neil gaiman, kitapta bulunan "a tale of two cities" adlı hikayesiyle charles dickens'a gönderme yapmaktadır. merak edenler şöyle buyursun :

--- spoiler ---

hikayeyi "mister gaheris" adlı bir amcamız anlatıyor..

-there was once a man who lived in a city, and he had lived in that city all his life.

it was not that he had never left that city; he had holidayed by the sea, and, on the occasion of his parents' death, he took his small inheritance and spent two weeks on a tropical island, on which he contracted a nasty case of sunburn.

he had job in the city center, and he commuted to work each morning from the city suburbs, returned home again in the evening.

in the subway train, in the morning, he would read a newspaper, and wonder what would happen were the subway carriage suddenly to be transported to a distant planet : how long it would take before the passengers began to speak, one to another; who would make love to whom; who would be eaten should they run out of food.

he felt vaguely ashamed of these daydreams.

he worked all day at a desk, in a room with dozens of men and women who sat at desks like his and did jobs much like his. he neither liked nor disliked his job : he had taken the job because it was a job for life, because it provided him with stability and security.

but on his lunch break, while his fellow workers went off to a cafeteria on another floor, to eat subsidized lunches and exchange gossip, the man, whose name was robert, would take a sandwich from his briefcase, and, for an hour, explore the byways of the city.

he would walk, or ride a bus, and he would stare at his city, and this made him happy.

a carving on a wall above a door on a condemned house; a bright flash of sunlight reflecting off the railings of a park, making them serried spears to guard the green grass and running children; a gravestone in a churchyard, eroded by wind and rain and time until the words on the stone had been lost but the mosses and linches still spelled out letters from forgotten alphabets...

all these sights, and many others, he treasured and collected.

robert saw the city as a huge jewel, and the tiny moments of reality he found in his lunch-hours as facets, cut and glittering, of the whole.

`is there any person in the world who does not dream? who does not contain with them worlds unimagined`?

it did not occur to robert that each of his workmates had something that made them, also, unique; nor did occur to him that his passion for the city was in itself out of the ordinary.

sometimes robert would walk alone in the city at night, when he could not sleep, to see the face the city presented after dark, which was not its daytime face. once he shivered to hear, through a window, someone screaming --lost in a nightmare, perhaps, or waking from horrors they were unable to face.

there was a river that ran through the city, and during his night walks robert would stare into the river, and watch the lights of the city reflected in the water. the next day at work he would be tired.

one morning he took the subway to work as he usually did, spent his day toiling in the room of desks. on his lunch hour he walked through the shopping disctrict.

he passed streets and lanes and alleys he had passed a hundred times before; and then he saw the silver road.

it glittered and glimmered away beyond a street market.

robert ran through the market, but when he reached the end of the street he found only an alleway, and the silver road was nowhere to be seen.

he returned to work, but he found himself unable to concentrate. two hours' work stretched into three and four, and by the time he had finished he was alone in an empty office.

the sun had set, and he had missed his usual train home.

robert waited on an empty platform; and daydreamed about the silver road through the city.

perhaps he dozed, perhaps not; anyway, he has jerked out of his reverie by the arrival of the train.

it was unlike any underground train he had seen before; the lines of it were sleek and strange.

it arrived silently, and robert got on. there was only one other passenger on the train. he was standing, solitary, in the compartiment robert had entered: a pale man, with wild, black hair, dressed in a long black coat (bkz: morpheus). it took only a few minutes for robert to realize something was wrong : the train was not stopping at any stations. it was instead speeding onward silently beneath the city.

"excuse me? is this train going to stop? is this the city line? i'm afraid i got on the wrong train. i'm afraid..."
the stranger simply stared at him. dark eyes, like pools of night.

robert took a step backward then, nervously, and, as he did, he felt the train begin to slow. the lights of a station glimmered through the windows of the train.

the doors hissed open, and robert stumbled out. he did not recognize the station. there was no sign indicating its name, and it was poorly lit.
he hurried up the stair. robert was certain enough of his familiarity with the city to know that once on the streets it would be a simple thing for him to orient himself.

he would get a taxi home. certainly it would be expensive, but it was an expense he would willingly bear. he stepped through an archway onto the street.

there was something more than familiar about the street he stood in. something he found impossible to place; and he found himself unable to name the street.

he turned, but the archway was gone.
buildings loomed above him, high and lightless.
robert hurried through the city -- if he was still in city, for he was in two minds about this.

a cold wind blew down the thoroughfares and avenues, bringing with it familiar scents: the meat market at dawn; hot television sets from the electrical district; the smell of earth freshdug, and of burning tar, of sewers and subways.

robert began to run, certain that, eventually, he would see a street or building he recognized.

he didn't. eventually he collapsed, breathless, against a concrete wall.

from time to time, robert could feel eyes on him from the windows and doorways. but the faces he saw, when he saw faces, were lost and scared and distant, and no one ever came close enough to him to talk.

there were also certain other people in the city, but they were brief, fleeting people who shimmered and vanished.

from time to time the sky would lighten; at other times it went dark, but there were no stars or moon in the sky in the darkness, no sun by day.

the roads mixed him up, turned him around. here, he would pass a cathedral or museum, there, a skyscraper or a fountain --always halintigly familiar. but he never passed the same landmark twice, could never find the road to turn him to the landmark again.

nor was he ever able to find the subway station from which he had entered this distorted echo of his city.
he had been in the city for days, or for weeks, or perhaps even months. he had no way of knowing.

it was sunrise, although no sun rose, then robert found the river. it shimmered and shivered like a silver ribbon. there was a bridge above the river, an elegant curving arch made of stone and metal.

he walked up to the top of the bridge, and stared at the city.

he had taken it for a pile of rags; but it stirred and moved and stood upright.

the old man walked over to robert. "it's beautiful, isn't it?"
"yes" said robert. "it is."

they stood there, on the bridge together, looking out.
"where are we?" asked robert.
"in the city" said the old man.

robert shook his head. "i have walked the city all of my life. this is not the city, although there are moments when i seem to recognize fragments of the city, in the manner of one recognizing a line from a familiar poem in a strange book."

the old man took robert by the shoulder.
"this is the city," he repeated.
"then... where in the cirt we are?"
"i think..." the old man paused. there was a cold wind, up there on the bridge.
"i have been here for many, many years. how many, i do not know. and in that time i have had much time for thinking."

"perhaps a city is a living thing. each city has its own personality, after all.
los angeles is not vienna. london is not moscow. chicago is not paris. each city is a collection of lives and buildings and it has it own personality."

"so?"

"so, if a city has a personality, maybe it also has a soul. maybe it dreams.

"that is where i believe we have come. we are in the dreams of the city. that's why certain places hover on the brink of recognition; why we almost know where we are."
"you mean that we're asleep?"
"no. we are awake, or so i believe. i mean that the city is asleep. and that we are all stumbling through the city's dream."

together the two men crossed the bridge, and reentered the city.

"the flicker people --who are they?"

"who knows? perhaps they are waking people, flickering through our world. for one fractional moment they enter the city's dream, and see the city the way we see it. or perhaps they are people the city is dreaming of--"

above them vast, cyclopean walls loomed and towered. lights flickered on and off in distant buildings, as if they were spelling out messages in some uncertain code for a far-off observer.

"what will happen to me?" asked robert.

the old man shrugged. "i have met many people in my time in the city," he said. "but it is a big city, and there are few of us. i do not know what will become of you. for myself, i am content to wander the streets.
perhaps one day i shall return to the waking world. i am searching for a road i knew in the real city-- and when i find it, i shall walk down it and find myself in the real world once more.
this is what i hope and pray for; it is, after all, preferable to the alternative."

"and that is?"
"that the city should wake," said the old man. "that it should wake and--"

but he broke off there, and pointed wildly. "look!" he exclaimed, "do you not see it? that corner, there, between the wall and the old house? is it not familiar?"

robert stared, puzzled.

but already the old man was running across the street.
"wait! wait for me!" the old man was shouting.
the old man darted across the street and into an alleyway and was gone.

when robert reached the enterance to the alleyway he found it to be a dead end, and quite empty. he never saw the old man again.

but now robert has a purpose. he looked for something he knew; a path, or street or alley; he walked the city of dreams hunting for something he recognized: searching for the real.

he would climb the stairs of skyscrapers hunting for a doorway he had seen before.
he would descend below the city, following imaginary trails down wet dank steps that led him nowhere.

he walked tiny blackstreets, passing restaurants, forever closed, or small stores that, from all he could see through their windows, sold marvels, but which were never open for business.

he walked perhaps for months, speaking to no one, until the day he encountered a woman (işte tam bu noktada endless ailesinin en büyük kızkardeşi death dahil oluyor sahneye.) in the roof garden of a building that jutted up from the city like a black tooth.
she was sitting by a small fountain, and looked up at him as he approached.

"sir-- if you are real, and not a thing of figment and fantasy-- where are we?" she asked him.
"how real i am i can no longer say," he told her. "but we are in the city, or so i have been assured."

there was something about the woman; the way she held her head, perhaps, or a certain color to her eyes, or the line a curl traced as it tumbled from her forehead onto her cheek.

robert stepped closer to her.

it was then, behind the flowers and potted plants (some prosaic, some possessing a strange and exotic quality that was almost alien), he noticed a doorway.

it was a door of almost unbearable familiarity; he had passed it each day, on his way to work, in a life that now seemed distant and imaginary as the moon.

"what is your name?" she asked him.
the woman reached out a hand. robert thought that she was going to touch him; and had she touched him he would have been lost forever.

he ran headlong across the roof-garden, knocking plants over as he went, running headlong, pell mell, helter skelter, without looking back.

through the doorway, then.
and he was blinded.

"are you all right?"
robert looked around him, blinking the sunlight.

"thank you," he said. "i am fine."

i met robert in a small village off the coast of scotland, some years after the events i have mentioned here.

it was a very small village he lived in. consisting of a few scattered houses and farms, and a shop that served as post office, village store, and inn. other than that there were only stunted sheep and blasted trees, and the constant low susurrus of the sea.

it was in that inn that he told me the tale i have told you.
he was a most frightened man.

"do you fear that one day you will return to the dreams of the city?" i asked him. "is that why you live out here?"

he shook his head, and he walked outside. the mist hung low and white and thich and we might as well have been nowhere at all.

"if the city was dreaming," he told me, "then the city is asleep. and i do not fear cities sleeping, stretched out unconscious around their rivers and estuaries, like cats in the moonlight. sleeping cities are tame and harmless things.
"what i fear" he said, "is that one day the cities will waken. that one day the cities will rise."

i like to believe it was only the cold that made me shiver, only a strand of fog in my throat that caused me to catch my breath.

robert walked away across the moor and i never saw him again. since that time i have walked with less comfort in cities.

--- spoiler ---

üşenmedim yazdım.
(bkz: ablan kurban olsun sana)

(vudu - 20 Ocak 2010 21:33)

giris yazisini stephen king in yazdigi sekizinci sandman cildi. dream country gibi konu olarak seriyi takip etmek yerine, bir kar firtinasinda yollarini kaybedince sigindiklari worlds end isimli handaki karakterlerin anlattigi kisa hikayelerden olusur.

ozellikle bir kentin hayalleri icinde kaybolan bir adami anlattigi a tale of two cities hem konusu hem framing i hem de cizimleriyle cok basarilidir.

(thessaly - 19 Aralık 2002 03:17)

önümüzdeki hafta laika yayınevi tarafından sandman dünyaların sonu ismiyle yayınlanacak.

(laemar - 7 Nisan 2011 17:31)

http://www.frpkitap.com/….php?b=arama&arama=sandman

(one minute - 21 Nisan 2011 16:31)

worlds' end. sekizinci sandman cildi. stephen king tarafından yazılmış bir önsözü vardır.

(nightling - 18 Ağustos 2003 12:11)

bir fırtına yüzünden yollarını kaybeden ve bir hana sığınan birbirinden ilginç yolcuların şömine başında şarap eşliğinde birbirlerine anlattıkları hikayelerden oluşur. ancak şahsi kanaatimce bu cildin bütün sandman hikayesine olan armağanı boss smiley'dir.

(nightling - 18 Ağustos 2003 12:11)

ayrica, hikayenin sonundaki cenazenin de kimin olduguna dikkat; the wake'de tekrar karsiniza cikabilir..

(thessaly - 21 Eylül 2003 22:39)

laylaylom okurken, son hikayelerde aslinda bazi seylerin yanlis gittigini anlar okur. en sonda oyle bir darbe alir ki, ici icini yer, meraktan kudurur, kosa kosa the kindly ones alasi gelir. kisaca world's end, (the wake'i henuz okuyabilmis degilim) sandman efsanesinin sonunu ve kaderini dogrudan etkileyen bir cilttir.

(the 8th endless - 13 Nisan 2004 17:49)

sandman ile gec olan fakat guc olmayan ilk tanismamizin sebebi olan kitap. serinin en sikici kitabi bu ise digerleri nasildir acaba? diye dusundurendir. favorim kesinlikle hob's leviathan oldu. bunun disinda a tale of two cities'de harikaydi. aslinda hepsi cok guzeldi lan. neyse devami gelecek kesinlikle bu seviyeli iliskinin bundan eminim. bu arada sonundaki funeral kismi hakkinda aydinlatilabilirsem sevinirim. bu konuda degerli sandman okuyucularinin yesillemelerini bekliyorum. serinin diger kitaplariyla alakali bir spoiler icermiyorsa tabii.

(yok be kengatu aga - 23 Kasım 2014 22:40)

londra'da kings road'un batisinda earls court'un guneyinde bulunan, -notting hill kadar olmasin- bircok antikaciya ve mefrusatciya sahip bir semt adi. gidilip gorulmustur, ismini haketmesini saglayacak bir etki birakmamistir. neden boyle bir ismi oldugu bilinmemektedir.

(london - 22 Mayıs 2005 07:20)

camden tube istasyonunun karşısında akşamüstleri gothic ve punkların buluşma mekanlarından biri..canlarım benim..o saçlar o boyalar falan..

(marpione - 16 Temmuz 2005 00:37)

zor kitap...acıkcası sandman serisinin en sıkıcı kitabı..yine de guzel tabii ki..

(streetprincess - 10 Temmuz 2006 14:04)