From his interview with NPR's Arun Rath:
RATH: You note that usually short story collections or collections like this have some sort of a unifying theme. And you apologize for the fact that this doesn't have a unifying theme. You say it's kind of a hodgepodge. But I would maybe put to you that there's a theme of fiction overtaking reality or dreams doing that - and also it seems like this idea of forgetting and memory.--Marshal Zeringue
GAIMAN: I think that's true. In some ways, it's me tipping my hat both to the human imaginative facility - the fact that we can imagine - and it's also a way of trying to celebrate aspects of and creatures of and people of the imagination that I've loved, which is why it contains a Sherlock Holmes short story, which is why it has a tribute to Bradbury in there, which is why it has a Jack Vance story. There are things in there that are just ways of tipping my hat to things and fictions and acts of imaging that I have...[read on]