In Neil Gaiman's "Stardust," a star plummets to Earth and a fantastical fairy tale unfolds. The author's star, by contrast, has been burning brightly and sitting pretty in the publishing worlds of comic books and genre novels.

It was just a matter of time before Hollywood came calling.

Director Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman wrote the screenplay for "Stardust," the film that opens Friday and bears only a passing resemblance to Gaiman's book at times, particularly in the Robert De Niro role of Captain Shakespeare -- who has more in common with Captain Jack Sparrow than with Captain Johannes Alberic, a minor character in Gaiman's text. There are creatures and characters -- along with graphic sex and more explicitly violent acts -- that have vanished for the on-screen "Stardust," owing to the PG-13 rating.

	Charles Vess' cover illustration for "Stardust," a fantasy novel by Neil Gaiman. Click photo for larger image.

Gaiman has endorsed the changes made in his original story, which comes in a book with beautiful illustrations (as explicit as the text) by his "Sandman" collaborator, Charles Vess.

"I think it's a lovely movie, and that it's a movie, not a book, and those places where they changed things to make it work as a movie, work just fine," Gaiman wrote in a recent entry at neilgaiman.com/journal after seeing the movie.

While leaving "Stardust's" movie magic to others, Gaiman, whose own screenwriting credits include the English translation of "Princess Mononoke" and the teleplay "MirrorMask,'' has completed an epic writing task: With Roger Avary, he's written a screenplay of "Beowulf," the poem from around 1100 A.D. that's long been a staple of college English classes. The film has attracted a cast that includes Angelina Jolie and Anthony Hopkins, with Robert Zemeckis at the helm.

It's been reported that Gaiman and Avary started translating the more than 3,000 lines of "Beowulf" in May 1997.

It's that kind of attention to detail and an encyclopedic knowledge of superheroes, myths, gods and pop culture that has earned Gaiman, 47, a cult of followers. The native Brit now lives in a "big Addams Family house" near Minneapolis with his wife and three children. He may be a family guy at home, but out and about, he's the genre geek's rock star, with his unruly black hair and charismatic storytelling ability, both of which were on display from kickoff to goodbye at San Diego Comic-Con last month.

Ed Bailey, Associated Press Neil Gaiman is co-writing a screenplay of "Beowulf." Click photo for larger image.

During a packed morning tribute to the legendary Jack Kirby on the final day of the convention, Gaiman entered last and, in true rocker style and in stark contrast to the touristy attire of other notables on the panel, wearing sunglasses and a leather jacket. When Kirby's biographer, Mark Evanier, asked the panelists to name a Kirby favorite, Gaiman began, "I was having this same conversation with Guillermo del Toro two weeks ago in Budapest on the set of 'Hellboy' ... "

Evanier interrupted to say that might be his favorite sentence of the whole Comic-Con.

Closer to home, Wayne Wise, assistant manager of Phantom of the Attic in Oakland, has been reading Gaiman since the writer came on the scene like a breath of fresh air in the 1980s. Just in his 20s, Gaiman had picked up where the legendary Alan Moore left off on "Miracleman," and then skyrocketed on his own with "Sandman."

"He was a young voice, and he made it hip to be smart, intellectual and literate" among the comic-book cognoscenti, Wise recalls. "He has the image, too -- the sunglasses, the rocker hair, he's always dressed in black ... he plays to the image."

Kirby and other creators of legendary superheroes continued to write for many years, and they continue to have legions of fans, not the least of which is Gaiman. But he takes what they did, mixes it with a pop-culture sensibility, and turns tradition on its ear.

His work has helped bring comic books an air of respectability while appealing to the reader who believes "it's hip to be bright."

"In Sandman, the Endless appear as Goth kids," Wise continues. "It was fashion-conscious, it was culture-conscious, it spoke to a lot of people because it wove together so many different elements. ... 'Sandman' comes out, it's not a superhero comic. It's mythology, it's history, it's literature."

And then there's the company Gaiman keeps. Wise points out that he's pals with Tori Amos, who sings on a tribute CD to the writer, titled "Where's Neil When You Need Him?"

Even as he seems to promote the rock-star image, and now with mainstream fame biting hard at his heels, Gaiman says he doesn't take much stock in the notion of celebrity.

"There's an interview over in Time Out New York today that suggests that I'm about going to move from whatever cult famousness I have to being someone who is recognised in delicatessens," he wrote last week. "I hope that doesn't happen. I've spent about 15 years turning down things like People magazine and the David Letterman Show mostly because I didn't want to be famous in that way, remembering Stephen King's comment to me back in 1992 that if he had his life to live over again the main thing that he would change would be the "Do you know me?" American Express TV advert. He wouldn't do it, because somehow his face entered the public domain at that point. I prefer a world in which the people who don't know me or what I do also don't know my name or what I look like.

"Personally I think the genie will stay in the bottle. But we'll see."

The cult of Neil Gaiman, despite his protests, is likely to spread beyond fans of "Sandman" and books like "The Anansi Boys" and the Hugo Award-winning "American Gods." Not if he keeps dropping such names as Stephen King and Guillermo del Toro, or partnering with other popular authors such as Terry Pratchett, with whom he wrote "Good Omens."

Unbeknownst to the master storyteller, it appears the fame genie is cavorting out and about with the masses. Sounds like the topic for a devilishly good Gaiman yarn.