Paul Cornell's Friday Newsletter

New Newsletter Host!

Subscribers will have noticed something different today. I’ve moved the hosting of the Newsletter from Substack to Beehiiv. Everything should be as before, and I hope you got this on time as expected. And for those who’ve signed up since the move: welcome!

Award Longlisting for ‘The English Astronaut’!

My three-part comics serial for 2000AD with artist Laura Helsby, ‘The English Astronaut’ has been longlisted for in the category of Best Shorter Fiction in the British Science Fiction Association Awards! You can see the full listings here, and, if you’re a BSFA member, vote!

Of Shadows, Stars and Sabers is Out Next Week!

I have a new short story in a new original anthology, Of Shadows, Stars and Sabers, edited by Jendia Gammon and Gareth L. Powell, and I’m alongside a stellar group of authors, including Adrian Tchaikovsky, David Quantick, Stark Holborn and Lizbeth Myles! The book is out next Tuesday, February 11th, and is available for pre-order from all these different vendors!

There’s also an in-store event featuring many of the authors at San Diego’s Mysterious Galaxy bookstore on February 22nd at 2pm!

Gnomes of Lychford

On 9th September, Tor.com Publishing is releasing the sixth book in my Lychford series of rural fantasy novellas, Gnomes of Lychford. It’s a re-editing of the serial I ran on this newsletter, and I’ve taken the opportunity to sort out a couple of little plot problems.

I think it’s my best Lychford book, and, weirdly, it’s a great jumping-on point, because everything about the series is explained at the start.

You can read all about it here.

“An unlikely group of supernatural creatures terrorizes the sleepy village of Lychford. Okay, they're gnomes. That's not a spoiler: you worked it out it from the title. When an ancient prophecy clashes with an unfortunate modern design aesthetic, the people of Lychford must band together to put out fires (both literal and metaphorical) to save their town before the king of the Gnomes (King Greg, and it's dangerous to laugh at a gnome) calls in the terms of an old promise.

Trouble is: no one knows what the promise is, nor how to fulfil it.

It's going to be a long night.”

Telefantasy Time Jump

The new podcast from me and Lizbeth Myles has just released its first Patrons-only episode. We’re covering the history of SFF on TV, from 1953 onward, with our regular episodes (on the 14th of every month) covering a show released that year in the UK, and the Patron Bonus episodes (on the 28th) covering a show from the rest of the world. This month’s shows, from 1953, are The Quatermass Experiment and Canada’s Space Command (starring Star Trek’s James Doohan).

The main episode is available free wherever you get your podcasts. To get the bonus episode, you need to follow us on Patreon at £3/$3 or above. (And you get access to seven years of Hammer House of Podcast bonus episodes!)

You can find all the info here.

For Your Awards Consideration

The project I’ve had out in 2024 that I’d like to put forward for any award nominations you might be considering this year is The Complete(d) Saucer Country by myself and artist Ryan Kelly, published by Image. (It’s weird not to have put out anything that would qualify for the Scribe Awards, but having had a Hugo Awards Best Graphic Story or Comic run last year I might have a shot there.) Thanks very much for considering it.

My Ko-fi and eBay Stores Re-Stocked!

I’ve re-stocked my Ko-fi store, where you can buy my books and comics, signed and personalised, for shipping worldwide.

Similarly, I’ve now re-stocked my ebay store, full of Bronze Age Marvel comics at bargain prices.

Find my Books at Bookshop.Org and Help Out Indie Booksellers!

Bookshop.org is a collective selling tool that sets up a marketplace for all indie bookstores in the UK, functioning exactly like Amazon, except you’re supporting your local bookshop. You can find a selection of my books here, and I get a little cut of the proceeds too if you order from here!

My Linktree

You can now find all my social media links, my website/blog and links to where you can buy my books, in one place here, thanks to Linktree!

The Work of Friends

My friend the writer Eddie Robson has a new novel coming out. The Heist of Hollow London will be published by Tor Books on 30th September.

“It’s a sci-fi crime story set in a not-too-distant future where Oakseed, one of Earth’s largest corporations, has unexpectedly collapsed. As all its assets are sold, five clones produced by the corporation are purchased by someone who wants them to go to a small, crumbling outpost of the corporation, located in the failed and near-abandoned city of London, and steal a vast sum of money that’s been concealed there.

The crew are all low-status workers with no experience of such things. Arlo and Drienne are ‘brand ambassadors’ tasked with making sales on the street; Nadi is a security guard; Loren works in tech support; and Kline is in HR. But they all know the workings of the company, and none of them have a choice. It’s the only shot at true freedom any of them will ever get.

As anyone who’s familiar with heist stories will know, the meticulous plan always goes off without a hitch.”

You can read all about it, and find ordering links, here.

(Cover by Alex Eckman-Lawn.)

My Week

Phew, so that was a bit of a scramble to learn the new system, import the old posts and you subscribers and make sure it was all going to work. (Fingers crossed!)

Still no childcare here, so this week I’ve been fitting in what work time I have in the gaps between looking after Thomas. I’ve done a few thousand words of the new fantasy novel, and sent off a radio pitch to the producer who asked for it. I also went down the pub for lunch with two visiting friends, the novelists Emma Newman and Geoff Ryman. This was mainly so Emma, who’s about to move to an area with limited wi-fi, could get a bag of my old Doctor Who DVDs (the ones I’ve replaced with the lovely new blu-ray sets), which would otherwise have been going to the charity shop. It was a real break from the routine to have guests, albeit just for an hour or two. The routine, at the moment, is pretty demanding. Thomas, being an autistic special needs kid, gets great comfort from the same things happening at the same time every day, and Caroline and I try to give him that at home so he has energy enough for school. That means, however, that one finds oneself attending to many small details all the time. Many of them are joyous, like singing the ‘Form a Sausage Roll’ song at 6.30pm precisely. (It’s a long story.) But put together over several days, with Thomas’ annoyance at, for instance, too much traffic on the way home, on top of that, and it becomes a little bit burdensome. It’s important to recharge one’s own batteries, and, right now, that isn’t happening.

However, Thomas is really enjoying his new Monday drum lessons, and has been given the homework of memorising the names of the drums. (It’s wonderful that three of them are ‘toms’.) This evening, as always, he’s off to swimming lessons with his Mum, so I get my ninety minutes down the pub. I have come to highly value my little cadre of roofers and builders, those other crafters who knock off early. The landlord even backed Who Killed Nessie? (Rachael Smith just delivered her fiftieth finished page, meaning we’re halfway and well on target to deliver on time.)

Today, before that, thank goodness, I have a Zoom meeting with an old friend who works for a TV company, and he’s going to tell me what the networks are after right now. It’s more to keep my hand in than anything else. I’d like to write a new spec script, but that’s going to have to be after all the other things that are in the pipeline, including the three enormous things that haven’t yet been announced.

So it’s been a mixed week all in all, with a lot of emotion, a lot of exhaustion, some good work. That’s pretty average around here.

To Be Continued

One of these days I’ll be able to announce one of those big projects. In the meantime, I hope to see you all here again next week!