Paul Cornell's Friday Newsletter

The Big Announcement: The Mighty Avengers Vs. the 1970s!

I’ve got a book coming out from Bloomsbury that’s part of a new range of popular studies of Marvel Comics! The Mighty Avengers vs. the 1970s is fully illustrated with panels from the comics, and is my journey through how Marvel’s main super team navigated that difficult decade. (Release date, etc., TBA.) You can read the announcement here at AP News. This is very much a labour of love for me, a book I’ve wanted to find a way to write for the longest time.

And as you can see below, I’m in very good company with the other launch titles in the Marvel Age of Comics range!

Of Shadows, Stars and Sabers In-Store Event Tomorrow!

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 available from all these different vendors!

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

L.A. Strong! (Now With Preview Pages!)

I have a strip, with art from the great Dennis Calero, in L.A. Strong, a charity comics anthology in support of the victims of the L.A. fires, out from Mad Cave on March 19th. The line up of comicker talent is extraordinary, as you can see below. You can order a copy, and read all about it, here and you can see an exclusive preview, including many finished pages, at The Beat, here.

And if you’re in the UK, you can order a copy from Forbidden Planet mail order here. 

Ace Jacket

I’ve contributed a short story to this anthology in aid of autism charities, edited by Sophie Aldred and Shawn J. Levy. It’s out on June 17th. You can read all about it and pre-order a copy here.

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!

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 (February Episode Out Now)

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 1954, are Nineteen Eighty-Four and the French/German Flash Gordon.

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 (Hugo Awards Now Open!)

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

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!

My Week

It’s Thomas’ half term holiday, and I’ve been away from Thursday, so I spent all day Monday and Tuesday looking after him. It was very satisfying. On Monday he just wanted to stay put and work on his jigsaw, but, as a result of him talking about a photo on my phone, on Tuesday he and I went out on an expedition. The photo in question was of him at a row of round barrows on the Wiltshire downlands where I grew up. I asked if he’d like to go back there and he said yes, then showed me another photo of him in front of the enormous earthwork that is Silbury Hill, and said something (in his not quite intelligible way) about not being so close to the fence. He also demonstrated that with a mime, as his way. So I wasn’t sure why he wanted to go there, but he was clearly excited by the idea, and that was good enough for me.

So we drove down to see those round barrows, Avebury stone circle, and Silbury Hill. Thomas seems to react to the landscape where I grew up in a similar manner to me. There’s something about those chalk downs that I find beautiful and reassuring. They talk to me of deep time, which I suppose was a comfort for me during the awful moments of my childhood. (I wrote a horror novel called Chalk about those days.) Thomas ran around the posts that indicate where a small stone circle used to be, on a vantage point where the horizon was the lovely rolling downs in all directions, laughing and laughing. I showed him the monument on the downs above my family home, and asked if he remembered Granny and her cat. ‘Not really,’ he said. It never occured to me to go and see the old house. If I ever set foot there I’ll discover it to be haunted, which it won’t be until I visit.

We went on to park at Silbury Hill, and Thomas asked for my phone so he could check the photo we’d been talking about. Then he slightly changed where he was standing - not so close to the fence - and asked for me to take a new photo.

I think he may have wanted to go all that way just to get a more aesthetically-pleasing image. Not that we’ll ever quite know. Which is all wonderfully Thomas.

To Be Continued

So that’s the smallest of the three big announcements done. I say smallest because, even though it’s something dear to me, it’s non-fiction, and the other two aren’t.

I hope to see you all next week!