Paul Cornell's Friday Newsletter

Pocket Gamer Connects London

I’m going to be on a panel at a games event this month! Pocket Gamer Connects London runs on 20th-21st January. I don’t yet know my timeslot, but if you’re a gamer I hope to see you there!

XTNCT is Out Again!

The current issue (#190) of the Hachette partwork 2000AD: The Ultimate Collection includes the complete XTNCT by myself and artist D’Israeli.

“ON A FAR-FUTURE EARTH, ONLY A FEW HUNDRED HUMANS SURVIVE AND WAGE WAR against themselves using genetically engineered plants and animals. A Crack team of GM dinosaurs have sworn revenge on mankind and are seeking to make them extinct…”

It’s great to see one of my favourite strips back in print.

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.

Telefantasy Time Jump Starts This Month!

On January 13th, Lizbeth Myles and I will be starting our new podcast, Telefantasy Time Jump. It’s going to be about the history of fantastic television in the UK, going year by year, starting with 1953. (But we’ll be talking in the first episode about all the shows that came out before that date.) Each episode one of us will pick a UK series from that year for us to watch two examples of, and the other one of us will select a show from the rest of the world in that year to talk about on our extra monthly episode for Patreon supporters. (Everyone who’s at the £3/$3 level or above.)

If you’re a current Patron of Hammer House of Podcast, you don’t have to do anything (except set your patronage to the £3/$3 level if you want the extra episode). The HHoP Patreon site will simply turn into the TTJ site and memberships will be carried over. (If you got HHoP through a podcast app, you may have to re-subscribe.)

You can now find the new podcast at these links on Instagram (where it’s /telefantasytimejump/) and Bluesky (where it’s TelefantasyTJ.bsky.social).

Of Shadows, Stars and Sabers

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 on February 11th, and is available for pre-order now!

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!

My Week(s)

It’s mostly been hanging out with Thomas, honestly, which is a mixture of pleasantly calm as he does his jigsaws or ushers me to the sofa to watch Supertato, and frustrating when he won’t listen to my telling him, for instance, reasons he should take a bath more often or not leave the garden door open and let the heat out. The one factor of raising an autistic child that I find most difficult, I think, is the lack of being able to reasonably outline why something needs to happen, when to him just the fact of it happening or not happening on a regular, repeated, basis is much more important. I failed to make a Cadbury’s chocolate house for him yesterday. The instructions were offhand in a quite 1950s way. I now owe him two big bars of wasted chocolate, covered in coloured icing which was my attempt to glue it together when melted chocolate had failed, and which he won’t eat. (And I’d better not, given I’ve started my health routine again.) That didn’t leave me feeling like the best Dad in the world.

I think a lot of people have trouble with going to see their in-laws over the festive season. I’ve stayed home for the last two years, and really enjoyed the solitude, but health issues in Caroline’s family made me feel that this year it was only proper for me to go. It was pretty difficult, and I think I’ll leave it at that, because it feels gauche to go further. But at least I just about got to do what I went down there to do, which was to help those who are going through some serious difficulties.

I got to pop down the pub on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. (And put some pictures on Instagram, which made me look like a complete lush, but sharing those there helps the Railway Inn with the publicity and it was a planned operation, not ‘wa-hey, photo with the lads!’) Apart from that, there hasn’t really been much in the way of festive relaxation, for either me or Caroline. I’m still on deadline, aiming to deliver this non-fiction book I’ve been working on on January 10th. It’s going fine, I’ll get there, but the business of research and fact-checking is fundamentally different to the rhythms of fiction, and learning to budget time for it has been a thing.

Like most of you, I should think, I’m kind of aghast at the coming year. This morning, for instance, I’ve been up since 4am, mostly doomscrolling. But at least I have my own eating and exercise back under control, and that feels like a big step. Now at least I’ll be ready for the year’s stresses. Getting 10,000 steps in on every day of the year so far feels like me being me again.

In the next few months, two enormous things are going to be announced, plus this non-fiction project, which is pretty big also. (None of this is Doctor Who. Do I really have to say that now?) I’ve also got a new comics series coming out, a new one-off comic being announced soon, a fiction project appearing in the autumn, and at the end of April Rachael Smith and I will be delivering Who Killed Nessie? to Zoop to print and send out to our wonderful backers. And that’s just the definites. Some of the could-bes are pretty great too. So I have some personal cause for hope. But it’s hard to feel it at 4am.

Happy New Year to you all, and I hope we all find unexpected happiness inside it. May your chocolate houses prove robust.

To Be Continued

I’m not sure when some of this stuff is going to be announced, so watch this space, eh? And do find Telefantasy Time Jump on Insta or Bluesky. In the meantime, I hope to see you all here next week!