Paul Cornell’s Friday Newsletter
For 22nd November. Thought Bubble memories.
Broken Frontier’s Complete(d) Saucer Country Review
The wonderful Andy Oliver at Broken Frontier, as part of his run-up to Thought Bubble, put out this lovely review of The Complete(d) Saucer Country, and, since it’s a feature review, I thought why not go ahead and feature it? You can read it here.
The Death of Wolverine Put Back to December
As announced here on ICv2, now on 17th December Marvel will be releasing an omnibus edition of the Death of Wolverine storyline, featuring not only the miniseries of that name, but also my entire run on the comic. I’m very pleased that all this material will now be available in one volume.
There are going to be two covers, this regular one from Alex Ross…
And this direct market exclusive version from Joe Quesada.
It’s available to pre-order on Amazon, and at all good bookstores and comic shops.
The Sequel to Hammer House of Podcast is… Telefantasy Time Jump!
Lizbeth Myles and I have just about completed our seven year journey as curators of the Hammer House of Podcast, with our final episode, a Christmas Special, coming out on December 20th.
So, on January 13th, we’ll 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 HHoP, 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 get HHoP through a podcast app, you may have to re-subscribe, but we’ll get into that as 2025 approaches.
HHoP will be leaving Twitter/X as soon as the podcast is finished. (I envisage our team of weirdies leaping on an ancient carriage driven by Christopher Lee that gallops off out of there.)
You can now find the new podcast at these links on Instagram (where it’s /telefantasytimejump/) and Bluesky (where it’s TelefantasyTJ.bsky.social).
I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved in our seven year run, and I hope you’ll follow us to our new monthly home!
My Ko-fi and eBay Stores Re-Stocked!
As always after Thought Bubble, 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.
The Current Hammer House of Podcast
Hammer House of Podcast, in which myself and Lizbeth Myles watch the Hammer horror movies in UK release order, is out on the 13th of every month, with our November episode (the last main episode!) being about Dr. Jekyll.
You can get these episodes free wherever you normally get your podcasts, as well as on our site, but if you sign up to our Patreon, for any sum of money from £1/$1, you get an extra episode every month too, on the 27th, in which we watch Patron requested movies and films from other horror studios of the same era. (But you now might want to sign up at the £3/$3 level to get the bonus episodes for our sequel podcast!)
(After a slow start I ended up really liking that movie.)
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 Lou Anders, excellent novelist and game designer, continues his run of amazing games scenarios with Fury of the Forsaken, a D&D-suitable Viking adventure with all his typical thematic depth. You can find it here on Kickstarter.
My friend the comics writer Fred Van Lente, with his co-creators Crystal Skillman and Fernando Pinto, are bringing the hit webcomic series Eat Fighter to print with a collected edition, now on Kickstarter.
“Eat Fighter is a competitive eating, zombie murder epic that follows Missy, a thirty-something fitness nut who throws away her kale and step-counting ways to become a superstar on the competitive eating circuit. Following the lifestyle of her late brother, who was a champion competitive eater himself, she embarks on a quest to Seoul to become the World Champion Eat Fighter. But eating barrels of barbecue and acres of apple pie doesn’t come without a price—so what’s Missy’s secret as to why she can eat as much as she wants and never gain a pound?”
And my friend the cross-media writer Meghan Fitzmartin is one of the writing team on the new season of the audio drama hit Batman Unburied. You can read the announcement here at the Hollywood Reporter, and hear the trailer here.
My Week(s)
I like to say that I enjoy the whole ritual of Thought Bubble in Harrogate, but this year I think maybe the ‘ritual’ aspect got in the way. Good memories are formed from new experiences, and this year I kind of did a lot of the same things as always, and not enough that was new. Being with Liz Myles across the whole weekend was wonderful, of course (Liz always makes things better), and included a highlight new experience in the form of a booked visit to Betty’s Tea Rooms. The pampering of that afternoon was akin to a Japanese tea ceremony, only with scones. At the con itself, I enjoyed having a table and meeting the audience as always, and being placed next door to Rachael Smith meant we not only got to enjoy her company but that of her awesome toddler Henry, star of Nap Comix, who loved that we were all interested in him booping our noses. I think my big mistake, my main problem, was that on the Saturday night, myself and a group of colleagues on a certain venture that has not yet been revealed took the visiting boss of said venture out on the town. Relief at entertaining him and the bonds of friendship that were made that night turned into too many pints, and I ended up not only being inadvertantly rude to other friends (I headed off to the next shiny thing while they were getting their coats) but not actually getting to enjoy something I’d looked forward to all year, the Mid-Con Party. Granted, by the time we got there that was a packed-to-the-ceiling nightmare of loud music and nowhere to sit, but I later saw photos of all the bigtime comickers sitting happily on the roof gardens. In search of my next big thing I’d, yet again as I feel it, cut myself off from the community I very much aspire to be a part of. And the next day was more time at the table and very few people seemed to be around on the Sunday night and I never even got to see a whole bunch of friends.
Next year I’m going to do all that differently. I might not get a table. I will definitely drink less, maybe nothing at all. And I’ll prioritise the social over the business. But next year, equally, that as yet unrevealed project might have changed everything.
I got the hi-hiz jacket (required for set-up in the hall) from some local builder friends of mine, and the sack truck as it’s called from a friend who’s in the moving business. The sack truck is an amazing invention that made the whole business of moving heavy boxes of comics really simple.
That’s before the convention started. We sold most of those. Liz set up the table as always. I couldn’t manage a display as welcoming as that.
One of my many niche purchases that weekend was this booklet of… well, you can see. It’s available from Dark and Golden Books. This is the sort of thing Thought Bubble is for. But for me also this time around it was about Fear of Having Missed Out. So something has to change.
Meanwhile, at home, Thomas had to get used to a new babysitter for the Sunday morning when I wasn’t there. The wonderful Abigail showed an interest in his jigsaws, I’m told, and that broke the ice. He’s been a little meltdown-prone in the evenings now I’m back, which I’m sure is down to the stress of school. He seemed, in his stoic way, glad to have me around again, though.
Work-wise this has been quite the amazing week. I’m pottering away on the non-fiction book, shaping my notes into an opening chapter, and I’m also reading the proofs of a novella I have coming out next year. But mainly, I’ve had three truly enormous meetings across three days, one of those being a follow-up. None of them had anything to do with the so-far-unannounced project I mentioned in my Thought Bubble recap. So that’s three possibly life-changing things on the go right now. (Of course we’re in the business of that sort of thing never happening, but one of these things is a definite!) My fingers remain crossed.
I blame Trump for my current seeming inability to control what I’m eating (and to some degree what I’m drinking). You know, special needs child, future of planet in danger, fascist idiot a big influence on that future. I keep seeing signs of hope, but to fully commit myself to doing all I can, and to make sure I keep going in good health, I need to make some changes. At least I have a whole ton of new followers on BlueSky!
Wow, that was the ultimate glass half full, or an eighth full, piece. Lots of exciting stuff in the future, a weekend with Liz amongst friends, what more could I want? Obviously, I need a sack truck of the soul.
To Be Continued
Happier next week, I’m sure! I hope to see you all again then!
Hang in there. We will survive the orange fascist idiot. We do have a two-term rule. That's not going away.