Guest Profiles

Guest Profile: Paul Cornell

Paul Cornell was born in 1967 in Chippenham in Wiltshire, just to the north west of Salisbury Plain, where Stonehenge stands. His writing credits are phenomenal and varied for a man of his comparatively tender years. He has written both fiction and non-fiction, consisting of novels, audio books, comics, TV show episodes, TV guides, and journalism.

He's the author of two SF novels, both published by Gollancz. The first, Something More (2001), he describes as "a comfy British disaster about the far future." The other, British Summertime (2002), is, he says, "about a young woman who lives in contemporary Bath who can read anything: body language, where a chipshop is in a strange city, the odds on a team winning." He adds "I’m really proud of it: I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written." Elsewhere he says "I wanted to write, and still want to write, about the English countryside, and big moments of transcendence, and big reversals of expectation." He's in the process of writing his third novel.

He is also one of a team of writers who developed the phenomenally successful new Doctor Who series for the BBC. His episode, Father's Day, has been nominated for a Hugo Award in the category of Best Drama: Shortform.

Paul’s beginnings, however, were in the fan press, and particularly with various Doctor Who fanzines like Cygnus Alpha and Queen Bat, where one of his stories, Total Eclipse, which was to become the basis of his first Doctor Who novel, appeared. A string of Who novels followed, as well as short stories, audio books, a webcast story, an insiders guide to Who fandom, called License Denied: Rumblings from the Doctor Who Underground, and a Who reference book called The Discontinuity Guide, which he co-wrote with Martin Day and Keith Topping.

He also created the character of Professor Bernice Summerfield (described as an interstellar archaeologist, raconteur, boozer and wit.), who went on to have a very successful series of novels and audio books.

He has co-written a number of other TV reference books with Day and Topping, covering shows like The Avengers, Star Trek, and The X-Files, and they also wrote The Guinness Book of Classic British TV together.

Besides all of the above, he has written episodes of TV series such as Casualty, Holby City, and Coronation Street; written comics for the 2000AD Megazine, including the recently collected XTNCT, Pan-African Judges, and Deathwatch; written loads more TV stuff, this time for various children’s shows, including his own creation for CITV, Wavelength; worked as a journalist for both SFX and Starburst magazines; and done some editing and consultative work. Remarkably, all this still allows him some spare time, in which he enjoys cricket, and the life of his small town.

Currently he's waiting to hear about his own TV series. He is also the writer of the miniseries Wisdom for Marvel Comics, with more comics on the way.

Guest Profile by Pádraig Ó Méalóid