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| Art by Laurent Lefeuvre |
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| Ginda Bojeffries by Laurent Lefeuvre |
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| Art by Laurent Lefeuvre |
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| Detail from a portrait by Farel Dalrymple |
Alan Moore [...] has signed a six-figure deal for a “groundbreaking” five-volume fantasy series as well as a “momentous” collection of short stories.
Bloomsbury, home to the Harry Potter novels, acquired what it described as two “major” projects from the 67-year-old. The first, Illuminations, is a short story collection which will be published in autumn 2022 and which moves from the four horsemen of the apocalypse to the “Boltzmann brains” fashioning the universe. Bloomsbury said it was “dazzlingly original and brimming with energy”, promising a series of “beguiling and elegantly crafted tales that reveal the full power of imagination and magic”.
The second acquisition is a fantasy quintet titled Long London, which will launch in 2024. The series will move from the “shell-shocked and unravelled” London of 1949 to “a version of London just beyond our knowledge”, encompassing murder, magic and madness. Bloomsbury said it “promises to be epic and unforgettable, a tour-de-force of magic and history”.
[...] Speaking about his book deal, Moore said that he was at a moment in his career when he was “bursting with fiction, bursting with prose”.
“I couldn’t be happier with the new home that I’ve found at Bloomsbury: a near-legendary independent publisher with a spectacular list and a fierce commitment to expanding the empire of the word,” said Moore. “I have a feeling this will be a very productive partnership.”
The first-ever short story collection from the beloved creator of Watchmen and numerous other classics, a beguiling series of tales on the revealing power of magic and imagination.Illuminations is an astonishing, rich and broad collection of short stories, each featuring some kind of illumination or realization. From ghosts and otherworldly creatures to the four horsemen of the apocalypse to the Boltzmann brains fashioning the universe at the big bang, Alan Moore's Illuminations is a series of beguiling and elegantly crafted tales that reveal the full power of imagination and magic.Bloomsbury Publishing - Publication date: 6 September 2022
From the beloved creator of Watchmen and numerous other classics, the Long London series is a tour-de-force that tells the story of the timeless shadow city full of magic and memory somewhere beyond the "real London."
Long London is a series about "a sometimes-accessible shadow city that is beyond time." This is a hugely inventive, atmospheric, mythical world of murder, magic and madness. It is a quintet of novels that sweeps across the 20th century, starting in the shell-shocked and unravelled London of 1949, and following the populations of writers, criminals, artists, and magicians through that familiar city and a version of London just beyond our knowledge.Bloomsbury Publishing - Publication date: 2 April 2024
[..] That's scripts, plural, because I also kept a copy of “Convention Tension” in the same envelope. The latter is a plot synopsis by The Author originally intended to have been illustrated by Gary Kwapisz but had been pitched to me for a later issue of Anything Goes. “Convention Tension” obviously was never realized, although I still have the plot and the envelope. But not the script to “In Pictopia.”
Brief side note: “Convention Tension” involved an apocalyptic comic book convention that, if anything, would have formed a counterpart to “In Pictopia.” If “In Pictopia” concerned an allegorical city of comic strip and comic book characters, “Convention Tension" was a bleak comedy about the current industry of characters driven by ruthless ambition, petty grievances, and life-long grudges. One of the main characters is named Byron Starkwinter, a writer who achieves fame with his creation “Mookie the Worm,” but because of incessant fan adulation and no small amount of psychoactive chemicals, eventually becomes unhinged and unable to separate fantasy from reality. [..]
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| Art by Steve Poulacheris |
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| Cover art by Laurent Lefeuvre |
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| Preliminary sketch by Laurent Lefeuvre |
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| Art by Enrico Ariis |
Entertainment Weekly: San Diego Comic-Con is approaching. Have you ever attended it?
Alan Moore: No…well, I mean, I stopped going in the late ’80s. I just thought, I don’t really want to do this anymore, and I don’t really see why I am doing it. I did find it a bit overwhelming and creepy.
EW: Well, you’re a god there.
AM: And this is the last way that I want to be treated. The reason that I live in Northampton is because everyone here is kind of used to me. I mean, yeah, I do get a gratifying smattering of people coming up to me in the street and thanking me for me work, and shaking me hand and just wanting to wish me well.
EW: Although if you shaved your beard and cut your hair — no one would recognize you!
AM: No one would recognize me.
EW: Would you ever do that?
AM: No, just the laziness that has enabled my beard to get to this length is not a habit that I’m going to shake now.
EW: But it would be your greatest act of magic: ”Where did Alan Moore go!?”
AM: Well, I saw the possibility, of course. I’ve always got this option. So should I need to disappear, then, if you see a sort of bald guy with a really bad shaving rash going around somewhere, then that will probably be me, yeah.
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| Art by Jacen Burrows |
Uncertainties is an anthology series — featuring authors from Canada, America, the United Kingdom, and the island of Ireland — each exploring the concept of increasingly fragmented senses of reality. These types of short stories were termed “strange tales” by Robert Aickman, called “tales of the unexpected” by Roald Dahl, and known to Shakespeare’s ill-fated Prince Mamillius as “winter’s tales”. But these are no mere ghost stories. These tales of the uncanny grapple with existential epiphanies of the modern day, when otherwise familiar landscapes become sinister and something decidedly less than certain . . .
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| Art by Maria Brinet |
