Breakfast in the Ruins

After thinking about it for six years, we finally did it. We hosted a couple of days of Moorcock-flavoured gaming here in the heart of Bradford. And it is done. Stick a fork in it. But Phil and I had lots of thoughts about it that we wanted to record and share. Thoughts that would have been locked in a vault, probably, had this all gone down like a shit balloon... Fortunately, though, it went down...

Miles is back for Part Two of The Ice Schooner, in which we find that our hero Konrad Arflane is still a dick, and we beat around several bushes, including the novelisation of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Richard Widmark and flamethrowers, and comparative experiences of angiograms… JOIN US!!!! (and listen to the Casual Trek Podcast )

It's Threads Day! So what better excuse to have Dr Malcom Craig back in Derry & Toms to talk about NUCLEAR WAR, and particularly General Sir John Hackett’s The Third World War: August 1985 (1978) and its sequel The Third World War: The Untold Story (1982). As we're both gamers, and Malcolm has an academic interest in it too, we also get into it with GDW's Twilight 2000 RPG, arguably the ultima...

SYNCHRONIUS NEWS! We're less than four weeks out from our first Moorcockian gaming weekend, Rolling in the Ruins 2026, and suddenly Elric RPGs are like buses! What great fortune then, that I had this RPG-related chat lined up with Marcus Bone, the guy behind https://stormbringerrpg.com/ and many other things, like: https://www.darkconspiracytherpg.com/ https://demonground.org/archives/299-2/ and h...

Dave returns to Derry & Toms to conclude our coverage of the 1973 Karl Edward Wagner anthology Death Angel's Shadow, featuring his anti-hero Kane. Some great stuff in here, but some rough stuff too, with references to sexual assault, so please beware that we will discuss it in both the original context, as we see it, and that of a modern reader. Two stories round out our journey with this Kane...

In a blasphemous conjunction of the spheres, this year is the 60th anniversary of the publication of the novella Behold the Man in New Worlds issue 166 - and a few weeks ago patron Nick Hopkinson sent me the link to an article by Professor Rowland Wymer in Vol 52 no 2 of the Interdisciplinary Critical Journal Mosaic from June 2019, titled The Imitation of Christ: Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man...

Jason Atomic drops by Derry & Toms to talk about his journey from finding Moorcock and metal to creating Satanic Mojo comix , founding the Satanic Flea Market , becoming an avid book collector and illustrating the Alex Sanders Lectures , a brand new reprint of one of the first correspondent courses in witchcraft by the "King of Witches" with a commentary by Maxine Sanders. Head to Aeon Books t...

Allister Thompson returns to Derry & Toms to talk about his new novel, Birch and Jay: The Knowledge Seekers Part One . In a typically roving conversation, we get into his influences and intentions in writing about a climate apocalypse and aftermath, as well as other stuff, like bad War of the Worlds adaptations (again). This episode plays out with Why Did We Do It (The Last Ones) from Allister...

Robert is back in D&Ts to pick up the trail of Oswald Bastable as he navigates the strange world of an alternative 1970s full of airships, anarchists and a nasty little fucker called Regan. We also navigate Mike's occasionally annoying propensity for retrospectively sticking a Von Bek in EVERYTHING. Get the Colossive Press Croydon Spaceport Fun Pack HERE and check out the details of our Rollin...

Don returns to Derry & Toms to update us on his journey adapting The Dancers at the End of Time stories into a sprawling four-album suite and to talk about his epic musical memoir, One of the Spirits Burning (order from Stairway Press in the US and J ayde Design in the UK to get the limited edition CD included) You can find the Spirits Burning back catalogue on vinyl and CD all over the place...

Malcom Craig drops by Derry & Toms to talk about his work in academia, roleplaying games, his authorship of the first ever academic article on Twilight 2000 , the "macho men with Uzis" sub-genre of RPGs, the upcoming reboots of his Cold City and Hot War games, and panicking as children about how high priority your neighbourhood was in terms of Soviet megatonnage. Mostly, though, we're talking...

Dave is back in Derry & Toms as we finally turn our attention to Karl Edward Wagner and his towering dark fantasy anti-hero... Kane! We've been talking about doing some KEW for a while now, so what better time than a grim, miserable Yorkshire winter to tackle a chilly werewolf whodunnit. The story, Reflections for the Winter of My Soul, is the first of three in the collection Death Angel's Sha...

We're talking RPGs again, this time in the company of Tanya Floaker (Mum Chums, Lo! Thy Dread Empire, Solstice, Be Seeing You, a|state). Along the way we'll get into Tanya's history with Moorcock and genre fiction, gaming in Thatcher's Scotland, first steps into game design and the pending launch of their new Kickstarter for The Thunder Perfect Mind , launching 1st February 2026. If you're interes...

Joe Banks braves the radioactive zone to join me on the Ferris Wheel and discuss the 1975 album by Michael Moorcock and The Deep Fix - The New Worlds Fair - the 50th anniversary edition of which is now available via thinklikeakey.com . Joe's latest book - ROCK and ROLE: The Visionary Songs of Peter Hammill and Van der Graaf Generator - is available now, as is his prior book - Hawkwind: Days of the...

Derek AKA Imrryr joins me in Derry and Toms as we take a look at the Elric tale, The Jade Man's Eyes. Initially published in 1973 in Flashing Swords 2 and as a standalone novella by Unicorn Press, this story would later be heavily revised and repackaged as part of the fix-up novel The Sailor on the Seas of Fate. So plenty to look at, including unpronounceable names and this story's key place in El...

We're back... we've crawled out of the ruins of our Christmas and New Year bottles to witness the fantastic world of 1973 through the eyes of Oswald Bastable. Robert MacMillan is my co-pilot for this journey as we have to look up what things are and marvel over Moorcock's invention of a genre that these days seems largely about gluing cogs to pith helmets, tea duels and "chap-hop". OR IS IT? I don...

Another year, another Birthday Special... our sixth! It's Mike's birthday... it's Phil's birthday... it's the podcast's official state birthday... so what better than a silly, hastily assembled drunken quiz? No ? required... that was a rhe A chance for Loz to close the gap on Phil's epic quiz streak as well as to introduce a wild card in the shape of a third contestant! OK, fine. This wasn't the a...

Andy Darby joins me as we take D and Ts on the road to eons-old Mars to explore mysteries, machinations and mild disappointments. Check out Andy’s substack to read The Crow Feeder and sign up to his website for updates and to receive a free e-copy of his latest novella .

Miles is back in Derry & Toms as we tackle another 60s Moorcock classic... The Ice Schooner. Lots to talk about here, and some pearls to clutch too, as we visit one of Mike's sweatiest rime-encrusted tales that, one way or another, remind us of our hometowns. And we talk about Doctor Who and Star Trek a bit too. Content warning: there is some discussion of SA that occurs in this book.  JOIN US...

As voted for by our dear patrons, the subject for this year's Halloween Special is SLUGS! Shaun Hutson's breakthrough best seller has been on the poll list for three or four years, but 2025 was its year. So, join Graham, Phil and me as we evaluate Shaun Hutson's entry into that classic and most pulpy of British horror traditions, the Killer Critter novel. Also, we mull over whether four clefts are...

Author and game designer Tone Milazzo joins me in Derry & Toms as we look at another work by the late, great Robert Sheckley, his first novel Immortality Inc. Last time we talked about Sheckley with Derek , I had the distinct sense that we would be going back for more… and this turned out to be an apt choice, with this podcast being released during October, because it's a Halloween episode by...

Bryan Talbot returns to Derry and Toms to talk to about Alice in Sunderland, Grandville and his upcoming release, The Case of Stamford Hawkmoor - and we get a special guest appearance from Dr Mary Talbot too! Also, James Robertson calls in to talk about his two decades and more working on Bryan's website , being green in an increasingly grey world and all sorts of other stuff along the way. My co-...

Simon is back to finish our look at the final instalment in the first Corum trilogy... The King of the Swords... and, as it runs ramraid style into the conclusion of The Vanishing Tower, we roped in Miles too, because he'd only recently read it! This is another pivotal book in Moorcock's oeuvre, and for this podcast, because it means that the second sequence of eternal champeen books we've managed...

THIS EPISODE: I'm joined in Derry & Toms by Powys Media's Mateo Latosa and, via ringer (Phil), Patricia Sokol, to talk about Space 1999 and the 20-plus-year efforts of Powys Media to keep the show alive via novelisations and original stories. I was very lucky to receive a copy of the incredible (and impressively girthed) Space 1999 Year One Omnibus c/o Mateo. A handful are still available, and...

John is back in Derry & Toms to talk about another novelisation, but we're taking a break from Blakes 7 to focus on another early 80s obsession of ours... Well. Two. They just happen to combine to glorious effect in the classic slice of Daily Mail wet dreamery that is Who Dares Wins. Therefore, we get to watch it again for the 8,000th time and discuss it alongside its novelisation, The Tiptoe...