Breakfast in the Ruins

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. The conjunction was completed when the Professor agreed to hop in to Derry & Toms to talk about his article, his journey into SF and how he came to teach it, living and drinking in Hull and lots of other stuff along the way. We briefly talk about Russian SF too, so here I am talking to Ralph Lovegrove on his excellent Fictoplasm Podcast about Roadside Picnic.

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 to pre-order Occult Pop (get 20% off with the code POP20), and you can pick up back issues of Satanic Mojo here.

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's tie-in EP and you can grab that along with his entire discography from Bandcamp.

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 Rolling in the Ruins Moorcockian RPG two-dayer in Bradford in June. JOIN US!!!

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 Jayde 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 (it's a big back catalogue), and the DatEoT albums at these links: An Alien Heat The Hollow Lands The End of All Songs - Part 1 The End of All Songs - Part 2 And if you need more of your Deep Fix: Live at the Terminal Cafe Alien Injection

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 about Malcom's reading recommendation - THE ROBOT BRAINS by incredibly prolific but largely unheralded British author Sydney J Bounds. JOIN US!