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!

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 Shadow, and we'll be back at some point in the future to look at the other two. As KEW also wrote an Elric/Kane crossover story called The Gothic Touch, we took a look at that too. Dave's band SÖNUS will release the first single from their new album on 14th February - Pagan Woman - and in the meantime you can join the countdown to the video and pre-save the single. New album Planes of Torment will follow in May and we'll keep you up to date on that too.

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 interested in reading more, and even getting a hold of early drafts, check out Tanya's itch.io page. We'll also look into what Tanya would do around the gamification of Michael Moorcock's Multiverse, the 12-part comic series. I like it. I like it a lot. In addition, friend of the show and long-standing patron Randall Gatlin calls in to talk about all of this Moorcock malarkey and reveals what may possibly be the coolest interaction with Mike and Linda I've yet come across. Join us!

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 Underground: Radical Escapism in the Age of Paranoia.

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 Elric lore. Check out Derek's music in their guise as Imrryr over on Ampwall and Bandcamp and pre-order their upcoming release Carver 4 Mission Report.

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't know tbh. But Bastable's journey from dependable Man of Empire to temporal adventurer starts here. JOIN US!

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 actual intent, but best laid plans and all that. Also, Simon Perrins drops in to elaborate on his frankly incontestable assertion regarding a British cultural icon and their place in the Multiverse. Simon is also responsible for the magnificent art for this episode, which is a pretty big clue if you're British and over a certain age. MOOOOR COCK-COCK-COCK refrain is from The Dewey Decibel System by BlöödHag

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! (and listen to the Casual Trek Podcast)

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 just too many, and get disappointed by our initially impressive socialist hero's basic levels of competence. Image by Simon Perrins!

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 stealth! Tone’s website is tonemilazzo.com and you can find out more there about his novels, Picking Up the Ghost and The Faith Machine, and his RPG The King in Giallo.

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-host for this ep was Tom Murphy, and thank goodness for Tom as all of my technology had half a foot in Earth 749.

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 to complete in the last six years. Yes... This pod has been going for six years. Crikey! Miles is one half of the team behind the Casual Trek Podcast. Simon, as well as being behind lots of the visual stylings of Breakfast in the Ruins, is also the co-host of Can I Pod With Madness... and they have a Patreon Page!