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Breakfast in the Ruins

STIMBOT5000

Friends old and new join me in Derry and Toms roof gardens to discuss the work and influence of prolific British fantasist Michael Moorcock, as well as other bits of 60s and 70s genre fiction that came to me via my Grandad in the 80s and informed my world view. Books, music, role-playing games, wrestling in Featherstone Library and many other digressions await.

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22 episodes
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Avg 1 hr 40 min
English

Episodes 22

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#148
Thursday · 1 hr 50 min
The Distant Suns
Miles beams back into Derry & Toms from the Casual Trek transporter room so we can talk about Mike and James Cawthorn's (under pseudonym Philip James) 1969 JINO* tale, The Distant Suns. First serialised in The Illustrated Weekly of India in 1969 and later published by Unicorn SF and NEL in the 70s, it's a rollicking space adventure tale, so, obviously, we talk about The Black Hole, Psycho, the villainous filmic appearances of sub-par The Master actor Anthony Ainley, the perils of The Warp, if Udo Kier had starred in Possession, and more. Interesting factoid... according to John Davey's excellent Moorcography.org , the first US edition was in 2010 and states that it is 'an Eternal Champion Novel.' We're not convinced by that, but eh... whatever sells it, I suppose. I didn't get round to checking later publications in collections, for example, the Millennium Sailing To Utopia omnibus (which was also badged as an Eternal Champion volume, to be fair) in 1993. Did Mike change anything to make that more explicit, I wonder? I don't think he did, but I could be wrong. Answers on a postcard. You can find more Miles on the Casual Trek Podcast. The David Britton 1979 interview of James Cawthorn is here, and you can grab James Cawthorn: The Man And His Art and Stormbringer Sessions: Sketches For A Graphic Novel from John Davey’s Jayde Design. We really should do a full episode on these at some point in the future. *Jerry In Name Only
#147
August 21 · 2 hr 4 min
The Space Guardians
Mateo Latosa returns to Derry & Toms to follow up on our episode on The Powysverse of Space 1999 by digging into one of the original 1970s novelisations, The Space Guardians by prolific British SF author (and early New Worlds contributor) Brian Ball. We take a look at the episodes it adapted, and the work Mateo and his colleagues undertook alongside Brian to revise it and bring it into line with their rationalised Space 1999 continuity. Existential horror! Moral conundrums!! Alan's hairy chest!!! LOVEJOY!!!! If you fancy testing your wrist power, you can still grab a copy of the Space 1999 Year One omnibus here.
#146
August 5 · 1 hr 24 min
EVERDOOM (MM & RPGs Part XI)
When I’m exposed to a new game like EVERDOOM, whose author, Tremor Pings, states that it is written by Moorcock Fans for Moorcock Fans... then I have to investigate further, because we're always in pursuit of that core question... what makes a game Moorcockian, and it turns out that Tremor has a great angle on it. And a great game, to boot. Check out the Gamefound page for EVERDOOM and find Tremor's other games on his itch.io page.
#145
July 31 · 2 hr 11 min
The Silver Key & The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
Allister is back in Derry & Toms to take a look at some Lovecraft. My choice, The Silver Key, and his... The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. The latter appears in Michael Moorcock and James Cawthorn's Fantasy: The 100 Best Books, and may be the fifth on that hefty list that we've managed to cover in the past 143 episodes of Breakfast in the Ruins. We might have to pick up the pace. Allister's latest release as The Gateless Gate is the album Once Beautiful. Grab it now.
#144
July 22 · 1 hr 44 min
AGENT OF CHAOS
Phil is back in Derry & Toms, and we're looking at another IP Spin-off. On this occasion, though, the Moorcock content is significant. Critical, in fact! We're talking about Kami Garcia's The X-Files Origins: Agent of Chaos. But why is Moorcock so integral to an X-Files prequel novel about 17-year-old Fox Mulder and his small gang of crime-busting friends? LISTEN TO FIND OUT. We also touch on David Barnett's Scratch Moss, the wonders of Oranjeboom and more.
#143
July 13 · 1 hr 51 min
Rolling in the Ruins Part Two - Last Rollers Standing
In June 2026 we hosted a couple of Moorcock-flavoured RPG days a fortnight apart here in Bradford. For more on how that came about, see part one. A lot of our fellow rollers made a weekend of it and stuck around on the Sunday mornings, allowing, for the first time, a more community-based podcast experience. So join me and Phil at The Ginger Goose as we tackle a lazily assembled quiz, trapped mugs, breakfast stout and a couple of balmy, hungover Sunday mornings with the help of the Last Rollers standing...
#142
June 27 · 1 hr 34 min
Rolling in the Ruins - Part One (Build it and they will come?)
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 a treat! So, join us as we mull it all over and talk about RPGs and other stuff for a while. We'll be back in a few days with Part Two - Breakfast(s) with the Rollers
#141
June 12 · 1 hr 49 min
The Ice Schooner - Part Two
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)
#140
May 26 · 2 hr 8 min
Our Experiences in the Third World War
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 ultimate expression of the speculative World War Three RPG genre. A game that transformed our Cold War fears into the participatory storytelling of the RPG format, and allowed players to wander the ruins of post-nuclear Europe while tracking ammunition, diesel fuel, rads, rations, and the collapse of NATO command structures in all the meticulous detail a teenage nerd could delight in. You can pre-order Cold City and Hot War 2e in print, or get the PDFs instantly, here, and read Malcolm's paper on Twilight 2000 by clicking below: When You Say, “Thermonuclear War,” I Think You Mean “the Call to Adventure”! The Twilight: 2000 Tabletop Role-Playing Game and the Postapocalyptic World’s Imaginary Spaces
#139
May 11 · 1 hr 27 min
Stormbringer RPG Dot Com (MM&RPGs - X)
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 https://unboundbook.org/ So much to talk about. Join us!
#138
April 27 · 1 hr 39 min
Death Angel's Shadow - Part Two
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 book, Cold Light and Mirage. Check out Dave's latest trip with SÖNUS, the single Sisyphus Stomp - the video is on YouTube - and you can pre-order new album The Planes of Torment (release date May 22nd).
#137
April 6 · 1 hr 4 min
Teaching Behold the Man w/ Professor Rowland Wymer
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.
#136
April 2 · 1 hr 23 min
The Alex Sanders Lectures and the Satanic Mojo of Jason Atomic
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.
#135
March 27 · 1 hr 13 min
Birch and Jay w/ Allister Thompson
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.
#134
March 20 · 1 hr 20 min
The Warlord of the Air - Part Two
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!!!
#133
March 6 · 1 hr 32 min
One of the Spirits Burning w/ Don Falcone
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
#132
February 20 · 1 hr 40 min
THE ROBOT BRAINS (Sydney J Bounds)
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!
#131
February 6 · 1 hr 45 min
Death Angel's Shadow Part One
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.
#130
January 27 · 1 hr 38 min
Gamifying the Multiverse - Moorcock & RPGs Part IX
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!
#129
January 24 · 1 hr 20 min
The New Worlds Fair
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.

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