Breakfast in the Ruins
by 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.
Episodes
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The Sleeping Sorceress Part One - The Torment of the Last Lord
We're back with MM with guest co-host Simon Perrins, joining us again as we embark on the first of two episodes exploring Michael Moorcock's The Sleeping Sorceress, later retitled The Vanishing Tower. First up - The Torment of the Last Lord, which finds Elric and Moonglum pursuing dastardly...
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Bamboo Guerillas - Halloween 2026
Phil, Miles, and Graham (by late Marconi T1154 Transmission) join me in Derry & Toms for an uncomfortable encounter with Guy N. Smith’s Bamboo Guerillas, a book whose notoriety among paperback collectors we've been egging each other on to explore for a few years. Commissioned to push wartime sex...
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BREEDING GROUND - Halloween 2026's Penultimatum
Graham and Phil are back as we round off this year’s Halloween run with Breeding Ground, Shaun Hutson’s sequel to Slugs. Having apparently learnt nothing from our previous encounter, we’re heading into London’s sewers for another helping of slimy, metal-infused, mucusy death. Can a second dose...
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FREEZE TAG - Halloween 2026 cont'd
Our Halloween run continues as our mate Gemma joins us to revisit her horrifying history with the Point Horror series, courtesy of Caroline B. Cooney’s Freeze Tag. We’re heading back to a world of ominous paperback covers, American teenage envy and playground games with potentially fatal...
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Halloween 2026 - The Valley of the Worm
It's Halloween season again at Breakfast in the Ruins, and we're kicking things off with a journey into the darker, more monstrous corners of Robert E. Howard's imagination! This time, I'm joined by author and friend of the show Andy Darby to discuss Howard's gloriously gruesome sword and sorcery...
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Episode 150 - The Magic Faraway Tree (Exploring Enid Blyton's Multiverse)
It's our 150th episode, and we've now been at this for seven Earth years! So how do we celebrate this milestone? By sitting on the sofa and gassing about one of our earliest reads, a book we read in the 1970s that turned out, on reflection, to be a massive gateway drug in terms of where our...
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Sorcery by The Belbury Poly - a conversation with Jim Jupp
Jim Jupp drops by Derry & Toms to talk about his love of genre fiction, his path into making music as Belbury Poly, and the beginnings of Ghost Box Records, the label he founded with Julian House back in 2004. Books, electronic noises and the business of building strange worlds… all things that…
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The Prisoner - Part One
John returns to Derry & Toms as, following a drunken afternoon in Rochdale, we decided to take a look at Thomas M Disch's The Prisoner, the first of three Ace tie-in novels commissioned in 1969. Disch was a New Worlds ace and a perfect fit for Patrick McGoohan’s world of surveillance, sinister...
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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…
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SPACE 1999: Brian Ball's 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...
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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...
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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...
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Mulder, Moorcock and the Multiverse: The X-Files – 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...
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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...
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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…
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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!!!!...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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…
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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…
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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...
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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…
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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...
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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…
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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...
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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…
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The Jade Man's Eyes
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…
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The Warlord of the Air - Part One
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…
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Birthday Special 2025
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...
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City of the Beast AKA Warriors of Mars
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.
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The Ice Schooner - Part One
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...
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Halloween Special 2025 - SLUGS by Shaun Hutson
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...
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Immortality Inc. by Robert Sheckley
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...
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Bryan Talbot Part Two
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...
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The King of the Swords Part Two - The Vanishing Tower
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,...
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The Powysverse of Space 1999 w/ Mateo Latosa
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...
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The Tiptoe Boys / Who Dares Wins
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…
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Phoenix in Obsidian - Part Two
We're finally back to finish our reportage on Phoenix in Obsidian (AKA The Silver Warriors). It's an epic tale of anguish and self-pity on an earth where the sun has dimmed, the moon has crashed down to simply be called Moon and the menace known as the Silver Warriors have extreme problems…
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Phil's Choice - Revenge of the Manitou
It's our summer holiday special - and it was Phil's Choice. She reminded me that we had such a great time with The Devils of D-Day and the film of Masterton's novel The Manitou that we should read Graham Masterton's Revenge of the Manitou. So we did... and we're going to talk about it. And watch...
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(The Secret of) The Runestaff Part Two
Dave returns to Derry & Toms to combat creeping fascism and technical issues, all whilst concluding our epic reportage on the final volume in The History of the Runestaff - THE RUNESTAFF (AKA The Secret of the Runetaff). GUYLINER UPSETTING FATES PORNOGRAPHIC THRILLERS And more.... Check out SÖNUS...
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The Sundered Worlds AKA The Blood Red Game
Miles is back to discuss another of Moorcock’s 1960s SF titles, arguably the most influential of the lot when considering the origins of the Multiverse. This may require some thoughtful, in-depth analysis. Instead, we talk about caffeine, giro spending habits of the 1990s and racist space dogs…
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Slade in Flame
Joe Banks, author of Hawkwind: Days of the Undergound, is back in Derry and Toms to enthuse about a film that was, for me, a shock revelation about one of Britain's most misunderstood bands. Not only were Slade a hard rocking act whose reputation as a live act belies their popular image as a...
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The Dying Earth
New guest co-host, author, gamer and podcaster Adrian Tchaikovsky joins me in Derry and Toms to look at Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth and discuss Vance's particular approach, his influence on Moorcock, and that mordant lyricism that defined numerous elements of the fantasy genre. Check out…
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Hawk the Slayer
Sometimes we don't have time to read a book. Sometimes we just wanna gas about ace things. This is one of those times so... Hawk the Slayer... featuring: MORE Big Ron... ACTUAL Warren Clarke... SMOKY woods and DISCO.... and EVERYONE that's ever been on British telly EVER! Listen to The Casual…
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The Shores of Death
Andy Darby is back to look at another of Mike's 60s SF takes... THE SHORES OF DEATH. Replete with sexual deviancy, epic parties and a massive tool of a protagonist... it's classic 60s Moorcock! Check out Andy's substack to read The Crow Feeder and pick up The Blade in the Angel's Shadow.
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Special Bulletin - Beware THE WOODLICE
Graham is back in Derry & Toms to talk about his debut novel THE WOODLICE, as well as his influences, method, finding inspiration in Guy N Smith's Writing Horror Fiction, microdots, dogging and regrets over that vintage Amstrad PCW 8512... the one that got away. The Woodlice is available from UK...
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PROJECT AVALON (Trevor Hoyle's Blakes 7 Part II)
Seeing as John and I had such a good time with Trevor Hoyle's first Blakes 7 novelisation and series watch-a-long, we thought sod it... let's do another. And this time... it has Servalan, plus: Roy from Eastenders... Glynnis Barber... Woke blasters... Big Ron Tarr... TRAVIS!!! IT'S GOT THE LOT!
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Filming Elric!
With news that the Apple TV/Skydance Eternal Champion series is "DOA", what better a time to talk to Chris Preyer, the man behind Elric: Chains of the Doomed One - a fan-film project. Chris lifts the lid on the joys and challenges of crafting and resourcing a passion-driven endeavour. Follow…
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About this show
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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STIMBOT5000