Breakfast in the Ruins

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

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!

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).

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.

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.

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.

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!!!

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

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!

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.