Breakfast in the Ruins
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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Episodes
Monday Sep 05, 2022
Monday Sep 05, 2022
Ted AKA @tedankhamen joins me in Derry and Toms for the second leaf of our Summer diptych musing on Moorcock, gaming and whatever else enters our eyeline.
Some choice cuts in here including miniature bashing, Tolkien (again), a shock Strongbow appreciation story, chaosium-isms... but mostly some good, chewy thinking on modelling Moorcockian worlds and cosmology. I also bang my BoL drum again.
Be sure to have a good delve around Ted's blog Tomb of Tedankhamen.
Ted also mentioned Lasers and Feelings by John Harper. Lots more good stuff on his itch.io
You can check out the Tentacled Whisperer of Secrets Discord by making an offering to... THE TENTACLED WHISPERER... or just check out his profile. He's pretty lax on gatekeeping for an ancient deity of unspeakable power.
Steve's Stormbringer game recaps are on his blog.
Check out and subscribe to Jim Kirkland's newsletter and read his spoiler-free review of The Citadel of Forgotten Myths.
Our banner art and logo is by Simon Perrins. Follow him on Twitter and check out his store.
Listen to BITR Breakfast in the Ruins Radio on Radio Garden.
Saturday Aug 27, 2022
Saturday Aug 27, 2022
We're back in Derry and Toms to talk gaming again, this time with CLARKY THE CRUEL.
Dave gets shocked by the crap number of TV channels we had in the UK as kids, Clarky tells us about his sandboxing adventures beyond the ultraworld, and I get inspired. And we digress. Obviously.
You can find Clarky's Dissecting Worlds podcast archive and all of his game logs on his blog (including entires by yours truly describing the action from the perspective of post-apocalypse fiction powerhouse Roy Saveloy.
Our banner art and logo is by Simon Perrins. Follow him on Twitter and check out his store.
Listen to BITR Breakfast in the Ruins Radio on Radio Garden.
We also mention Jason's podcast, the Nerd's RPG Variety Cast.
Saturday Jul 30, 2022
Saturday Jul 30, 2022
After 40 years of obsessing over the Mayflower covers of Bob Haberfield, Dave and I get to wig out and talk to Ben Haberfield about his Dad's life, art and the gestating project to celebrate the breadth of his work in the form of two art books.
You can keep up with Ben's work at bobhaberfield.com and follow him on Instagram.
Our banner art and logo is by Simon Perrins. Follow him on Twitter and check out his store.
Listen to BITR Breakfast in the Ruins Radio on Radio Garden.
Tuesday Jul 19, 2022
Tuesday Jul 19, 2022
Phil returns to Derry & Toms as we visit Morecambe's (and perhaps the world's) premier second hand book vendor to select a candidate for the first ever Old Pier Bookshop Special.
We choose, or rather are chosen by, The Winds of Gath by EC Tubb - first in a 33 book series spanning three decades that charts the adventures of Earl Dumarest of Terra.
In honour of old school SF we drink old school beers. Well, I do. Phil drinks fancy wine. But we meet in the middle when the mysterious books of booze box appears for the first time in D&Ts.
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Our banner art and logo is by Simon Perrins. Follow him on Twitter and check out his store.
Chapter 13 of The Journal of Gerard Arthur Connelly was scored by N Λ N D.
Listen to BITR Breakfast in the Ruins Radio on Radio Garden.
Friday Jun 17, 2022
Friday Jun 17, 2022
Dave AKA SÖNUS returns to Derry and Toms to dive into the fast-paced and very metal, yet weirdly just OK-ish first part of The Mad God's Amulet, second in the Hawkmoon sequence The History of the Runestaff.
As always, digressions await the unwary traveller as well as ostentatious coughing and just excellent pants.
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Our banner art and logo is by Simon Perrins. Follow him on Twitter and check out his store.
Chapter 12 of The Journal of Gerard Arthur Connelly was scored by N Λ N D
Listen to BITR Breakfast in the Ruins Radio on Radio Garden
Monday May 09, 2022
Monday May 09, 2022
Loz returns to Derry & Toms to revisit an old adversary, Michael Moorcock's The Fortress of the Pearl.
Join us and marvel at our declining energy.
Bridle, as Loz declares The Chronicle of the Black Sword a shit book and denigrates poetry.
Along the way we 'wake the chicken'. What does that even mean? How many names are there for trousers? Why would anyone smoke stout?
Listen as we mull over the answers.
(Spoiler - we don't know)
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Support the podcast by becoming a Patron.
Our banner art and logo is by Simon Perrins. Follow him on Twitter and check out his store.
Chapter 11 of The Journal of Gerard Arthur Connelly was scored by N Λ N D
Saturday Apr 16, 2022
Saturday Apr 16, 2022
Finally, we're back at Derry & Toms to take a look at the 1980 Moorcock collection My Experiences in the Third World War. Along the way Phil and I compare notes regarding our mindsets in the 1980s, laugh at the preposterous Controller and let fate decide on the Wandering Traumatic Nuclear War Film Table.
Also, on this occasion we might not offend a small town in the UK but potentially ALL of Canada. But seriously what DOES 'pie-dish of privilege and broken promises' really mean?
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Our banner art and logo is by Simon Perrins. Follow him on Twitter and check out his store.
CONTENT WARNING - there are discussions in this show regarding sexual violence and exploitation
Saturday Feb 05, 2022
Saturday Feb 05, 2022
Dave AKA SÖNUS is back in Derry & Toms to celebrate the release of his second cut - USURPER OF THE UNIVERSE - out now on Forbidden Place Records.
As it aligns nicely we also take a dive into the 1962 Moorcock story To Rescue Tanelorn and make some connections. Along the way we talk about some other guff.
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Our banner art and logo is by Simon Perrins. Follow him on Twitter and check out his new store.
Our avatar is by Wyrmwalk. Follow him on Instagram.
Saturday Dec 18, 2021
Saturday Dec 18, 2021
Another year down and this is our third show celebrating Mike Moorcock and Phil's birthdays. It's also the Breakfast in the Ruins podcast's second birthday... sort of.
Loz joins me in Derry & Toms to reflect on two and a bit years of podcasting against the strangest of backdrops. Plus the wandering beer table returns, for both good and ill.
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Clarky's multipart Tenerife campaign as discussed on the show is detailed on his excellent site. My in-character (as Roy Saveloy) chapter write-ups are here and here.
Tuesday Dec 14, 2021
Tuesday Dec 14, 2021
After the Halloween Special we couldn't stay away. Phil needed to know how the Crabs came to be. Where did they come from? What do they want?
So we read Crabs Moon and discovered the answers to none of these questions. But we did have a hoot and we were joined by Graham (aka @opensussex AKA Apkallu of Enmerkar AKA DECADNIDS) to have a couple of beverages, discuss Crabs Moon and to talk in general about the late Guy N Smith, his diverse writing career. We also raised a glass to the man too as this show lands close to a year after his passing.
We reference a Guy N Smith interview from the excellent The Collected Pulp Horror by Justin Marriott and Will Errickson.
Guy's daughter TARA has re-energised the GNS Twitter and Instagram accounts.
We play this show out with Proditol from the album The Black Corridor by DECADNIDS vs ＮΛＮD.
***warning: unlike Night of the Crabs, Crabs Moon contains references to sexual violence and we do talk about them so please proceed with caution and look after yourselves - this month's Patreon funds have been donated to The Survivor's Trust - please do look them up and consider donating***
Breakfast in the Ruins
It had been a few years since I tried anything new hobby-wise and particularly anything t’interweb related beyond twitter and generally using it for all of the general reasons we use it (gifs, cat pics, buying things I don’t need etc).
However in recent years, whilst doing lengthy commutes, I found that podcasts had moved on somewhat from the type I’d been exposed to previously, with less of the ‘yuck yuck’ interactions between podcast hosts that felt the need to be artificially heightened, and more of a naturalistic and joyous approach to a specific subject matter that drew me in to feel part of the conversation.
Combined with this new found interest I’ve been needing a hobby and outlet for my creative energies, such that they are.
A few years back, for similar reasons, I started a blog (mentallicohullic.com), where I was able to have a good rant, but also link to the online articles I’d written for thequietus.com. I didn’t really keep that up with any regularity though, so it fell by the wayside, although it is still live.
Anyway, it struck me a while later that a sudden upsurge in interest amongst my friends in fantasy fiction, and particularly Michael Moorcock, had generated a number of conversations that I really enjoyed participating in. We were also having particular discussions about how to best model Moorcock in a table top role playing game. One night I started typing up some thoughts regarding my approach to it and, reading it back, it was written in a conversational style and for a split second the idea of a podcast themed around Michael Moorcock’s books and other associated art seemed appealing. A few sherries later I’d ordered a USB audio hub and a condenser microphone and the next day recorded a five minute podcast introduction as a proof of concept. I shared it with some like-minded friends and, following feedback, decided to give it a whirl.
Michael Moorcock as a subject seemed the natural choice, for reasons that may become apparent during the introductory episode. As you'll see as the show progresses, there's a reason why I call it 'Moorcock flavoured'.