New traveller Liam Jones drops by Derry & Toms to discuss one of his favourite things… Victorian Invasion literature… as we tackle the Moorcock-edited anthology Before Armageddon, a collection of Victorian and Edwardian imaginative fiction.
Liam also teaches me about the Parisian dandy criminals, the Apaches! (Who I must now write into my next game…)
And if you’re interested in the illustrations Liam mentions that accompanied The Great War in England of 1897, here are a couple of examples:
Very cool!
At some point we’ll take a look at volume II – England Invaded
Over on the patreon page, the Halloween poll is live and the patrons are already making their opinions known on what we will cover for the October Halloween Special.
First up (and currently in the lead) we have the first installment of Guy N Smith’s Sabat series. OK, technically it’s called Sabat: The Graveyard Vultures and it’s about SABAT…
Mark Sabat, ex-priest, SAS-trained killer, and exorcist, is a man with a harrowing mission. Haunted by his past and driven by an unrelenting need for vengeance, he must seek out and destroy his mortal enemy—a brother who has chosen the Left Hand Path and embodies the eternal principle of Evil.
And he has a ‘tache too! INSTAWIN.
Your next option is SLIMER! Another returning author for this year’s poll in the form of Harry Adam Knight (AKA John Brosnan flying solo this time). We had such a good time with The Fungus, Slimer was an obvious choice for this year.
I mean it’s a The Thing knock-off set on a North Sea oil rig in the 70s. With a horrific thingified dong scene. It’s crackers, out of order and therefore eminently suitable.
Recently, I’ve also been shitting my pants playing a PC game called Still Wakes the Deep that is also a The Thing knock-off set on a North Sea oil rig so this feels sort of topical.
Third on the list for this year is an all new author, but the cover is ace and it sounds lurid and violent so we have SLITHER by John Halkin, first book in the ‘Slither-Slime-Squelch’ trilogy.
It’s about worms eating people. Bring it on!
And finally, for perhaps the third year running, 2024 is the last chance for… SLUGS by Shaun Hutson. I haven’t read it since I was at school, the film is hilarious and amazing and Hutson himself reckons he’s the Pope of Horror Town.
We’ll be the judges of that damn it.
As per last year, we’ll probably do more than one horror themed show in October and, as it hasn’t ever been voted top, I’ve already arranged with Allister T to look at William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland. Allister is a massive Hope Hodgson lover, as am I, so I’m looking forward to that one but where would we be here at Derry & Toms without some low, violent and dirty killer critter/moist triangle/SAS trained vicar action?
Somewhere. Probably. But nowhere I’d want to be. And certainly not in October.
Dave is back in Derry & Toms to talk about some stories that were as formative for him as they were for me back in our teens… The Robert E Howard Conan stories, The Phoenix on the Sword and The Scarlet Citadel.
Dave also gives us an update on the latest SÖNUS news and we delve into some of the murkier aspects of the pulp of the time. But mostly we enjoy the head smashing and the surprisingly textured and erudite version of the Cimmerian in those first two stories.
Although this is our first Conan focused episode, Phil and I did look at The Tower of the Elephant way back in the early days in our first Happy Birthday Michael Moorcock episode back in December 2019.
Pig-bombs, priests in daisy dukes, dressing down the Theocrat of Pan Tang and getting torn apart by dogs are just some of the highlights as I’m joined in D&Ts once again by Steve Round to talk Stormbringer gaming and this time he’s brought the whole damn party.
The wandering beer table returns and, as a reward to the gang, we debut an all-new lazily assembled table of rubbish demon-bound quest goodies.
So join Steve, Chloe, Sara, Roddy, Jay, Richie and Ceirun as we board the Merciful Servant and reflect on what it takes to save the Young Kingdoms from the overbearing and stagnant forces of Law!
Content warning: The Void campaign is Moorcockian and therefore spicy. And Steve tries a smoked beer. Horrific!
You can find the full write-ups of The Void campaign and more on Steve’s blog – Cruising For a Musing
We’re two-thirds of the way through summer already and here in Blighty the weather is only now reflecting the time of year with any real level of commitment. It is a nice afternoon though so I’m sitting in the yard with a cold one musing on the contents of the third and long overdue volume of The Journal of Gerard Arthur Connelly. The Journal is one of the things (alongside the second and third planned sessions of the Black Sword Hack Ultimate Chaos Edition game I began a year ago – watch or listen at your leisure if you’re of the gaming persuasion) that got waylaid by the events of 2023 and again in the first part of 2024. Creativity is a fleeting thing, for me at least, and I need a specific set of circumstances to get in the zone. Unfortunately, the precise composition of those circumstances remains a mystery, but I had a little surge of activity on it over the last couple of days and vol 3 has crept closer to completion.
So that’s good.
On the flipside, however, having such a long time between sections and spurts of writing leads primarily to me looking askance at what came before and wanting to revise and alter. But I don’t have time, so this coming volume will remain, to some degree, a stream of consciousness (mine or Connelly’s is hard to tell). I also came across a piece I wrote over ten years ago when looking through old folders so that’s getting woven in too. By woven, I mean dropped in almost wholesale as an interlude. But I like it so I’m going to subject you to it too. Should you read it of course. No pressure. There may come a time when the originally planned four volumes get broken down, revised and re-assembled as the very first Breakfast in the Ruins Publications one-shit book.
The dream…
Then an all-star supergroup concept album featuring friends of the show like Wayne, Graham, Derek, Dave and Allister T. I reckon between us we can beat the Edgar Winter/L Ron Hubbard collaboration into the dirt.
THE DIRT I TELLS YER!
(You have no idea how many times I’ve almost bought this – and given that Allister T and I have talked about doing an episode about ostentatious SF/Fantasy driven prog concept albums I probably will).
The third thing that got waylaid was the re-recording of chapters 8-10 of the audio version of the Journal. They’re the only bits remaining from the scored audio version of volumes one and two that are holding up Wayne in completing his work and I need to get that done for no other reason than his work on the music needs to be heard. It’s progressed a long way since we first put the sections together that appeared at the end of podcasts in 2021 and 2022 and we have a sort of plan to put it all on Bandcamp as a companion to his two complete and frankly fucking awesome albums inspired by the Journal.
I shall endeavour to complete those last re-recordings soon and then, maybe, even start recording volume three…
On the podcasting front, the next episode on the RPG experience (Reflections on The Void) will be along this week, featuring Steve and his excellent gaming gang. Following that we have a nice little slate prepped and we’ll be looking at a bit of Conan, a Moorcock-edited anthology called Before Armageddon, a selection of alt-barbarian novels from the 60s of varied levels of quality that we’re calling Barbarian Bingo, and a vintage piece of eco-horror that dates back to the days of scanning Pops’s coffee table for booty and finding an alarming reference to my home town within. It’s August in a couple of days too so I’ll be putting out this year’s Halloween poll, watch out for that.
And finally, for now, you’ll see that the header photo for this update is a very tidy Dancers at the End of Time trio that I picked up recently in a very tidy slipcase. I think it’s high time we kicked that series off with An Alien Heat, particularly since we’ve been covering The Coming of the Terraphiles and there are some thematic connections there without a doubt.
That reminds me that we still haven’t done any Bastable, either. So much to cover. So little time.
So, in the interests of time I’ll leave things there for this report.
Stay safe folks and I’ll see you out there… on the Moonbeam Roads.
Miles is back to carry on our deep dive into Mike’s Who/Multiverse mash-up and also talk about Ncuti’s first run, the Timeless Child arc, writing Who fiction, engaged Tom vs couldn’t give two shits Tom and loads of other stuff no doubt.
Join us!
And be sure to check out the Casual Trek Podcast too.
It’s time for us to decamp to the coast for our jollies again. Not Morecambe this time though, no. We’re headed to the far side of Morecambe Bay to Grange-over-Sands, a bonny place with an incredibly picturesque railways station, some nice boozers and (most importantly perhaps) a used book shop with a pretty cracking fantasy and scifi section.
Or at least it did have last time we were there.
We’ll pass through Carnforth so it may be inevitable that we end up in their incredible three floor book shop along the way, even though I’m yet to even scratch the surface of my last Carnforth haul. On that occasion, from memory, it was a mixture of M John Harrisons, John Brunners, and a 70s book about UFOs in Bedminster or somewhere.
In fact it was a brace of nice Brunner hardcovers that I picked up in Carnforth last time too. Scandalous then that I still haven’t read any of them (despite my doomed efforts to read The Sheep Look Up for a podcast with Joe Banks that never got off the launchpad thanks to the appalling typeface/set/quality of print of whatever you call it).
I’m excited to see what this trip has in store for us. Our most recent forays in this direction have yielded a lot… and I mean A LOT… of Dumarest books so I’m going to impose a moratorium on those for now as I haven’t got to any of those either.
I need to retire damn it.
As you’ll see from the pic above, we’ve already kicked off our week with a hearty and mildly boozy lunch (start as you mean to go on I say) and we’re having a siesta to catch up on some reading.
I’m travelling light on the book front with Phoenix in Obsidian, because we will do Part Two damn it, and a couple of other likely candidates for a follow-up of sorts to the Snowcastles episode with Clarky. We’ll call it Barbarian Bingo or something.
Naturally, this will all hinge on whether I get distracted by any pick-ups in Carnforth or Grange-over-Sands. Best laid plans and all that.
Meanwhile, Part Two of The Coming of the Terraphiles (thanks Miles) is in the can and I’ll get that out in a couple of weeks when we’re back home (there may/will definitely be a part three). We have a couple of other things pencilled in for July and August, including a new RPG-related episode in which I grill Steve Round and his players about their epic Stormbringer campaign, what their ‘dance’ and ‘balance’ stats are and how many two-man canoes they managed to hoard by the end. Steve has also prepped them ahead of time with knowledge so foul, so vaguely unsettling, so gnarly on the wallet… Yes… It will involve the D6 wandering beer table.
Prepare your demon-bound flagons of stupid beer tolerance!!!
Amazing really that we’re half way through the year already. 86 episodes down in fact, so it’s looking like our centenary might even neatly coincide with this year’s Birthday episode.
I have a plan for that. Just need to shape it up a bit…
More on that later though! Halloween first and we’re going to try for a three-fer again with William Hope Hodgson definitely on the cards with Allister, a bit of eco-horror with Graham and an all new poll for some kind of blood-curling book/film combo for the 31st October.
I’m still quite fond of the idea of doing Nick Sharman’s The Cats with the movie CATS. You must decide though.
Right. I’m off to eat a two pack of snack biscuits from our hotel tea tray before working up an appetite for a good dinner and some Barolo.
Allister Thompson returns to Derry and Toms as we hurtle back to 1918 and brave the cold waters of the Atlantic to take a look at The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs, subject of Michael Moorcock’s sole filmed movie script (along with James Cawthron of course).
Expect discussions about mysterious island tropes, personal propensities to cannibalism, dodgy theories of race and C Thomas Howell!
Allister’s latest release (at time of posting this at least) is Apocalypse Man by Khan Tengri and it includes a nice Moorcockian track too.
PS Here’s that Patrick Tilley designed cover I mentioned…
Another quick-fire report from Blighty thanks to Jim Jupp and Ghost Box Records. Yesterday postie called by with another fantastic package from Jim – Fellfoul by Mulgrave Audio featuring a score by Jim and Belbury Poly. If you’ve not come across it, Mulgrave Audio is making atmospheric audio dramas that catapult me back to the days when TV drama and public information films in the UK had an undercurrent of ephemeral threat and usually we’re accompanied by incredible music.
This 10″ vinyl includes a page of the accompanying Fellfoul comic strip with art by that absolute legend of UK comics John Ridgway!
“Fellfoul has all the feel of a lost episode of Dramarama or Play for Today, a curiously British affair that is imbued with a sense of teh bizarrely normal.” – Starburst Magazine
If you have any passion for those autumnal, slightly odd folklore driven TV dramas from the 80s and their dreamlike scores you need to get this.
In other news, I’m typing this before heading off an a four hour drive down to Stroud where I will be catching up with a Derry & Toms original… Tash is getting hitched!
Will there be another report with wedding photos tomorrow?
I dunno.
I’ll probably get langered though.
In podcast news, the next episode is just around the corner. I’m talking to returning guest Allister Thompson about The Land That Time Forgot… The book by ERB… The film scripted by Moorcock and Cawthorn… Its cinematic sequel and… The Asylum remake starring and directed by C Thomas Howell. And that my friends was a real challenge to get through.
But we did it for you.
Then we’ll reconvene with Miles to try and get past just banging on about all things Doctor Who to properly cover The Coming of the Terraphiles. Maybe.
As the last few months have been generally all over the place with real life events I’m reckoning on things settling a bit for the summer (with any luck) so I’ll be rebuilding the itinerary for the coming second half of 2024. It will soon be time to launch the Halloween poll too, which seems odd as we’ve only just passed the summer solstice.
HA!
Summer my arse. The weather here in the North of England has been fucking bollocks. But the sun has come out today for Tash, so that’s a good omen.
Anyway, I’d better get driving so take care out there. When I get back, the second John Ridgway page that includes a download code for Fellfoul will be headed out to a Patron Demon…
I hope you’re playing a good hand at the tables this fine day.
A few years ago when I recorded the episode on Letters From Hollywood with Dirk, we raised a glass to departed friends. One was my old mate Magic Paul who I’d lost contact with some time in the early 2000s. When I learned that he’d passed away I spread the word amongst all my old muckers and none of us had seen him for years. It’s such a shame we do this as we get older. Drifting apart, moving towns, changing interests etc.
Anyway.
This morning one of those muckers sent me a couple of pics he found whilst having a clear out. Back in those days a few of us shared a house down De la Pole Ave in Hull, scene of many a debauched evening and subject of many fondly recalled anecdotes about being a smashed 20-something year-old in the early 90s. Heady days.
Paul was a huge Trek fan, even having his own Wrath of Khan era starfleet uniform (which was a much rarer thing in those days as cosplay was way more niche than it is today). He spent an age trying to convince a few of us, including Loz, to play the FASA Star Trek RPG. When we finally did, I was so mashed I fell asleep an hour in and missed most of it but Loz and Neil (AKA Noel Clippingstalk) sat through it and later vowed never to play it, or allow Paul to GM for them, ever again. They weren’t Trek fans and the meticulous approach from our Games Master and adherence to Trek aesthetics was just too dry for them I suspect.
Paul was a character. He was a classic old school geek with a vast RPG collection (I still wonder what happened to all of his Morrow Project and Aftermath stuff when he passed away as his parents were both long since gone and he had no siblings), and a passion for wargaming, napoleonic history, folk music, Samson tobacco and Rich Tea biscuits. He also had a ridiculous collection of 60s and 70s SF and Fantasy paperbacks and I’m pretty sure, had he still been around today, his to-read pile would probably dwarf any of ours.
I first met him when he trained to be a psychiatric nurse in the same school as myself and Robbo (see Wheels of Terror Part One – Part Two WILL arrive some day). He never completed the training for one reason or another but we stayed friends for a number of years afterwards. He was an acquired taste for some, but to me he was kind, generous, quick to laugh and an all-round good bloke. If a bit nicotine stained round the edges. What’s more, had we still been in touch he would have been a marvellous presence in a podcast like this because his knowledge of all the gubbins we gas about was deep. And I like doing this podcast with old friends like Robbo, Loz and Tash as well as making new ones along the way.
I regret losing touch with him.
He wasn’t particularly into technology and had no social media presence that I was ever aware of so I dedicate this report, and this tiny section of the Internet, to him.
Breakfast in the Ruins Podcast 