Breakfast in the Ruins Podcast
Podcasting about Michael Moorcock and traversing the million spheres.
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 Runestaff).
GUYLINER
UPSETTING FATES
PORNOGRAPHIC THRILLERS
And more….
Check out SÖNUS on bandcamp and buy their gear.
And take a look at Gates of Londra
Simon Perrins joins me in Derry and Toms to discuss Moorcock, art, comics, Tolkien, TV adaptations, role-playing games, tortured poet musicians we adored in our youths and generally go totally fugazi.
Simon is the man behind our banner art, logo, Gerard Arthur Connelly portraits and pretty much our entire visual identity. Follow him on Twitter and check out his store.
Listen to BITR Breakfast in the Ruins Radio on Radio Garden.
Imagery and stuff we discuss along the way:
White Dwarf #57
Thrud and Eric of Boneymaloney – Carl Critchlow
Fighting Fantasy Book 9 – Caverns of the Snow Witch
Imagine Magazine January 1985 – Cover by Rodney Matthews
The Nomad of Time – Grafton Edition – Cover by Melvyn
The Tolkien Bestiary – David Day – Illustration of The Fall of Numenor by Ian Miller
More Tolkien Bestiary – elves by Victor Ambrus
Andy’s Fave Elric cover – Jack Gaughan
Barry Windsor-Smith’s Elric vs Conan
Simon’s fave Elric – Sailor on the Seas of Fate by Michael Whelan
Elric by Lawrence Cutting
Blue Steel
Science Fantasy #47
Stormbringer 2e by GW – Rob Halford Elric
James Cawthorn’s Stormbringer by Jayde Design
Death of Elric prelim sketch by Cawthorn
Cawthorn’s History of the Runestaff
P Craig Russell on The Dreaming City
Julien Tello on The Dreaming City for the Julian Blondel adaptations
Mike Mignola’s Corum
MM on The Beatles
Moorcock and Mike Harrison (Robert Crumb style)
Homemade MERP Screens
The Swords of Heaven the Flowers of Hell by Howard Chaykin
The Mad God’s Amulet by Bob Haberfield
Swords of Corum by Mark Salwowski
The Chronicles of Castle Brass by Mark Salwowski
Breakfast in the Ruins – Random House – artist unknown
Fantasy Masterworks History of the Runestaff by Richard Carr
Fugazi by Mark Wilkinson
Dave (AKA SÖNUS) is back in Derry and Toms to pick up the second and concluding part of our quest for The Mad God’s Amulet.
Join us as we discover the greatest NWOBHM band to never exist… THE MUTANT WAR JAGUARS OF ASIACOMMUNISTA… and Lord Shark’s Ostentatious Couch returns.
Things mentioned in the show include Gates of Londra – a must have if you dig your industrial black metal with a Moorcockian twist.
Imrryr’s latest release The Dreaming City III is out now featuring Dave and Allister Thompson AKA The Gateless Gate.
Massive thanks to Dave Dempster for the Maegan Lemay poster. Check out her web and store page.
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.
Phil, Loz and I celebrate an all too brief interlude in lockdown life to drink weird porters and muse upon Moorcock’s treatment at the hands of tabletop role-playing games.
Phil taunts us with her syrupy beer avoidance skills, two-man canoes get far too many mentions and Loz gatekeeps Moorcock RPG play (the rotter).
Also, The Journal of Gerard Arthur Connelly debuts with chapter one. There are 5 more to come (and if I don’t get pelted with rottent tomatoes I may write more).
We’re back.
The Eternal Champion continues on his crusade to defeat the enemies of humanity and further proves himself an absolute duffer with the ladies.
Phil reveals a penchant for watching extreme violence against Ewan McGregor and Channing Tatum.
I wring my hands at the horror of it all.
JOIN US!
I’ve been thinking about how to vary the content on the show and one of the ideas generated is to do an ‘audio book’ version of an old write-up of one of Loz’s Moorcock themed games from a few years years ago.
Gerard Arthur Connelly is a character I created over 25 years ago (perhaps more) and have returned to regularly over the years. Being lazy and just playing variations of the same bod seems suitably Moorcockian.
I’ve shared some of the progress to date with patrons and, as nobody has told me it’s shit, I’ve done some more AND added some music. It’s still a work in progress and the atmosphere music is just to plug a gap until I get around to doing something original for it (probably with some help from Neil and Johnny Royale). I also realised when I got to the last chapter it was never finished so I haven’t recorded that yet. Will have to have a big splurge on the writing front if I decide to continue with it.
Once the individual chapters have had some more attention they’ll probably end up being dropped at the end of regular shows as an episodic deal or, if they don’t really end up working they’ll just stay on the Patreon site as oddities for our glorious patrons.
July is looking like a busier month (at last), I should have The Eternal Champ ep 2 uploaded this week, I’m catching up with Natasha a week tomorrow to round off The Jewel in the Skull and later this month Loz and I will embark upon our tour of the Corum books.
In other news the Gollancz Collection is finally almost complete. They may lack inspiring covers but they are definitive texts and are excellent reading copies. Sadly a lot of my older 60s, 70s and 80s editions are getting a bit fragile.
Finally for today, I just concluded play on Dirk the Dice’s terrific three-part Hawkmoon RPG scenario Casa De Mercurio. It was a ton of fun with a great plot, tons of Moorcockian flavour and a great group of players.
Incidentally, Dirk’s latest episode of The Grognard Files is all about the Hawkmoon Role-Playing Game and other associated bits and bobs. It’s required listening as always. Even if you’re not a gamer Dirk and Blythy’s observations on the Hawkmoon series of novels and the games they inspired are as astute, warm and informative as ever. Check it out here.
Natasha is back with me as we continue our deep dive into the first Hawkmoon novel, The Jewel in the Skull.
Meliadus gets some downtime and we finally meet Hawkmoon.
MARVEL at Tash’s brutal takedown of mothers-in-law…
SIGH at the rambling non-sequiturs…
GASP at Tash’s salty sailor talk…
WONDER at the gradual breakdown of recording discipline…
WEEP at the continual intrusion of traffic, crisp packets and leather furniture…
After a degree of arm-twisting and one false start, Hussein finally gets his head into a sci-fi/fantasy book and agrees to tell the tale!
We cover the first Phase of The Final Programme, the introduction of Jerry Cornelius into the world of Michael Moorcock.
Hussein pops a couple of cherries, appearing on his first podcast AND reading his first ever scifi/fantasy novel! He also gets to marvel at the wonders of psychedelic 70s scifi covers. Meanwhile I keep mixing up my Perssons with my Brunners.
Massive thanks to new patrons Matt and Tom, as well of course as existing Chaos Engineers Norman, Fred, Malpertius and David. I’m ruminating on what I can do in terms of patron exclusives. Watch this space.
Loz is back with me at Derry and Tom’s as we tackle the 1972 novel Elric of Melniboné.
We have a few drinks and muse upon Elric’s early pre-wanderer, Stormbringerless years on the Ruby Throne of Imrryr.
We also ponder the news of a possible Elric TV show and attempt to get comfortable on Lord Shark’s Ostentatious Couch (spoiler, we don’t).
Natasha and I discuss Book One of The Jewel in the Skull. It’s got it all!
Moorcock discussion? Check!
Moorcroft? Sure, why not!
Bagging small English towns? Check!
Dogs wagging tails? Check and check!
NOW IN THC SOUND!
Thanks are once again due to Neil for his ace moral and technical support.
Note: The bulk of this was recorded before Episode One, so we’re already entering into the true spirit of Moorcock by complicating our own internal chronology.
Breakfast in the Ruins Podcast 