Entropic State Report 14th July 2023

It’s a week since we returned from our latest trip to our by now practically second home Morecambe, that curious blend of urban decay and mellow repose.

As usual, we returned home burdened with bellies full of booze and tucker and several bags of second-hand books from The Old Pier Book Shop, the market book stall and the Carnforth Book Shop up the road in… well… in Carnforth.

And what a haul we bagged!

From the Old Pier we came away with another Graham Masterton, a potential one-shit book and a whole raft of Edgar Rice Burroughs…

..including these three Frank Frazetta illustrated hardcover doubles…

…ugh… marvellous. Black and white Frazetta art inside too.

There is, of course, a consequence to this. Now I have to find the other three volumes to complete the set.

Meanwhile, over at the market, I plugged a few gaps in the Survivalist series I started collecting a year or two ago.

I finally started reading the first of these a few days ago. It’s entertaining. Pulp trash for sure but I can’t stop reading. For a series so fixated on WW3 it’s also pretty ill-informed about a few things, but the author Jerry Ahern certainly does love his guns. In fact, he’s an out-and-out gun nerd, which just makes them all the funnier when, after describing in intricate detail the hero’s handguns right down to the grip, he shows amazing ignorance of other details (best example so far is a couple of nuclear submarines under an ice cap torpedoing each other and causing a 72 (SEVENTY-TWO) megaton explosion. It’s refreshingly short on racist tropes so far and, as it reads like the creative writing of a 13-year-old growing up in the 80s, it’s all very charming so far.

Over at Carnforth we picked up a lovely little trio of Sphere Conans. The Sphere editions were my introduction to Two-Gun Bob’s creation so I have a soft spot for them even though they are the de Camp and Carter adulterated texts or, in these cases, entirely new stories. Inferr yes, but nevertheless part of my Conan head-canon thanks to Pops.

As well as the Conans, a trio of M John Harrisons (which reminds me we need to cover The Pastel City at some point)…

Just look at that Centauri Device cover. So dynamic.

The Carnforth Book Shop, whilst perhaps not quite as extensive with SF and fantasy as The Old Pier, is an absolute trove thanks largely to its being much better organised.

I could have come away with a lot more but with the steely resolve of Conan himself (or being too lazy to carry any more as we were on the bus) I limited myself to just another four, including a John Brunner, a Thomas M Disch, a bloody lovely Dunsany and a tatty old British UFO exposé.

Just need time to read them all now. Which I’ll never get. But fuck it, finding these beauties is all part of the fun and I’ll retire one day…

one day…

…

Anyway. I’m on with editing the latest episode after finishing this report – The Sword of the Dawn Book Two with Dave -and it’s a tricky bugger thanks to some bizarre audio issues where we went out of sync during recording and ended up like an old trans-Atlantic interview complete with time delays in hearing each other. I’ll conquer it though.

And last night Graham and I jumped into D&Ts to discuss our latest Uncosy Catastrophe with The Fungus so that will be emerging in a couple of weeks too.

That’s it for now though, I’d better drink coffee and crack on wrestling with audio files.

Take care, stay safe and we will of course bump into each other again soon… on the moonbeam roads.

Gor Blimey!!!

Miles of the Casual Trek Podcast returns to Derry & Toms as we turn flagellant and cast our eyes over the first in John Norman’s GOR series (and the Cannon movie adaptation as a Brucey Bonus).

Publishers disdain it, booksellers sneer at it and the literary establishment would rather just not talk about it. But the GOR series still has a habit of popping up in the second-hand bookshops we frequent, because there are still millions of ’em kicking about probably. And there’s even a Gorean subculture in Darlington!!!

But which side are we on?

The establishment (and at least one butcher in Darlington)?

The other people that think it’s saucy and cooooool?

LISTEN AND FIND OUT!

Spoiler: In the end… we’re just with Oliver Reed.

CW: This podcast contains discussions about themes of sexual exploitation and slavery that are shot through the Gor novels.

Entropic State Report 28th June 2023

Incredible as it may seem, we are just about midway through 2023 already. We’re just a few hours out from our traditional midyear repose so of course the rain is falling here in Bradford and the weather forecast suggests that is to continue throughout our break at our destination of… Morecambe. But who cares when you have the sea and some decent hostelries and restaurants to haunt right?

We will end up back in the Old Pier Book Shop, so the fact my to-read pile continues to grow rather than diminish (despite a break from work) is just another pillar of my existence that I long since ceased to fret over. Until it falls on me of course and I’m trapped under it for the winter, surviving only on the scraps Phil feeds me to keep me alive to appreciate the irony of my cosmic retribution.

It remains to be seen whether we will undertake another Old Pier Book Shop Special – that will entirely depend on whether the fates decide to throw two copies of something interesting in our paths – but no doubt it will throw up some goodies that I fail to resist.

In other news, at times on the show I’ve mentioned that my taste in Hawkwind tends towards the earlier 1970s material and that I’ve never really held the album The Chronicle of the Black Sword in particularly high esteem. As a result, several of you have pointed me towards Hawkwind’s Live Chronicles album as a superior representation of the material – so having picked up an audio technica sound burger recently that allows me to play vinyl on my desk as I’m doing other bits and pieces I’ve been bashing through a whole load of albums I’ve picked up in the last couple of years that I still haven’t got round to spinning. I may well share my thoughts on that sometime soon.

Perhaps it’s worthy of an episode… we’ll see.

Our last show, Tales From Strange Cupboards was our latest swing at the world of Moorcockian roleplaying games and in a few weeks I’ll be running a game of Black Sword Hack Ultimate Chaos Edition – my first GMing effort of 2023 – so I’ll report back on that too in a couple of months.

Anyway, I need to sort my reading pile out for our jollies and finish editing the latest show so I shall depart and get my head down into it (and we’re off to a poetry and whisky night at Bradford Cathedral shortly – part of the Bradford Literature Festival itinerary) but meanwhile, be well out there. All power to our friends that are fighting and protesting to keep their heads above water not only here in the UK, but all around the world.

Tales From Strange Cupboards – Moorcock and RPGs Part VI

For our latest exploration of multiversal gaming, friends of the show Dave and Steve bring games mastering knowledge and expertise to Derry and Toms (as well as a couple of afternoon libations of course).

Whilst we consider whether Stormbringer is the Moorcockian RPG to rule them all, we also yak about the lineage of the Stormbringer RPG (see terribly boring powerpoint slide below), gaming as shit-kickers, when games get too meta, cat character sheets, how to nail the dream realms, playing games in Littlewoods cafe, and memories of Oyster Stout (all bad).

You can catch up with Dave and Steve’s gaming escapades at:

tentacledwhisperer.wordpress.com

and

cruisingforamusing36190591.wordpress.com

Also, I refer to Ted’s Stormbringer modifications in the intro to this show and you can read his latest thoughts on the games application of Sorcerers and Summoning over on the Tomb of Tedankhamen.

Entropic State Report 16th June 2023

We’re almost a couple of weeks past the last episode, a terrific discussion with Goran Gligović, and since that was uploaded he’s released yet another Eternal Champion creation. The triptych has become the FOUR who are One with the addition of Erekosë.

May there be many more.

In other news, The Woods of Arcady has landed in bookshops and on door mats and in my case it will have to join the long queue. I still haven’t read The Whispering Swarm. I do have a bone to pick with Tor though.

That first edition hardcover of The Whispering Swarm is gorgeous. This Woods of Arcady first edition is just so bleh. And the dimensions are larger. Is it too much to ask that we just have some unity of design?

It’s almost egregious as not being able to get the final Pyat novel in my favoured jacket and format (and even then the publisher managed to screw up the spine on Jerusalem Commands).

Sigh.

Maybe I just have too much time on my hands at the moment.

Anyway.

In other book news, I saw recently that it was the fifth anniversary of the death of Christopher Stasheff, author of the Rod Gallowglass Warlock novels (amongst other things). Stasheff is another author that I do not think I would have ever discovered without Pops throwing books at me throughout the 80s. None of my like-minded friends ever mentioned them (although I did throw a couple at my mate Mike back in the day and he dug them) so I suppose they must be a bit niche even amongst fantasy circles. I suspect that may have been down to the mixture of tones involved. Some pretty hard violence in the first couple of novels can swing wildly towards a very light and humorous approach in short order, but I have fond memories of the two Pops gave me. King Kobold and The Warlock Unlocked were originally books two and three in the series but after a prequel, Escape Velocity, was published along with some revisions to King Kobold (issued as King Kobold Revived) to bring it in line with the wider and growing series they became books three and four.

As tends to be the case here at STIMBOT Towers, I have three paperback copies of King Kobold kicking around so if there’s any interest in hearing more I may add it to the itinerary. Otherwise, I’ll revisit it for the first time in probably 35 years for my own gratification.

On the subject of the itinerary it did get slightly derailed due to recent developments but we’re back on track now and we haven’t had any significant gaps in releases thanks to the camaraderie and engagement of my various interlocutors (thanks M Broome) over recent months allowing a good pace of production. And coming up we have:

GOR (already in the can)

The Sword of the Dawn Part Two

The Queen of the Swords Part Two

The Fire Clown AKA The Winds of Limbo

Beyond Armageddon

THE FUNGUS

Luther Arkwright Vol 01

Nine Princes in Amber

and

Part VI of our ongoing discussions about Moorcock in the context of role-playing games (still need a snappy title) – it’s in the can, undergoing final edits and out this coming Monday. Fair warning, one of my companions for that show is worried it may be a bit dry and that we didn’t get nearly pissed enough by half to make it all sexy. All I’ll say is that I talk for a good five minutes about a powerpoint slide I created. So I’ll leave it to the jury to decide.

On top of all the above Loz and I still haven’t decided on our next subject matter (it may well be Gentlemen of the Road), and Hussein and Tash remain on the hook but playing hard to get. And Phil might just get around to reading The Phoenix in Obsidian/The Silver Warriors at some point too so we can crack on with the Erekosë saga at long last.

That’s all for this report other than to say thanks pards for all of your kind words and encouragement this past few weeks.

See you on the moonbeam roads.

Black Swords & Storyboards – a Conversation with Goran Gligović

Goran Gligović stopped by Derry and Toms to discuss his art and influences, as well as his work on the recently kickstarted Black Sword Hack: Ultimate Chaos Edition, a Moorcock-influenced roleplaying game from The Merry Mushmen

We rove around the joint and, for possibly the first time, Excalibur gets a mention on Breakfast in the Ruins… how it took so long I honestly can’t say. We also do a prize draw for some lucky Patron Demons!

Check out Goran’s Patreon and his InPrnt store.

The Queen of the Swords Book One

Simon returns to D&Ts to look at the first part of the second volume of the adventures of Corum, Prince in the Scarlet Robe and tell us all about his new(ish) podcast Can I Pod With Madness (available wherever you consume your pods).

Beer mistakes and dodgy audio can’t dampen our enthusiasm for some fantastic world-building and the first true appearance of everyone’s (well ours anyway) favourite companion/hat/cat combination.

JOIN US!

The Swords of Corum – Omnibus cover by Mark Salwowski

Entropic State Report 7th May 2023

It’s been a wild week here at Derry & Toms but we’ve managed to get away and take our repose at our spiritual home… Morecambe.

The Old Pier Book Shop yielded some modest treasures this time around, largely because I limited myself to a ten minute scan of the heaving shelves and piles, but I did pick up a nice brace of Brunners and a lively old Masterton edition of the further misadventures of the Manitou and his nemesis Harry Erskine. I have three of those editions now. Love those covers. Very striking. And now I’ve picked up a couple more John Brunners I really am running out of excuses to cover one.

One of our distinct pleasures when we visit Morecambe is a catch up with Ian aka @biomassart and his partner Angie, so true to form we had a couple of liveners in The Bath (a glorious old school rock pub – Dave, if you ever get to the UK we should make this hostelry a pilgrimage destination). Interestingly, Ian has a podcast idea marinating in his noggin that’s very much related to his great passions, in which he and I have something of an overlap (beyond the natural stuff like Moorcock, RPGs, scifi, beer and all the other geekery). Specially the PC strategy game Homeworld, one of the most visually distinct, absorbing and mellow of distractions I’ve ever engaged with over the past couple for decades. So… No pressure Ian but I’d LOVE to join you for that.

In BITR Podcast news, thanks for all the positive feedback on FotP:3 – as I have some time off pending I’ll probably edit and release the two I have in the can over the next week or so. So expect to hear Simon Perrins join me to muse over The Queen of the Swords Book One, and then part 6 of our periodical series of RPG-centric ponderings in the company of artist Goran Gligovic and a couple of friends of the show (and experienced Stormbringer GM’s) Dave and Steve.

To keep up the pace Miles returns to D&Ts next week to decide whether Tarnsman of Gor is a step up or down from Dannus (#FUCKINGDANNUS) and see what Darlingtonian butchers find so fascinating and arousing about Gorean culture.

Over the rest of May we’ll also be welcoming Andy Darby back to the rooftop to tackle The Winds of Limbo and Dave will be looking at book two of The Sword of the Dawn. And there’s plenty more in the pipeline too. You never know, Phil might actually finish her long-gestating homework and Tash might make herself available for Nine Princes in Amber…

In the meantime though, we love having these conversations and remain delighted that you enjoy listening.

See you soon. The Moonbeam Roads await…

The Fortress of the Pearl Part Three

Loz returns to Derry & Toms to brave the final gate (and the depredations of the beer slate) as we conclude our re-read of Michael Moorcock’s 1989 Elric novel The Fortress of the Pearl.

Expect revisionism (both textual and personal), rose-tinted reflections on the dole, a beer challenge best described as cyclopean and some RPG-focused grumbling as we complete our re-evaluation of a novel we haven’t read in over 30 years and fail to pronounce simple English words.

JOIN US!

Entropic State Report 21st April 2023

It’s been a couple of weeks since our The Final Programme Phase IV – The Last Days of Man on Earth episode went live and I’m STILL thinking about casting for an alternate sphere movie version. Only this morning another revelation hit my twitter feed c/o legend Robin Askwith, a still from Horror Hospital with his co-star Vanessa Shaw. I saw it and my instant reaction was – CATHERINE AND FRANK!

They would make a dream casting accompaniment to Mick and Anita as Jerry and Miss Brunner too…

There is a legend out there that suggests Mick Jagger turned down the role of Jerry but it may be apocryphal. If it’s true though I can understand why as he’d already hit (at least tangentially) similar territory in the incredible Nic Roeg film, Performance – something we referred to in the show. I’ve been thinking about Performance ever since and I suspect it’s something we’ll need to talk about in Derry & Toms at some point down the line.

But back to Robin Askwith for a moment. Whilst primarily known for his roles in British telly and a variety of low-budget films in the 70s, particularly saucy comedies, he got his screen start in the Lindsay Anderson film …If which was itself the introduction of the Mick Travis character that Malcolm MacDowell would continue to portray in O Lucky Man! and (along with Askwith returning to his own role) Britannia Hospital.

For that reason, Askwith is part of the extremely credible raft of character actors that occupy my mind palace whenever I’m daydreaming about the odder, counter-cultural, subversive and/or transgressive British cultural artefacts.

I also love his pictures of Windsor Davies.

A sitcom legend, Windsor was an actor I adored as a kid largely because he looked a hell of a lot like Pops. He could do a serious turn too and would have made a pretty great Colonel Pyat and, in a several-degrees-of-separation kind of situation, he appeared on screen at least once with the screen version of Professor Hira himself, Hugh Griffith.

I’ll be spending far too much time thinking about all of this for a good while yet.

In other news, I’m currently editing our third and final foray into the pages of The Fortress of the Pearl and that will be along in the coming days. Next in the queue and in the can for editing, we’ll have The Queen of the Swords Book One which features the return of Simon Perrins to the hot seat and the first proper arrival of a certain Companion to Champions (in his non-dream guise at least).

I had intended to get FOTP3 out this week, but STIMBOTCLASSIC finally, after two prior cancellations, got down to the hospital for his heart surgery and it all went off without a hitch so we’ve been a bit distracted here at D&Ts but now we can relax a bit, indulge in some celebratory libations and get back on track.

In other sad news, our very own real-life roof garden, Bradford’s Rooftop Cafe sees its last day of trading tomorrow before permanent closure. It’s been a regular haunt for us for over five years so we’ll be down there giving them a boozy send-off.

For now though, I have to do some actual work (boooooo) so take care pards and we’ll see you out there soon…

On t’moonbeam roads.