Podcasting about Michael Moorcock and traversing the million spheres.
The patrons spoke and this year’s full-bore Halloween Special is Sabat – The Graveyard Vultures (and more) by Guy N Smith…
It’s fair to say that this one was challenging, and not just because our hero is a massive wanker. There’s more… much more…
Content warning for sexual violence and exasperated hosts.
Halloween is rampaging towards us and, following some technical issues, we managed to get our Halloween Special recorded and in the can…
SABAT!
And Holy shit. It was not what I expected, but I’ll keep my powder dry on that one. Thoughts of Phil, Graham and me coming up in a couple of weeks.
Meanwhile though, I had a great time discussing The House in the Borderland with Allister – a book I’ve loved for a long time and one that is indelibly marked by my memories of Pops and some of those conversations we shared after my Nan passed away and I spent long evenings with him and his recollections of all sorts of things, some whimsical and light, others drenched in the grief, loss and trauma that a widower of his age and generation had inevitably suffered due to his place in time.
Also, and this was a last minute addition to the slate, it was great to welcome Loz back to the Derry & Toms kitchen to drink daft booze, eat haggis and talk about another horror novel that’s failed to make the grade in the patron polls this past couple of years… Slimer!
I’m not sure horror is Loz’s bag, but we had fun either way. When you listen to that one be sure to stick with it to the end because we did watch Proteus, but I put that bit of chat after the end music for some reason. I was going to leave it out, because we were a bit battered by the time we recorded that segment (and you can tell) but I thought “bah whatevs” and just bunged it on the end.
In other news, a package arrived at D&Ts today… a mysterious package c/o Dan Charnley AKA Dan’s Monsters…
Some ghost stories, a couple of westerns including an Edge volume (always meant to check one out), a bit of Survivalist action and… THAT BEAUTY PICTURED ABOVE!
Many thanks for that Dan, it now has pride of place alongside my signed Ebola Hunter photo from Wakaliwood.
It just occurred to me earlier that by the time our Sabat episode goes out on Halloween, we’ll have knocked out five episodes this month. Probably our busiest-ever period, but none of it Moorcock-related (other than talking generally about Bastable with Robert). Therefore, in November, we’ll be going back to the well and picking up some of our dangling threads with a return to Corum, the finale of The Coming of the Terraphiles and possibly some other bits and bobs, and then it will be December!
And that means another birthday episode that might… just might, by some coincidence… end up being episode 100.
Yes, our centenary approaches.
I wonder if we can crowbar in something special for that? Well, mayhap we can and mayhap we can’t…. we’ll just have to see. I’m nothing if not disorganised and terrible at planning, so it might just finally be part two of Phoenix in Obsidian or something.
Finally for today, if you don’t subscribe to Jim Kirkland’s Dreaming City Books newsletter, Pursuit of the Pale Prince, you absolutely should. There are some great updates in this latest instalment, one of which I referred to in the Slimer episode, but there’s more to see too, including details of a new Monsieur Zenith trilogy, the Bob Haberfield art shop and more.
Take care all, and see you in a week or so for Sabat (uuurgh… Sabat).
In this, our third (?) Halloween episode for 2024, we tackle the book Loz describes as, “crass, bluff and gittish”!
It’s SLIMER… our second experience of Harry Adam Knight action on Breakfast in the Ruins and it certainly was a book. Interesting developments on the ‘base under siege by weird monster’ are brought low by some of the unfortunate tropes of the genre at the time. Still, fortunately, the D6 Wandering Beer Table made a welcome return and generally we rolled rather well!
Content warning for sexual violence (in the book, not between me and Loz) and really shitty characters.
Our last look at Harry Adam Knight was our 2023 Uncosy Catastrophe read of The Fungus
We are firmly in our Halloween groove. The eco-horror of Pisces Rising may have given us a light step into the season, but now we’re up to our necks in it and our choices for this year not only include the winner and one of the runners-up from this year’s patron poll, but we’re also taking a look at one that has featured on past polls but never reached the top…
William Hope Hodgson’s classic of weird fiction and cosmic dread… The House on the Borderland.
Author, editor and musician Allister Thompson is back for this one (check out his musical retrospective and his debut novel The Music of the Spheres), and this was a pretty deep reading (by my standards anyway). We also touch on Lovecraft and some musical interpretations, including one by Nostalgia and Borderlands by Tactile, an extract of which can be heard at the end of the show.
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In this bonus fix-up episode, I meet up with our pen-pal Robert MacMillan in a coffee shop in Bradford to set the scene for our journey into the worlds of Bastable… this wasn’t our initial plan. Still, life intervenes in strange ways sometimes and we follow the moonbeam roads as we must.
As well as Moorcock, we talk about 1980s coach holidays to Palamos, VHS tracking, Bond, Who conventions, Pontins Prestatyn, the literary merits of Lawrence Durrell and all sorts of other things.
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It’s October already so it’s time for Graham to return for our traditional Halloween period of exploring killer critter features and, from time to time, discovering new author rabbit holes to tumble down. This time, it’s PISCES RISING by NEL stalwart Peter Cave and his one-time collaborator Margaret Wredden.
Fantastic creation myths combine with brutal deaths, drinking bitter in a pub in Lowestoft, and a sadly underfeatured octopus called Bluey.
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We’re into September and ten days from the autumn equinox, so technically it’s still summer. You wouldn’t believe it from the thermometer though. It’s a balmy eight degrees C this morning in the hills of Bradford. Brrrrrr.
So we need activity to keep us warm and as you may have seen, we fired out a quick follow-up to our Conan episode with a chat with Clarky about some Conan knock-offs from the 1960s.
Our choices were largely driven by what we had kicking about. In fact, I’ve had some of these kicking around for decades, too many Howard and ERB patches to count. I did struggle with Thongor though and I’ve got loads of them and other Lin Carters too like the whole Jandar of Callisto line (but they do have amazing Pennington covers so there is that).
We will get to Sword and Planet again at some point. We’ve done Gor and Dannus, so it’s high time we actually looked at some GOOD planetary romance fiction. We came close to covering the first of Moorcock’s Kane of Old Mars books probably three years ago, but I had two separate copies of the first one fall to bits on me, so it went on the back burner. I also had a show scheduled with Anthony Perconti and Matthew X Gomez, a couple of the authors/editors of anthology mag Broadswords and Blasters, but scheduling issues (all mine) got in the way. Hopefully we’ll get that back in diaries soon.
Now that Brak and Thongor are struck off the list, I have a couple of spares that will be winging their way to Patron Demons too. HUZZAH!
Coming up next, Graham will be back as we head into the spooky season with some sort of tonally all over the place eco-horror thriller fantasy mash-up that may have sent us down a new author rabbit-hole too. That will be coming up around the end of the month.
And then, speaking of scary-time, the Halloween Poll indicated a clear winner (58% of the vote) for our traditional Halloween Special. And it’s Guy N Smith again, but no crabs on this occasion… oh no… this time it’s the first of his ex-SAS killer turned priest quadrilogy. We’ll be covering SABAT: The Graveyard Vultures.
We’ll get back to some Moorcock soon too, with plans for Corum, Hawkmoon and Elric catch-ups in prep… and Saga Press release the all-new Von Bek volume in a month or three so watch that space…
In other news, Jim Jupp’s Ghostbox Records is about to release the new cut from ethereal dark-folk electronica geniuses Beautify Junkyards – NOVA. Jim sent me a copy of the CD for an advanced listen and I’ve already pre-ordered the vinyl. As we would have said back in the day, it’s mint.
That’s about it for today’s update. Phil and I are headed on our jollies in the next few days where we will combine a trip to the coast with a sojourn across the North Sea to attend the 80th Commemoration of the Battle of Arnhem with my old fella. Dad isn’t an Arnhem vet of course, but he has been a member of the Parachute Regimental Association for over 50 years and this will be the first time he’s attended without my dear old mam, so it will be a beer-soaked and emotional occasion, but also pretty fucking cool. Expect holiday snaps in the next report.
Take care folks and see you out there… on the moonbeam roads.
Dad (middle) and chums Pete (left) and Brian (right – RIP) somewhere in West Germany in the late 60s.
From the North he came, to seek knowledge and fortune. Cast out by his tribe for offending Ulfr, God of the Wastes, he is driven by mirth, restrained by melancholy. One day he will return to make offerings to the Bear Druids, particularly Mewler the Claw. She thinks he’s an idiot but owes him a debt.
Memories of Krangg, The Iron Bear
Clarky is back in Derry and Toms to talk Conan knock-offs, and pool our thoughts on an all-Barbarian game and how to resolve the inevitable “Pah! My hand-tailored sandals are more northern than you, you weakling southlander habadasher!” type conflicts.
We get into Thongor and Brak mainly, but also a touch of Kothar and a mild dusting of some other characters whose names I’ve forgotten.
One of them had a halberd though.
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“Dishonesty hollows a man, like the bog bug hollows out a tree. Don’t be that tree. It’s dry, useless and dusty, although it does burn ok.”
Krangg, 134th of Ogbok’s Moon, 13423
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.
Breakfast in the Ruins Podcast 