Malcom Craig drops by Derry & Toms to talk about his work in academia, roleplaying games, his authorship of the first ever academic article on Twilight 2000, the "macho men with Uzis" sub-genre of RPGs, the upcoming reboots of his Cold City and Hot War games, and panicking as children about how high priority your neighbourhood was in terms of Soviet megatonnage.

Mostly, though, we're talking about Malcom's reading recommendation - THE ROBOT BRAINS by incredibly prolific but largely unheralded British author Sydney J Bounds.

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Dave is back in Derry & Toms as we finally turn our attention to Karl Edward Wagner and his towering dark fantasy anti-hero... Kane!

We've been talking about doing some KEW for a while now, so what better time than a grim, miserable Yorkshire winter to tackle a chilly werewolf whodunnit. The story, Reflections for the Winter of My Soul, is the first of three in the collection Death Angel's Shadow, and we'll be back at some point in the future to look at the other two.

As KEW also wrote an Elric/Kane crossover story called The Gothic Touch, we took a look at that too.

Dave's band SÖNUS will release the first single from their new album on 14th February - Pagan Woman - and in the meantime you can join the countdown to the video and pre-save the single.

New album Planes of Torment will follow in May and we'll keep you up to date on that too.

We're talking RPGs again, this time in the company of Tanya Floaker (Mum Chums, Lo! Thy Dread Empire, Solstice, Be Seeing You, a|state).

Along the way we'll get into Tanya's history with Moorcock and genre fiction, gaming in Thatcher's Scotland, first steps into game design and the pending launch of their new Kickstarter for The Thunder Perfect Mind, launching 1st February 2026. If you're interested in reading more, and even getting a hold of early drafts, check out Tanya's itch.io page.

We'll also look into what Tanya would do around the gamification of Michael Moorcock's Multiverse, the 12-part comic series. I like it. I like it a lot.

In addition, friend of the show and long-standing patron Randall Gatlin calls in to talk about all of this Moorcock malarkey and reveals what may possibly be the coolest interaction with Mike and Linda I've yet come across.

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Joe Banks braves the radioactive zone to join me on the Ferris Wheel and discuss the 1975 album by Michael Moorcock and The Deep Fix - The New Worlds Fair - the 50th anniversary edition of which is now available via thinklikeakey.com.

Joe's latest book - ROCK and ROLE: The Visionary Songs of Peter Hammill and Van der Graaf Generator - is available now, as is his prior book - Hawkwind: Days of the Underground: Radical Escapism in the Age of Paranoia.

Derek AKA Imrryr joins me in Derry and Toms as we take a look at the Elric tale, The Jade Man's Eyes. Initially published in 1973 in Flashing Swords 2 and as a standalone novella by Unicorn Press, this story would later be heavily revised and repackaged as part of the fix-up novel The Sailor on the Seas of Fate.

So plenty to look at, including unpronounceable names and this story's key place in Elric lore.

Check out Derek's music in their guise as Imrryr over on Ampwall and Bandcamp and pre-order their upcoming release Carver 4 Mission Report.

We're back... we've crawled out of the ruins of our Christmas and New Year bottles to witness the fantastic world of 1973 through the eyes of Oswald Bastable.

Robert MacMillan is my co-pilot for this journey as we have to look up what things are and marvel over Moorcock's invention of a genre that these days seems largely about gluing cogs to pith helmets, tea duels and "chap-hop".

OR IS IT?

I don't know tbh.

But Bastable's journey from dependable Man of Empire to temporal adventurer starts here.

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Another year, another Birthday Special... our sixth!

It's Mike's birthday... it's Phil's birthday... it's the podcast's official state birthday... so what better than a silly, hastily assembled drunken quiz?

No ? required... that was a rhe

A chance for Loz to close the gap on Phil's epic quiz streak as well as to introduce a wild card in the shape of a third contestant!

OK, fine. This wasn't the actual intent, but best laid plans and all that. Also, Simon Perrins drops in to elaborate on his frankly incontestable assertion regarding a British cultural icon and their place in the Multiverse.

Simon is also responsible for the magnificent art for this episode, which is a pretty big clue if you're British and over a certain age.

MOOOOR COCK-COCK-COCK refrain is from The Dewey Decibel System by BlöödHag 

Andy Darby joins me as we take D and Ts on the road to eons-old Mars to explore mysteries, machinations and mild disappointments.

Check out Andy’s substack to read The Crow Feeder and sign up to his website for updates and to receive a free e-copy of his latest novella.

Miles is back in Derry & Toms as we tackle another 60s Moorcock classic... The Ice Schooner. Lots to talk about here, and some pearls to clutch too, as we visit one of Mike's sweatiest rime-encrusted tales that, one way or another, remind us of our hometowns.

And we talk about Doctor Who and Star Trek a bit too.

Content warning: there is some discussion of SA that occurs in this book. 

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(and listen to the Casual Trek Podcast)

As voted for by our dear patrons, the subject for this year's Halloween Special is SLUGS!

Shaun Hutson's breakthrough best seller has been on the poll list for three or four years, but 2025 was its year. So, join Graham, Phil and me as we evaluate Shaun Hutson's entry into that classic and most pulpy of British horror traditions, the Killer Critter novel. Also, we mull over whether four clefts are just too many, and get disappointed by our initially impressive socialist hero's basic levels of competence.

Image by Simon Perrins!