It's 2025, but we're tying up some 2024 business with Miles and finally rampaging to the potentially multiverse-shattering conclusion of Moorcock's Doctor Who novel The Coming of the Terraphiles.

They came. They went. The hat mystery was solved and the multiverse saved, and we still don't really get what went down.

But HATS!

We're back for our last show of 2024 and it's dropping in that weird 'between time' when I'm sick of festive food and just craving a tin of beans, but also wondering how much Yorkshire pud I can fit on my plate when my NYE appetite returns. And because Episode 101 has emerged through a haze of mince pies and sherry and our 18th viewing of Krampus, it's a lazy, boozy one that features a hastily conceived, tenuous theme.

It also goes on for about three days.

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It's Mike's birthday... It's Phil's birthday... It's our centenary...

For this one, we have a very special guest. It's Michael Moorcock!

Also, me and Phil go to Morecambe blah blah blah... JOIN US!!!

Simon Perrins is back in Derry and Toms to pick up the third instalment of the first Corum trilogy. Many delights await as Mike puts his foot down on drawing together the threads of this first ten years of Eternal Champion cosmology and, as usual, Jhary wears some nice threads.

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Steve Aylett, Moorcock's favourite modern absurdist and one-man genre, drops by Derry and Toms to talk about his work, satire and his latest novel The Book Lovers (available Dec 2nd 2024).

This was a real treat for me as I've been a fan of Steve's since happening across Lint in a King's Cross bookshop nearly 20 years ago. Since then he's continued to amuse and alarm with a whole range of writings and claims.

In his own words:

"My writing has been described as dreampunk, slipstream, bizarro, cyberpunk, new weird.  I call it satire.  I'm an aspie, a synaesthete and, despite all I've done, miraculously invisible.  I love books. I'm very interested in permaculture, perennial veg and ecobuilds. I'm tall and resemble some sort of hen." 

For this almost-delve into Moorcock's dark and inspired quest fantasy The Warhound and the World's Pain, I'm joined by author, playwright and Games Master David Griffiths. Inevitably, we ended up going down various routes in a wide-ranging conversation including Target Books (again), Moorcock and other inspirations, roleplaying games and, eventually, The Warhound and the World's Pain, which is getting a fresh coat of paint thanks to Joe Monti and Saga Press and their brand-new hardcover Von Bek collection (releasing in December). We will follow up on this in the next few weeks with a deeper delve.

We also discuss Dave's latest play, inspired by the events that led an under-sexed weirdo to produce the infamous Malleus Maleficarum, The Hammer and Helena.

This is the latest of Dave's plays to be staged by Arts Groupie, a Liverpool-based Community Interest Company. Check out their website for more details, including Dave's take on the Dickens classic ghost story, The Signalman.

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.

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. 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.