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Are you worried you’re not that cool? Don’t worry, you can always write a fantasy novel where a person, suspiciously similar to you, is the coolest.

That’s what John G. Stockmyer did with the Bandworld series. In the first book, Under The Stairs, a history professor loses his cat and tracks him to another dimension where history professors are treated like kings. It’s not a terrible book, though the treatment of women is pretty reprehensible. Other than that, it’s pretty fun.

Congrats/thank you again to Jon from Norway who won this sponsorship during our International Live Show!

0 comments on “RiaW #276: Under The Stairs (Bandworld Book 1)

  1. Jon Oshaug says:

    Hey guys, thank you for making this a great episode.
    When you read out loud what I said about the book, my reaction was “Wait, I actually wrote that?” I think I was reeling too hard at the news of Stockmyers’ death at the time to really give it a fair treatment. I first encountered the series back in middle school, so the nostalgia is strong with this one.
    BTW, the reason it has all the musical interludes is because the audiobook was released episodically on podiobooks back in the day. The podiobooks draft also did not have that drawn out rape scene in the beginning, so I did not know about that one. Color me horrified!

  2. Alex Falcone says:

    Oh man, that’ makes so much sense. The podio thing AND cutting the rape stuff because IT ISN’T NECESSARY AT ALL. But nothing to be horrified about. It was actually kinda fun.

  3. Mike says:

    I just started this episode, but it immediately makes me think of the Gor books or the Thomas Covenant Chronicles. Both are pretty rapey and degrading to women.

  4. Mary-Anne Jack says:

    Would’ve been nice if you’d put the “books with rape” tag on this like you did for the John Ringo books.

  5. Alex Falcone says:

    Good idea. I hope it’s not too hard to listen to us talk about it. There’s always this point where I get uncomfortable hearing the discussion but I also want to give the book its (awful) due.

  6. Andrew says:

    medieval = after the fall of the Western Roman Empire but before the modern age. So 7th century certainly is medieval.But putting rams on war-ships was being done in Ancient Greece and Phoenicia so the college history professor still gets failed on this one.

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