Just how bad is John Norman's Gor Series?

[drbooman]

Not as bad as every one else says.

Once you get past the whole sex slavery thing, or that Norman may not be the best writer, the series is rich on many levels. Set in more of a Greco-Roman style world, individual books visit other cultural areas like desert, native plains, jungle, etc. All areas are well thought out in their descriptions of every day life.

Gor plays out as the chessboard for two warring alien species, with the main character, Tarl Cabot, being an agent for one side. Fighting ranges from gladiator style to naval battles, piracy to really wicked reptilian mounts.There is plenty of intrigue and spying. Everything seems well thought out and thorough in it's descriptions, more so than most any book out there.

Sure Norman gets long winded many times, and the male dominance/slavery does get tiring, dont let these issues stop you from enjoying this series for everything else it has going for it.

 

[TheMaster]

Just started reading

I just started reading the Gor books (I have 25 of them) and halfway through book 3, which is the best of the three.

Before I started Gor, I did a lot of research into and found some interesting documentation on the background of some of the Gorean philosophy of submission and slavery. Some of you youngsters may not remember some of the radical feminisiom of the 60s and 70s, but that mindset is what is being played on in the Gor books.

"Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women's movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage." (radial feminist leader Sheila Cronan).

There was also attributed (falsely) to some feminists the statement that "All sex is rape."

In Gor, there is no such thing as marriage. There is slavery and Free Companionship.

What many reviewers of Gor don't observe is that, at least in the early books, the protagonist goes out of his way to free the female slaves he encounters, demonstrating the more enlightened culture of Earth.

I reserve the right to update my review as I read more of the books.

That being said, so far they have been enjoyable, in the vein of ERB's John Barsoom, Venus and Pellucidar stories.

 

[KatG]

I just started reading the Gor books (I have 25 of them) and halfway through book 3, which is the best of the three.

Before I started Gor, I did a lot of research into and found some interesting documentation on the background of some of the Gorean philosophy of submission and slavery. Some of you youngsters may not remember some of the radical feminisiom of the 60s and 70s, but that mindset is what is being played on in the Gor books.

"Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women's movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage." (radial feminist leader Sheila Cronan).

There was also attributed (falsely) to some feminists the statement that "All sex is rape."

In Gor, there is no such thing as marriage. There is slavery and Free Companionship.

What many reviewers of Gor don't observe is that, at least in the early books, the protagonist goes out of his way to free the female slaves he encounters, demonstrating the more enlightened culture of Earth.

I reserve the right to update my review as I read more of the books.

That being said, so far they have been enjoyable, in the vein of ERB's John Barsoom, Venus and Pellucidar stories.

I think we might let the feminism discussion lie on this particular series. There aren't many who would agree with you and the writer expressed his views publicly and not in support for feminism. There is general agreement that the third book, The Priest Kings of Gor, is a solid SF novel, and the rest are more representative of a lot of types of fiction that were put out in the 1970's perhaps. I can't remember how far I read in, but there are some good adventure stories in there.

 

[HeatherCat]

Blast from the Past LOL

Can't believe I stumbled on this topic here. I just signed up with Netflix and seriously doubted my eyes when I saw the film "Gor" listed LOL Watching it at the moment and can only giggle at the low budget and 80's hair styles.

I used to buy the Gor books (had all 25!) in the Stars & Stripes book stores on the military base back in the 80's, when I was in my 20's . I thought they were great fun to read and re the S&M theme, it only had me amused. I did like the humor bits rightly called "tongue in cheek" in a previous post here.

As time went by and I got into other genres and themes, the Gor books stood on the bottom shelve of the book case. For over 20 years. The selling price back then was about 2.50 to 3.00 $. In 2008 I packed up my household and prepared to move to Ireland. Hence I sold lots of things, and most of my (over 200) books. I put the Gor books up on ebay, separately. And I nearly fainted when each one reached a sales price of over 20 $ I wondered (and still do), why they fetched so high bids, but there you are. There's no accounting for taste.

Darn good investment, though, I'd say LOL

Admittedly, the Gor books were no literary all-time high, but back then (even as a woman ) I found them amusing, not offending.

Having said that, I will stop the movie now, it's just TOO bad ROFL

 

[hrufrdr1]

I began reading the Gor novels in junior high, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. I was big into the tough, heroic figures back then--King Arthur, Robin Hood, Conan, etc., and I found Gor to be an intriguing place. Is John Norman comparable to Kurt Vonnegut or Don DeLillo? Of course not. But every once in a while, I enjoy re-immersing myself in what is basically literary comfort food. Junky, bad for me, and with absolutely no nutritional value.

But surely there's something to be said for stories that are just fun to read. After all, Pulp Fiction is violent, profane, and offensive, but everyone I know simply LOVES that movie! For me, Norman's worldview was generally harmless until Tarl Cabot chose slavery over death in Raiders of Gor. It was then that he became embittered and more...Gorean. Do I agree with Norman's views on master and slave? No. I have a mother, grandmother, and wife, and the thought of them being classed as property is utterly repellent.

But even when he waxes bombastic and gets overly long-winded defending his views, he eventually gets back to what made us want to read his stuff in the first place: Big, tough, evolving Tarl Cabot. My favorite of all of the novels is Marauders of Gor.

The Jason Marshall trilogy was ok, and the novels told from the POV of Earth girl slaves were junk.

But Tarl Cabot (or Bosk of Port Kar) is still pretty cool.

 

[oasis seeker]

Wow, it's funny. I just read through this thread and my experience was basically exactly like the majority of others.

I read the first few books when a young teen and found them very enjoyable. They were basically along the lines of Edgar Rice Burroughs stuff (Tarzan, john Carter) and Robert E. Howard's stuff (Conan etc.) Heroic sword and sorcery stuff.

But then he got more and more into that weird female slave BDSM stuff and I moved on to other stories and authors.

 

[Ash Aelfwine]

Counter earth - exactly what it says on the tin

Okay, so for quite a while now, I've been interested in the classic sword & sorcery genre. Amog the authors I'm really interseted in are Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, Fred Saberhagen, C.L. Moore, Karl Edward Wagner, Leigh Brackett, Talbot Mundy, Michael Moorcock, David Gemmell, Lin Carter, Avram Davidson, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and others.
And one author I've kind have got a curious eye on is John Norman, but I'm weary of reading him, because I've heard that his writings are quite nefarious in their treatment of women. I've heard that he isn't just simply sexist in his writings, but has the women degraded and tortured in bizarre and harrowing sexual ways. Could someone please tell me if all that has been said about his writings are true?

Thanks,
Zsinj

It was a long time ago, when in my twenties, when I read the Gor books but I do remember them with fondness.
True, I began to loose interest when ‘Tarl Cabot,’ originally Carl Tabot on Earth, was phased out, and the first half dozen or so were likely the best. However, much of the criticism of today is due to PC cultural brainwashing – the process over several decades to eliminate the distinction between the male and female sexes and the invention of two more, so it is hardly surprising that young readers find the idea of men dominating women to be unnatural – that is, with the exception of Muslims and anyone outside of a western democracy.
I intend rereading at least the first half dozen, and it will be refreshing to counter the society in which I live, which is the real fantasy world where weaklings and the dishonest prosper and people think that humanity can continue to breed out of control; where people have become utterly dependant upon the state and have few or no skills of their own; where good manners and common sense has been replaced by political correctness and the compensation culture; where the benefits of modern science continue to be abused for their own enrichment by the corporations and politicians, and our environment continues to become more polluted and unhealthy for ourselves and deadly for our fellow inhabitants.
We couldn’t be worse off with Priest Kings of our own to control the destructive excesses of our greedy species. So please do read 'Tarnsman of Gor,' of Counter Earth, and momentarily escape the real fantasy world which is our civilisation.

 

[PeteMC]

True, I began to loose interest when ‘Tarl Cabot,’ originally Carl Tabot on Earth,

Nope.

was phased out,

Nope. Tarl was dropped for one book, then another three about ten books further on (the Jason books), in which he made a cameo. The whole cycle is Tarl's story. Have you actually read them?

and the first half dozen or so were likely the best.

I don't think anyone is arguing with that.

However, much of the criticism of today is due to PC cultural brainwashing – the process over several decades to eliminate the distinction between the male and female sexes and the invention of two more, so it is hardly surprising that young readers find the idea of men dominating women to be unnatural – that is, with the exception of Muslims and anyone outside of a western democracy.
I intend rereading at least the first half dozen, and it will be refreshing to counter the society in which I live, which is the real fantasy world where weaklings and the dishonest prosper and people think that humanity can continue to breed out of control; where people have become utterly dependant upon the state and have few or no skills of their own; where good manners and common sense has been replaced by political correctness and the compensation culture; where the benefits of modern science continue to be abused for their own enrichment by the corporations and politicians, and our environment continues to become more polluted and unhealthy for ourselves and deadly for our fellow inhabitants.
We couldn’t be worse off with Priest Kings of our own to control the destructive excesses of our greedy species. So please do read 'Tarnsman of Gor,' of Counter Earth, and momentarily escape the real fantasy world which is our civilisation.

Wow...

 

[Ash Aelfwine]

Nope.



Nope. Tarl was dropped for one book, then another three about ten books further on (the Jason books), in which he made a cameo. The whole cycle is Tarl's story. Have you actually read them?



I don't think anyone is arguing with that.



Wow...

Hi Pete,
It was in the mid 70's when I must have read most of them, they were only 30 or maybe 35p. I only have a vague memory of the change of char and the story becoming less interesting.
I have taken to writing in my dotage and use interesting blogs as writing practice and, rather like a small child, I occasionally resort to being outrageous in order to attract attention. However, in regard to modern conventions and our degenerate culture, I mean every dam word.
On balance I prefer Conan by Robert E Howard and wish that Hollywood could do the stories justice.
Sorry about the plug, but it is free!

 

[beanie]

Norman has at least one actual strength as a writer. He's a decent world-builder. I maintain that the RPG industry lost a great fluff writer when Norman decided to write kinky bondage porn instead of D&D supplements.

Unfortunately, he's terrible at maintaining the narrative flow. Many times throughout the series you'll see him stop right in the middle of a tense action scene to add in a 4-paragraph digression about the Gorean compass or the Gorean calendar or the native wildlife in the area.

His actual prose stylings are an acquired taste. I actually kinda like it, but I find the stuffy, overly formal, quasi-academic style (see also: H.P. Lovecraft, Arthur Conan Doyle, and others) evocative. Even so, he still occasionally manages to make even me flinch.

The less said about his dialogue, the better.

I will echo what others have said: The first 7 are halfway decent. They're not great, but they're not terrible either. And Book 3 (Priest-Kings of Gor) is indeed the best of the bunch. There's a few chapters which revolve around the BDSM angle and the feisty woman yearning to submit to a manly and virile Dom, but the bulk of the novel is a very respectable entry in the sword-and-planet genre.

If you are curious about the books and would like to get your feet wet while sparing yourself the potentially soul-crushing process of actually reading them, I've got a chapter-by-chapter "Where I Read" thread going on over at the RPG.net forums. I post some excerpts from each chapter, add in my trenchant commentary, and other folks join in on the discussion. Currently closing in on the end of Book 2, so you can get a very good idea of what the first two books are like, at least.

Priest-Kings is definitely the best of the books, both in terms of world building and also in terms of the least amount of the BDSM crap. If you skip past that stuff, you actually find some very amusing tidbits of dry humor that are very appealing. He has a unique voice that way. And it's easy to skip the BDSM stuff because it's all in giant chunks between the actual plot.

Thanks for the link. I first read them as a young and impressionable teen when I ran across the first book in my uncle's library. I'm sure he would not have approved of me borrowing it. But I really dug the swordplay and the tarns! The tarns were so cool. I wanted one for my very own.

 

[maggieCr]

Okay, so for quite a while now, I've been interested in the classic sword & sorcery genre. Amog the authors I'm really interseted in are Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, Fred Saberhagen, C.L. Moore, Karl Edward Wagner, Leigh Brackett, Talbot Mundy, Michael Moorcock, David Gemmell, Lin Carter, Avram Davidson, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and others.
And one author I've kind have got a curious eye on is John Norman, but I'm weary of reading him, because I've heard that his writings are quite nefarious in their treatment of women. I've heard that he isn't just simply sexist in his writings, but has the women degraded and tortured in bizarre and harrowing sexual ways. Could someone please tell me if all that has been said about his writings are true?

Thanks,
Zsinj

I read quite a few of the Gor books, and my impression was that after about the third book they are soft porn. That being said, they were fun adventure. There were a lot of cultural divisions in them, desert, city, farmland. And there were aliens, Tarl Cabot was a hero, rescuing many of the women he found enslaved.,
So, I enjoyed the series as far as that went.
All of the authors you have listed above I have on my shelves and have read and re-read.
Hope this helps
MaggieCr

 

[Woofdog2]

-M.A.R. Barker : Man of Gold and Flamesong.

-L. Sprague de Camp : Reluctant King novels (funny sword
and sorcery : always rare) and Zei novels (planetary romance)

-Roger Zelazny : Dilvish the Damned
.

3 great authors/choices - some comments

re flamesong/man of gold by Barker - It may not matter but I think the petal throne would seem more sci-fi (or to use a phrase from another thread - post-apocalyptic fantasy)- also MAR Barker later published (with a small or private publisher) 3 more petal throne novels expanding on subsequent events for the characters in the first 2 you note above. They aren't as good, but they may be good enough and it is all there is ever going to be in that world. I enjoyed them, to be sure. I recommend the two books you note by him to anyone who might be interested, but the population of people who will read a 40-year old book by an (to them) unknown author is getting smaller and smaller.

De Camp and Fletcher Pratt also wrote The Compleat |Enchanter series, which I think is worth mentioning as well alongside the Reluctant King stories. I have not gone wrong with either of these two author's original works and collaborations, including de camp's historical fiction. (worded to avoid the de camp/howard stuff)

Zelazny's short fiction was republished in a 6-? volume anthology not too long ago, which does include some of the dilvish stories. I had no idea how talented this author was, as my only prior exposure was the amber series.

 

[Dana]

Norman shares a dry and verbose style I have seen in other college writers. Where a small phrase is given then two paragraphs to pages detail what that phrase meant. Then another line or two of dialog and repeat. And it can get tiresome. Most of the accused bdsm is overhyped unless you count that in the world building the cultures put women as second class to everyone. Then it starts to get tired. But some of the refreshing parts is magic to justify things. Making the struggle versus a hostile world and wars among sword wielding me all the more engaging.

 

[allanon]

Tried to read book 1 as a kid, it was sold to me as the "antithesis" of Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time" series and the Aes Sedai. Sadly I was bored easily by the book and did not finish it. I was shocked when I learned that it is still running, with more than 30 books written by the author.

 

[JunkMonkey]

In a fit of "F"(k it, I don't want to get out of bed today." I took yesterday off, stayed in bed and read. I finished off the book I was reading the day before then polished off Assassins of Gor (the 5th book in the series) in one go.

Assassins of Gor is, quite frankly, fecking awful. But compulsively so in only the way that truly bad writing can be. A couple of days before I'd read a John Sladek story called A Game of Jump which he wrote using the limited 307 word vocabulary of The Ladybird Key Word Reading Scheme plus a few proper nouns. I was reminded it of it a lot while reading Assassins. The vocabulary of Norman's book is larger than the one Sladek employed but, I suspect, well below the average work of fiction - even for this type of low-expectation, thud and blunder pulp. Some of the dialogue was mind-numbingly banal and repetitive. the same point being repeated again and again with the same phrasing.

The plot, of what is by all accounts I have found online one of the more complex of the book , runs something like this:

An assassin is hired to avenge the murder of the hero (and narrator) of the previous 4 books. Following the only clue - a convenient piece of torn fabric that could only be a 'sporting faction patch' of the city of Ar - the Assassin goes to Ar. He picks up a street slave and gets involved in a bar fight. He retires to his room with the slave girl and, in the middle of a paragraph, halfway through some dialogue, the narration changes from third person to first person as it is suddenly (jarringly) revealed that our narrator hero of the previous four books isn't dead after all and is suddenly narrating The assassin is him, in disguise, pretending to avenge his own death! Gosh! Turns out the guy we saw cremated on page one was someone who LOOKED A LOT LIKE our hero and had been killed in mistake for him.

Our hero gets himself hired by the biggest slaving house in town which has mysterious amounts of money pouring into it. The slave girl he has picked up on the street is his girlfriend from the previous book pretending to be a slave in that very house. The two of them are working undercover at the behest of some aliens (who obviously appeared in the previous books and are some sort of good guys) to try and thwart the evil plans of some other aliens (who may NOT have been mentioned in previous books). Aha! I know where we are. This is a mashup of the Lensman books and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Kimble Carter: Lensman of Mars! Anyhow once inside the mysteriously-funded slaving-house (biggest slaving house in town and obviously funded by the bad aliens from the moment they appeared on the page) our hero spends a good couple of hundred pages... doing not a lot. Seriously not much happens; we get long guided tours of the facilities. Endless discriptions of knot-tying, lock mechanisms, sado-masochistic slave-girl training methods. Countless chainings and unchaining, descriptions of liveries and the meanings of different types of slave clothing. (There's some serious sicko stuff in here. Several pages devoted to a loving description of hidden rooms in the slaving house full of beautiful young women, raised from childhood in all female surroundings, totally innocent of any outside world, destined to be thrown into pits full of male slaves to be gang-raped for the amusement of onlookers) and there are other other pages-long descrptions of stuff. Shitload after shitload of world-building info-dumping about whatever the hero stumbles across. Occasionally, when not getting guided tours of the establishment or chaining his girlfriend to the bed for the day, our hero has occasional trip to the games to watch Tarn racing (men on big birds flying round a course through hoops), gladiator fighting (who is the mysterious masked fighter who undefeated refuses to kill his enemies? Could it possibly be the exiled - in a previous book - beloved hero-warrior Whassifasicus? I think Norman was going for mystery and a big reveal later but it was obvious from the third sentence what was going on here)?

After a while, bored with not getting the secret documents his inside man has been promising to get him for a couple of hundred pages, and not having made any headway in finding out who it was who killed the person our hero is supposed to be avenging (not that he actually does a lot of investigating) he joins the new sporting faction in town and dons a disguise so no one will know its him (for some reason) as he flies big birds through hoops.

Head villiain of the piece - boss of the slaving house where our hero works gets himself by devious means made head Poo Bah of Ar.

THEN! dad da dah!!!! Something happens. Our hero discovers his inside man isn't his inside man at all but one of the evil boss's men. He's been double crossed! He is captured and thrown into jail where the villain gloats the plot at him. The man murdered at the start of the book was one of his men - murdered by another of his men because he (the first 'his man') looked like our hero and was killed purely to lure the hero into investigating his 'own' death. (Thus placing himself within the grasp of the villain where the villain could keep an eye on him make it impossible for him to thwart his plans because he was kept so busy chaining up his girlfriend and waiting for the secret plans to be given to him to go do any side thwarting.)

Villain is dragged, bound and gagged (natch), to watch his girlfriend get auctioned off to some evil slave-traders from the evelist evil place of ill-repute known to man before being hooded and tossed into the arena to be slain by gladiators. As luck would have it, JUST before he is about to be pushed out into the arena, a bunch of slave girls he met, tied up (and possibly schtupped) earlier in the book turn up. They replace his blinding helmet with one with some holes in they give him a sword. Out he goes and starts killing the other gladiators with gay abandon - stab stab stabbity stab - grrrr! Villain does not like the thwarting! so sends in more gladiators. Crowd goes "Boo! Hiss! That's not fair!". Suddenly Hero is not alone on the sand facing a gazzillion men. Whassifasicus the masked gladiator is there too and they start massacring gladiators by the hundred... then they are joined by another couple of minor characters who for unspecified reason (maybe they fancy him) realised they want to die at the side of our hero and the slaughtering goes on for a few more pages before our hero has to rush off and win the last big bird race because that will so incense the population they will rise and throw off the yolk of tyranny for a few minutes before putting it back on again with Whassifasicus in the driving seat. And suddenly we're in the last act of Rollerball (the original not the remake)... and with a single bound!

And the people revolt and some people commit suicide and others get slaved and the old Poo Bah Wassifacicus is back and just about every minor character the hero has bumped up against turns out to have been working for the good aliens or their surrogates all along and the hero's girlfriend wasn't sold to evil slave-traders from the evelist evil place of ill-repute at all but sold instead to yet another agent and set free only to decide she liked being enslaved by our hero after all and they lived happily for a bit till the next book.

It's Janet and John do sado-mashocism.

It's shite.

Leigh Bracket could have done the whole thing as a short story in Planet Stories and been far more entertaining.

 

[Contrarius]

I read a fraction of one of these books once and ended up hurling it with great force. But I love your summary!

 

[JunkMonkey]

What horrifies me is, that by all accounts, I read one of the better ones!

 

[pogopossum]

Yeah. As JM says,They're absolutely shite. At every level.

Contrarius' post reminds me of the old comment. (She was probably quoting.)
"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force". - Dorothy Parker

Years ago I hosted a session at work (public library) with Barry Longyear. He was not well known so we of course salted the audience with staff from our other 25 branches.
After he talked about his background for a while, an outspoken colleague said that she would like to try SF, but that she couldn't get past the scantily clad women on the pb covers.
Longyear said (as well as I remember) that of course that content did not describe most SF, or even (many? most?) of the covers. But that you had to be very popular to have any say as to what went on them. Most often even the editors were out of the loop. It was the sales department that chose what went there.
"And there was this very popular series called GOR - - -"

 

[Windshadow]

I enjoyed Longyear's enemy mine and his Circus world stories but I can’t recall much else that he has written. Is he still active?

 

[pogopossum]

^He seems to not have published anything new since 2013. He would be 80 now. A couple of his (more) recent books were mysteries. Here's a summary bibliography. LINK and his web page. LINK2

When I met him his latest book (collection) was It Came from Schenectady whch was his answer to the old question, "Where do you get your ideas?" He elaborated that there was this mail service there that he subscribed to. I think that it took a moment for some of the audience to get the joke.