I’m a big fan of John Norman’s Gor novels, so I thought I’d share why I think they’re so good. I’ve written an article on the topic. Here’s the opener:
Here’s a link to the article: it’s work safe, but be warned, other pages on my site are not.
Some people apparently do not think so highly of the Gor novels – well, there is no disputing tastes, but sometimes it’s fun to do so anyway.
I enjoyed the first 3 or 4 as escapist entertainment then they got boring.
Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, Card, Sturgeon are all better.
Dl Timgar
I found the stories pretty engaging, but the constant bondage theme (which I didn’t know about when I bought the first couple of books, but by then was hooked) I could do without. I always wondered if there was going to be some resolution on the assassin (whose name I don’t recall). Did he really get perish? Whatever happened to the Priest-Kings after their internal “problems?” And the Kur (Kuri? Kurii?), they had potential for having a larger role than they did in the later novels.
On another comment, another Cheri Caffaro fan? There was supposed to be another “Ginger” movie, “The Girl Machine,” but it never came about.
I wouldn’t call Norman an SF writer like Heinlein. The more direct comparison would be between Norman and Robert E. Howard or Edgar Rice Burroughs. A lot of people think Gor was modelled on Burroughs’ Barsoom, but I don’t know that I’d agree with that. In any event, Norman had flaws, like Burroughs. He wasn’t as good a fantasy adventure writer as Howard (but then, who is?) but he handled sexual relationship a lot better than Howard did – which is to say, he handled them.
IIRC, the assassin was Tarl Cabot, who had changed his name when he joined the assassin’s guild. He changed it back later on and went on to hang with other Goreans, eventually becoming Bosk of Port Kar for a long time. Basically, his travels gave him plenty of opportunity to meet new people, kill some of them, and pick up and discard slavegirls.
The Preist-Kings were very nearly wiped out in their troubles and I believe it came down to one queen egg which Tarl Cabot helped preserve, ensuring a new generation of preist-kings to protect Gor and Earth from the Kurii.
The Kurii had a big role in Beasts of Gor, but in later novels they were more or less discarded in favor of internecine squabbling among the big city confederations around Ar. I liked the Kurii but dramatically they were kind of a dead end, as the only use they had for humans was as food.
I wish they’d made it, those Ginger movies were WAAAAAY ahead of their time. I wrote to their present distributors and got permission to run the caps with the story about them. They’ve recently reissued the Ginger movies on DVDs, though I don’t think they had a lot of extras.
I enjoyed the first five or so, however his obsession with the bondage theme and the “breaking” of a slave girl very much weakened the books for me. They got considerably worse as they went on. Had he kept to the fantasy theme, I would have enjoyed the books far more.
I can only echo Khadaji. I found the first 5 or 6 quite good, but his sexual themes became overbearing. And I never thought I’d complain about things like that. I stopped reading them decades ago.
When the whole bondage/slave thing became the main theme, I lost interest. The first few were unimaginative, if readable, Barsoom pastiches. The Sword of Truth series went down the same toilet.
To be honest, I felt that it had started in that toilet. I read the first and thought it terrible and only read the second because I was told “it gets better.” It never did for me.
You probably got bumped by “Captive of Gor” the sixth of seventh book in the series. Up until that one, Norman had been published by Ballantine Books, and Betty Ballantine kept him on a short leash wrt the bondage content of his novels. On “Captive” he was published by DAW books and took full advantage of the new editorial freedom and write a book from the viewpoint of the slavegirl, full of bondage stuff.
Most of his novels, however, are written from a male POV and have considerably less bondage content, though still a lot of it. (For the record, Captive is one of my faves.) Beasts of Gor and Explorers of Gor were fairly strong adventure stories, and there are a few others I can’t recall offhand. But the price of old Gor novels has been driven up by members of the Gorean subculture, so they can be hard to find at reasonable prices.
Sword of Truth series? I’m not familiar with it. Should I be? We talkin’ slavegirls and swordplay?
Ummmm, no.
BTW, another random thought. . .
I could have sworn I came across a first edition of one of the early “Gor” novels some years ago, and saw that the author’s name (John Frederick Lange, IRL) on the cover was “John Savage” instead of “John Norman.” Can anyone verify that or was it a dream? Also, did anyone else (other than Lange) write any of the “Gor” novels using the “John Norman” name, or did he write them all (in the same way that some of the “Doc Savage” novels authored by “Kenneth Robeson” weren’t written by Lester Dent)?
Sword of Truth there is some SAVAGE bondage in SoT. There is also multiple rape attempts throughout the book (though somehow the main female lead always manages to get out of it) Funny considering the male lead Richard is raped and damaged by it but she always excapes. Frankly though if you’re interesting in the psychology of bondage this does a great job of it.
Excellent series though it’s turned into a Robert Jordan style extend the series for as long as possible even if you ran out of things to say.
Oh just to clarify Richard is raped by a Female Dom. 
The sex isn’t too explicit the torture is though.
Self-designated Gor expert checking in…
That was Pa-Kur, the Master Assassin (not to be confused with Kuurus, Tarl Cabot’s assumed identity in “Assassin of Gor”. No, it was never resolved what had become of Pa-Kur. There are a few clues. In “Nomads” (“of Gor” elided hereafter) Elizabeth Cardwell recalls being interviewed on Earth in the presence of a man who bears some resemblance to Pa-Kur. In “Assassin”, Tarl takes a look at the place from which Pa-Kur made his final leap and concludes that escape would have been theoretically possible. Otherwise, no. Tarl raves “Pa-Kur is alive!” during a fever-dream (in either “Hunter” or “Marauders”, I forget which) but, unless there is a reference somewhere in the few books in the series I haven’t read, there is no further reference to Pa-Kur.
“Captive” is volume seven and, as you say, the first non-Tarl Cabot-narrated Gor story. Tarl is given the slave name of “Bosk” (“Ox”, more or less) in “Raiders” and, ashamed of himself, stubbornly calls himself nothing else until “Marauders”, even after regaining his freedom. “Captive”, “Slave Girl”, “Kajira” and “Dancer” are all one-offs through one pair of female eyes or another. “Fighting Slave”, “Rogue” and “Guardsman” trace the career of another Earthman, Jason Marshall, taken to Gor as a slave after getting mixed up in the abduction of his girlfriend and then growing to Gorean manhood.
For adventure stories, I’d go to “Nomads”, “Assassin”, “Marauders” and “Players”, although “Beasts” has its moments. “Explorers” could have done with some proper editing IMHO.
My money is on a dream. For a while I wondered if “John Norman” was actually Michael Crichton - don’t laugh, that was down to a book I saw that had “John Lange” as a pen-name for MC. I know better now. John Frederick Lange is an Ivy League phil professor who wrote the Gor books in his spare time. There was a widely-held supposition that Lange had contracted out the writing on the Jason Marshall trilogy (see above) but I understand that this is not in fact the case.
The power of the Priest-Kings was greatly reduced in “Priest-Kings” when they waged a civil war. Thanks to Tarl’s efforts in recovering the last queen egg (“Nomads”), however, the future of the species was assured. They are still active in the later books, by implication: the ship that carries Elinor Brinton to Gor (“Captive”) is shot down by a PK patrol vessel, and the crashed ship is examined by a Priest-King. In a still later book, a traveller reports having seen what is evidently the dead body of the only male Priest-King floating on the sea. This suggests to Tarl that the (insectoid) queen’s Nuptial Flight has taken place, as there is an evasive allusion in “Assassin” that “there is never a Father of the Nest” - so we can assume that the male dies after mating, and there is a fertilised queen laying fresh eggs.
As to the Kurii (singular: Kur. Odd way to pluralise, but there you have it), they made a few efforts in “Marauders”, “Tribesmen” and “Beasts”, but after that presumably the political faction behind these efforts lost power. What they have to do with the political machinations later in the series, and the war between Cos and Ar, is still up in the air AFAIK. Talena, once Tarl’s mate, is deep in all of this, but that’s not to say she may not herself be a pawn.
There were no new books for many years after Volume 25, “Magicians of Gor” (n.b. - there are no real magicians on Gor. There are, however, stage illusionists, and one plays a part in the book) as Norman was finding it hard to get edited or published. He writes bitterly, and at length, with many semicolons and much highly-coloured rhetoric, as to the feminist influence on the world of literature, and he may be right. However, a new company, World of Gor, apparently inspired by the
has reprinted the earlier books and also published Volume 26, “Witness of Gor”. Apparently there is a Volume 27 (“Prize of Gor”) in the pipeline - so the same faction that made used Gor books scarce and expensive may have brought about a revival in the author’s fortunes and made new Gor books available.
Interested parties may check out this site. Respect and moderation is advised.
Thanks for the informative post. Everything you’ve written pretty much squares with what I know of the Gor novels. I know the Gor novels was being reprinted at one time by an outfit called Masquerade Books, a publisher primarily known for bondage stuff, and there was a Gor comic book in the works at one time.
What I can’t figure out is why Gor novels aren’t the rage in Japan. From what I’ve seen of Japanese adult anime (and I’ve seen a lot) bondage scenes are as commonplace in straight porn as lesbian scenes are in American straight porn. Norman ought to considered an extra-national treasure over there. You have any info on that?
I found the novels to be gyrogorphotor-riffic! In an articulated way.
Peace.
Evil Captor, I don’t know offhand how big Gor is in Japan. I know by reputation of a number of Japanese “online Goreans” (if anyone wants to ask what the quoted phrase means, I’ll explain).
OTOH, perhaps Gor would have gone down bigger in Japan if the Kurii had tentacles 