I realise there’s been at least one other thread on them but Gor is one letter too short for the search engine.
So yes, Gor. I read the first and three quarters of the second books in the series. Apparantly these are the best and the series actually goes down in quality! It’s only marginally better than The Eye of Argon and thematically is a Mary Sue ripoff of Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars novels. I can’t for the life of me see how it got any sort of popularity beyond no-smiling-contests at science fiction conventions. Why would anyone pick this series to base their lifestyle off? That’s not a rhetorical question by the way, I’m really curious!
I also think that if my girlfriend was somehow magically whisked away to Gor she’d start kicking butt and taking names post-haste .
I think it would have to be for the post-structuralist cultural critique and reassessment of contemporary gender roles inherent in the Gorean socio-political gestalt.
I know that there was a movie made based on the first novel, “A Tarnsman of Gor” (or whatever the title was) starring Oliver Reed. I never bothered to watch it, as the books were such a pile of mysoginistic trash that seeing it on screen would be an abomination. Has anyone out there ever seen the movie?
I read the first one, many years ago, decided it was third-rate pseudo-Burroughs, and never read another one.
Evidently after the first six or so, Norman started getting deeply into the S&M Master/Slave, Woman-as-a Sexual-Object stuff, but I never read these. That’s the stuff that apparently tickled a lot of people’s fancies.
I did read his book Imaginative Sex, and found the fantasies slanted that way. Not exactly my cup of tea.
There was a movie called “Outlaw of Gor”, which featured as an episode of MST3K. I’d rate it as “hysterically awful”. Jack Palance played an evil priest. I get the impression he didn’t give a rat’s ass about the movie so he just played the character as his usual cowboy type. Nothing quite like seeing the high priest of a religion in a fantasy world grimace at the evil queen and tell her she’s “acting like a bitch in heat”.
That episode also had my favorite mst3k parody song, “Boobular Tubular”, a sort Rogers & Hammerstein/vaudeville-ish ditty about the movie having too much skin. Quite catchy, actually.
Now, c’mon, if you really want to get into the master/slavegirl stuff big time, you have to start at Book 7 or after, where Norman really let 'er rip.
As for why the Gor novels were so popular … and Wollheim claimed they were more popular than all the other fantasy series he published* combined * … it’s because they were a very ingenious combination of sword and sandal adventures and soft-core bondage porn, with a nice frisson of SF thrown in to gloss over the total irrationality of the series. Norman’s interest in ethnology makes his Goreans more interesting and believable as a culture than he is generally credited for, and indeed may account partially for why his books are the basis of a lifestyle, unlike, say, just about every other SF book ever written.
By having his sex slavery incidents often occur as a natural part of the story, hardly interrupting the plot, he was able to keep fantasy readers on track, and that same technique kept erotica readers slogging through some pretty slow plotlines.
That said, Norman could on occasion write some crisp narrative and descriptive prose. Dialogue was a definite weakness for him though, and his anti-feminist rants, often preceding one of his rare full-blown sex scenes, were really thick and dull and repetitive. Fortunately, they only consisted of 4 pages or so and you can smell 'em coming and skip right over to them to the sex if you like. And I like.
Glad I could answer your question about the books.
*Tarnsman of Gor * - B
*PriestKings of Gor * - B+
*Outlaw of Gor * - C
*Nomads of Gor * - A
*Raiders of Gor * - B+
After Raiders the series seriously started to go downhill for me. I managed to slog through the next 4 books, maybe, then gave up in disgust. But Nomads is an excellent travel book. Interesting, action-filled, and you don’t mind throwing it away at the end of the trip!
So sorry…can I get you some bleach for your brain?
I read several - they were in the library cart when I was in traction and had nothing better to read :smack: WHY oh why didn’t I jsut stay whacked on morphine
and this is coming from someone who once was more or less a dom…had a BF who liked pain…
I read the thread title and thought, “Wow, on purpose?”
Who allowed those books to come into existence, anyway? A deep appreciation of the D/s lifestyle should not subvert one’s need for quality prose, people!
I have read a few since I like both S&M and SciFi/Fantasy.
Gor: The erotica isn’t very Erotic, the SciFi isn’t very scientific, the Fantasy isn’t very Fantastic, and the Adventure is stillted in poor prose and dull plots.
I might get a sexual submissive partner to read one as punishment some day;), but only if she is very very naughty.
Funny you should say that. About thirty years ago the folks at the MIT Science Fiction Society (MITSFS) put on a skit entitled Buckets of Gor; or Abbott and Costello Meet the Priest-Kings
For years I was convinced that Sharon Green was a not-very-well disguised John Norman.
Unfortunately, she is apparently an independent entity. Then I was all offended that she would ‘betray’ her gender in that fashion (I was eighteen, teenagers can Be Like That). Now, I just think she’s pathetic.
Of particular note are her Terrilian series, and Jalav, Amazon Warrior series. Where the second is concerned, just the series title ought to tell you how truly awful it is.
I read a couple of them out of the high hopes that there was an actual plot purpose behind the dominance/submission line, but apparently not.
LOL, I have a friend who is an author, and he actually went on a few dates with her back in the 70s…he was boggled by her, as apparently she believed at the time that it wasnt a good date if someone wasnt bleeding at the end of it :smack:
Jalav series, apparent plotline [ also on teh library cart, amazing what you will read when you are in traction and have nothing else to do=)] First book is typical, tribe of amazons, she is the war leader. they basically kidnap men found in teh forrest hunting or traveling, shag the hell out of them and either let them go or keep a few around as sex slaves. If they have to trade with the local villagers, they shag the local village leader as sort of a contract handshack. She ends up having to go to a local city for something that was stolen from them, and they all get turned into mens sex toys, and end up excaping. Next book [there were more, but i couldnt get through teh second one…] we find out that in one city there is a woman shortage because all their women were killed when they turned on an ancient machine and it blew their minds and killed the females. The item that got stolen in the first book was a giant crystal used in this machine. Their goddess Mida actually is an acronym for Minds in Darkness Aware…and was some sort of interstellar communications device, the planet is a lost colony…
About then I lost it, not even good sex, and cheesy SF to boot…
You may want to check out the Silistra series by Janet Morris. There are some reviews here. They can be hard to find, but I do have the entire set.
The series is very lurid and the Dom/Sub sex scenes occasionally include homosexual rape and are generally told from the victims POV. My first girlfriend (in high school) was really into these books… years later I saw them on a shelf in a used bookstore and bought them out of nostalgia.
It was hard to read them all… the “heroine” is at one moment heroic, and at the next moment completely depressing.
But then, I guess if you can make it through both of Stephen R. Donaldson’s series, then Morris’ will be a breeze.
