Wow! You summed up my experience with the series perfectly!
I really liked Nomads.
After Raiders it just got majorly weird and tedious.
I cut my teeth on ERB (Edgar Rice Burroughs) and the first handfull of the Gor novels had a lot of the same feel. I lost interest after about number 10. Later, I actually re-read some of them – the first five translated into Spanish and published in Argentina. Bondage and the vos form. You have to have a strong stomach.
Well, aren’t WE special?
Norman had to have SOMETHING going on, after all, his series ran to 25 books. Granted, you don’t have to be a GREAT writer to create a popular series, but you do have to have SOMETHING going on. I think Norman hit on a good formula that no one has yet been able to imitate. A better writer could go a lot farther with the same kind of stories.
And of course, there was the one written for the youth market: Harry Potter and the Wizards of Gor.
Sex sells.
I remember a boxed set of the first few Gor novels. It got passed amoung my friends and I, alway with the same ominous warning: “Here, you can keep these, I bet that you can’t get rid of them”.
The challenge was to find somone who had no prior knowledge of Gor, and get them to take them off of you. They were then stuck with the horrid things untill they found some other “sucker”
If that’s so, why didn’t Randy Andy Offut and Philip Jose Farmer do a lot better? Are they worse writers than John Norman?
Then this is gonna unmake your day – a few cut and pastes from Ebay
GOR (19) JOHN NORMAN (KAJIRA OF GOR ) 1ST HTF Item number: 6926287996
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Kajira Of Gor (#19) By John Norman (FIRST) Item number: 6926347499
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Gor Saga, Vol 1-25, John Norman, sci-fi fantasy series Item number: 6926442668
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Some of those Gor novels have stood up rather well in terms of value. Course with people like you just dumping them, it’s easy to see why they might be a little hard to get nowadays.
Philip Jose Farmer hasn’t done well? What World of Tiers are you living in? And his Essex House erotic books are still in print.
Not familiar with Offut, but if he’s not doing well – well, it’s possible to write bad porn, too.
Sex sells. Especially if it’s not directly sold as that, to an unsuspecting audience. I figure the Gr books slipped in under the radar.
Insert-barfing-smiley-here
Yes, well, I may not know much about bondage, but I would up flipping through one of the later off the rails books and the sex seems to be all of the “I’ll rape you till you love me” variety. Serious ick.