I’m planning on sending my husband’s small collection (I think it’s the first 8 books) of Gor novels to a friend who is unfamiliar with them.
Did I mischaracterize or malign John Norman by calling the Gor novels “soft porn”? I read the first half of the first book (and saw some of the covers of the others) and thought it seemed like thinly, very thinly, disguised erotica (and I’ve got nothing against erotica, thinly disguised or no), but maybe there’s a whole heap of plot and characterization that comes later or that I missed already?
No so much “porn” as the novels are actually pretty chaste when it comes to talking about sex. The porn part to the extent you want to consider it “porn” is the endless, and ultimately tedious philosophical wanking on how good (Gorean) women really want to be slaves and need a good, strong master to guide them. There’s also a lot of discussion on binding techniques and guides to properly enslaving a woman. The most explicit the novels ever got would be considered downright prudish by romance novel standards.
Woven through the enslaving meme there are a few decent adventure stories being told, but I don’t think it’s going to be any woman’s cup of tea unless she enjoys submission fantasies as women are largely chattel in the Gorean universe.
You might also want to see about the value of the books before shipping them. The Gor books were out of print for some time and IIRC some of them (even the paperbacks) are quite valuable as collector’s items
No, they are not porn. I read them in the 70s as a teenager. They have good plotting for the action part of the narrative. The sex stuff is endlessly tiring. Even as a teenager I thought it was bad sex writing. For good sex writing back in the 70s I used to sneak a few passages from The Godfather (yes, by Mario Puzo) that someone had given to my Mom that she never opened. Now that had porn.
A lot of sex takes place, but only inferentially. The books do suggest over and over that most women secretly (or not so secretly) really want to be dominated.
As I recall the first half dozen or so Gor novels are pretty respectable as far as mass market fantasy goes, with the domination stuff unobtrusive. It was the later ones where he really went off the rails with it.
Send your friend a copy of Imaginative Sex by Norman. I suspected it’s the Gor plots he never got a chance to use.
I never got into the Gor books after the first couple. I’ve read Otis Adelbert Kline, so I already had my re-tread Burroughs. So I never read the “sexier” Gor books.
At MIT, MITSFS put on a skit one year: Buckets of Gor; or Abbott and Costelo Meet the Priest-Kings
Yes, the first eight or so novels were mostly adventure stuff (Priest Kings being my favorite). It wasn’t until they hit double digits that he started going really deeply into the slavery thing. And it was never sexually explicit.
The first dozen or so are pretty easy to find in used book stores, but the later ones are really rare (I think there are about 26 all together). So I doubt that your collection has a lot of monetary value, unless they are pristine first editions. By the way, I don’t think they were *ever *published in hardcover.
One more question regarding this series. I thought my husband had the first 8 books, but so far I’ve found 5 of the first 9 on the bookshelves. Can they still be read without all the missing books filled in?
IIRC, yes they might as well be read in any order, or no particular order, and gaps don’t really much matter. Also IIRC, there would occasionally be a passing reference to a plot point from an earlier story, but that happened in Bobbsey Twins books, too, and no one ever tried to argue against those being stand-alones.
BTW, the priest-kings are not really much like the Dalai Lama.
The first book is a good fantasy book read. Norman knew he had to keep the bondage issues relatively low-profile to sell the first book. Books 2 and 3 are not bad reads, though the direction of the bondage issue becomes more ovbious. Book 4 (Nomads) was both the best book of the series (it’s actually interesting seeing where he goes with his stylized nomadic peoples) and the worst of the series to that point (he takes the wrapping paper off and simply gets to the heart of the bondage issue). Books 5 and 6 were more of the same as 4, with pretty decent plots going on.
The whole thing went totally South starting with Book 7 (Captive), which is the first book not dealing with Tarl Cabot, the main protagonist. From that point forward, the plot-line of the books (the struggle of the Priest-Kings against the Kurii, and the efforts of Tarl Cabot to find his ex-“wife” from the first book, modified by his efforts on behalf of the Priest-Kings) takes back seat to the various philosophical wanderings by the author through the concept of sex and bondage, as applied to the “proper” role of men and women in life. As a teen in the 70s, I was hooked on the first books (both because of the plots and because of the implied sex). I simply gave up buying the books after about #12, though I seem to recall having read 13-16 either by borrowing or reading in the bookstore. I simply got tired of the message, and impatient with the plots, which never seemed to be headed towards any resolution of the underlying themes.
“John Norman”, btw, is a professor of Philosophy at Queens College, CUNY.
I read the first Gor novel as part of a class where I was required to read some science fiction with gender roles and interpret it through anthropological theories. I really wouldn’t describe the first book as being soft porn or erotica though looking at the cover of my copy of the book you’d certainly think that’s what it was. If I were a 12 year old boy I think I would have enjoyed the book a whole lot more.
I had no desire to read any other Gor novel after the first one.
Did he move? When I read the first few, at the time they came out, I thought he was somewhere in Pennsylvania. I would have remembered Queens college since I was born quite close to it.
I made it through the first five or so and gave up out of boredom. OTOH, a friend of my wife’s (female) loved them - at least she did before she got married, I don’t know about now.
In one of the Dray Prescott books, an early one, there is an aside about wiping out the kingdom of Gah because they were so obnoxious.
It’s funny that no one else saw these as quite as sexualized as I did, which makes me think that I was reading a hell of a lot more into it than intended. Plus, I know I was surprised since my husband tended to grumble when books had much in the way of sex in them.
MITSFS didn’t do drama when I was President and Skinner!