An Attempted Justification of John Norman's Writing and/or Existence.

First off - Gor is not meant to be the height of intellectual reading. It's meant to be cheap, trashy fun, read for inspiration and cheap thrills by those whose tastes include dom/sub roleplaying, or who are just mildly titilated by the whole idea. So give it a break.

As far as I'm concerned, the reason the books stand out above all the other crap sci-fi/fantasy (I'd classify them as fantasy, but he keeps sticking in aliens) series' that are available is the inherent crapness of the writing style. The second distinguishing feature being the bizarre attitute every single character has towards women. This is a little more difficult to overlook. I like to think I continue to buy and read these books in a sort of horrified fascination, and there is definatly something very comforting about the fact that these books can be published in the first place, then printed and reprinted, when they are so techically inept. Right, that's my excuses out of the way...

We'll come back to the negative points in a second... Gor does fulfill a very specific role. Dom/sub lifestyles and interests are a (relatively speaking) small and often dismissed minority. Although, insofar as alternative sexual practises go, it's fairly well represented in porn/erotica, Gor does provide a highly detailed world with a harmonised, ritualised system of slavery. There is variation within the world itself; over the course of the series all the different aspects and areas of Gorean life are explored, at least to a satisfactory depth, at some point. It provides an easy starting point for a person to create their own system, and ideas for maintaining it and keeping it interesting. Also, for those who are a little more squeamish about buying actual porn, Gor does manage to be quite risqu� without being completely obvious. As a result, if you know what you're looking for, you can find the damn things everywhere. I bought my copy of Tarnsman in Waterstones, and most of the others have come from high street bookshops.

Although, having said all that, it is possible to approach the books simply as literature. In Tarnsman of Gor, the first book in the series, there is only one slavegirl, who appears and disapears fairly quickly. And, in fact, keeps her clothes on. There is still the undercurrent of male domination to female subservience, but in this case it could justifiably be called an undercurrent. Also it's consensual submission, and slightly more believable, given the pairing of upper-class Gorean woman with half-Gorean warrior. The post-wedding Tarn flight over the city has a lot more power than the later books' long, involved explanations could ever hope to achieve. In fact, the first few books, which feature the Priest-Kings to a greater extent, are quite reminiscent of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian series.

Some people (in fact, I think one of them might have been me...) have said that it was a shame Norman didn't continue to steal from Burroughs, as it is only after he settles into his own style that the books start to become quite painful to read. The first thing to be taken into account is the structure and grammar. Which is, to put it mildly, terrible. I've tried to count the number of semi-colons in a sentence and lost count entirely. Twice. But, to be fair to me, the sentence did last over a page and a half. The dialogue is completely unrealistic and impossible to picture (one shining example being the oft-used exchange "I love you!" "I, too, love you!"), the sex scenes are very strange, described with a mix of discretion and explicitness which often makes it very difficult to work out what's actually going on. The attention to detail is, at times, overdone to the point of tedium (see later works of Mervyn Peake for another example of same, but without the slave girls), for example, dedicating a good two pages to the various knots used to tie slave girls, and the exact meaning, inference and symbolism of every loop of cord. The implied meanings of the different slave brands are another favourite.

But then, despite the initial laughableness of Norman's writing generally, something to take into account with the Gor books, is that they are supposed to have been translated from Gorean into English. And at times, after you've read far too much Gor at one go, and are possibly not in the best of health and in need of some sleep, you start to have thoughts along the lines of: "what if it really is all real? What if it really was just badly translated?" It's the consistancy in the bizarre little grammatical bits that really gets to me. In fact, at times, it reminds me of trying to make sense of Middle English.

Of course, the problem with that (faintly disturbing) theory is that Norman's non-Gorean works are written in a similar style...

The second thing that is really really wrong with the Gorean books is their treatment of women. Not that I've got anything against the whole dom/sub thing generally, it'd be a dull world if we were all into the same thing and I've got nothing but respect (and slight fear, but that's my problem) for those who would explore their own desires to that extent.

Right, disclaimer over. What's really offensive about the Gorean depiction of women is the basic message, repeated over and over again, that all women are submissive, and all men are dominant. Which isn't the case, no matter how many times Norman quotes statistics to show that all men who don't rape at least three wenches a week die young.

It's not even implied. It's blatantly stated at great length. Every book. With constant reference to all the diseased, unhappy men of Earth, who are so foolish as to allow thier women to rule them.

I wouldn't even mind that so much, if he'd stuck to dealing with Gorean society. The number of times the basic plot of 'Earth woman is captured by Gorean slavers, brought to Gor, and discovers how much she loves being a slave' is used is quite shocking. For Fighting Slave it was subtly altered to 'Earth man is captured by Gorean slavers, brought to Gor, escapes, and discovers how much he loves being a master.'

And the most irritating part of all this self-justification is the use of the basic 'I'm right and you're wrong' argument used by any small-minded individual trying to dismiss all other sexual practises than his own :- "Anything different is unnatural." No, it bloody isn't. What's natural for one person, urge-wise, is not going to be natural for a sizeable proportion of the rest of the population. Because (get this...) not everyone gets their ya-yas from the same things. If you really want to live naturally, go sit in a tree and eat raw squirrel. And even then you'll probably get turfed out the next time someone wants to build a bypass. Humanity has progressed beyond the natural. Well, some of it has...

And then there are the actual characters themselves. Of which there are two. The man and the woman. Norman has obviously chosen to deomstrate his belief that we're all exactly the same as every other member of our gender by practical application. Which does get a bit dull after a while. To demonstrate my point I will now bore you rigid with some examples.

From Guardsman of Gor, from the POV of Jason Marshall:

She looked at me, angrily. "I am a captain's woman," she said.

You are a mere slave," I said," who must crawl to any man."

No!" she said.

"Are you haughty?" I asked.

"If you like," she said.

I turned from her, to search for oiled cloth and wax, something, anything, with which to make a sealed packet.

I heard wood and glass suddenly move, as she scrambled across the cabin floor, on her hands and knees, toward the leaden sheets.

With a cry of rage I spun about and smote down with the whip. The stroke caught her across the back and buttocks and struck her to her stomach on the floor, amidst the wood and glass. Her extended hand was a foot from the leaden sheets. It had not occurred to me that she would attempt to reach the leaden sheets. Apparently she did not yet know who owned her.

From Renegades of Gor, from the POV of Tarl Cabot:

"We are waiting for a caller," I said.

"Who?" she asked, apprehensively.

"Surely you have not forgotten," I said. "He was to have been along in a few Ehn. I expect him in a bit, the assaults now having abated."

"If she is to be me," said Lady Publia, suddenly, frightened, looking at Lady Claudia, wearing her former rags, veil and scarf, "what then is to be my role in this farce?"

While we were talking I had taken the cloth which Lady Claudia had brought from the side earlier, that which she had cut from the tunic of one of the guards, and had been tearing it here and there, and working with it.

"Can you not guess?" I asked.

"No!" she cried. "No!"

"Perhaps," I said. I was now wadding one of the peices of cloth into a tight ball.

"Are you not a Cosian?" she asked.

"No," I said.

"What is your city?" she asked, frightened.

"Port Kar," I said.

She suddenly turned white.

Spot the difference. And for your further enjoyment... From Dancer of Gor, from the POV of Doreen Williamson.

"What do you think, Teibar?" I heard.

I again almost fainted that Teibar, my master, he who had come to reclaim me, was near.

Then I feared, terribly, that he might more desire Ila than me. A wave of sudden terrible hatred swept over me. I wanted suddenly to leap up, screaming, and run at her, like a raging cat, to scratch out her eyes, to tear every last strand of that long, silky blond hair out of her head! Then I was frightened. I remained exactly in place. I did not move. I could be terribly punished, perhaps even totured and killed, if I, a mere property, seriously injured, or diminished the value of, another property. Short of such things, though, we could do much what we wanted to one another, and Ila was larger and stronger than I! I felt helpless.

But there had been no response to the man's question.

From Kajira of Gor, from the POV of Tiffany Collins.

I was startled. I realized, suddenly, that these two women, indeed, were begging for love. "Beg elsewhere, sluts!" I thought. "Leave Drusus Rencius alone!" And how offensive that a woman should beg for love! Surely her intimate, desperate needs for attention, for affection and love were better concealed even from herself, if possible, and certainly, at least, from others! And if they must beg, the helpless sluts, did they not know how a woman begs, by looks, by glances, by small, hopeful services. Surely a woman should not be expected to speak honestly in such matters. What brute would force her to such extremities? Too, how vulnerable a woman would make herself, placing herself so at the mercy of men, subject to being spurned, subject to his scorn and rejection. Yet how simple, how straightforward amd liberating might be such a confession. How beautiful it might be to so express one's vulnerabilty, and femininity, so tenderly, so piteously, so openly. To be sure, one would expect such a confession only from a woman whose needs were both desperate and deep, a woman who had needs such as might characterise slaves.

(Sorry about those, it's difficult to find useable examples in the books from a female POV, as they tend to suffer from bloated paragraphs)

Another point about these Earth women - they're all virgins. Now this may possibly be just the books showing their age slightly, but even then I doubt every woman in the world was terrified by the thought of men, and kept themselves locked in mental chastity belts. None of Norman's slave girls seem to have a clue what an orgasm is until they're taken in the arms of strong masters. And even then they are tormented by said masters by being left in cells with no men, but with their hands untied, and they can't figure out what to do about it. It's simply a case of assuming that no 'natural' (submissive) sex = no sex at all. Which is self-evidently crap, and not just for Norman's version of natural sex, either.

Also, when you consider the central concept, it's all a bit sick, really. Now, maybe I'm taking the whole thing a bit too seriously here, but as far as slavery is concerned, what is being described in these books isn't an innocent game between consenting adults (although the concept of free companionship as it was in the early books pretty much is), it's ritualised, socially acceptable, legitimised slavery. The removal of a person's human rights. Which isn't kinky or exciting, but a horrible, depraved, inhumane concept, which doesn't deserve to be glorified in this fashion.

But, of course, it's all okay, because all women want to be reduced to the status of animals. Imagine the books had been written from a racial standpoint rather than that of gender, and Norman had claimed that all black people were naturally inferior to white people and wanted to be made into slaves. I doubt the books would have had quite the same following.

Another point to be made about Norman's rather bizarre view of the world is his grasp (or lack thereof) of the theory of natural selection. He uses this theory to explain why Gorean women are so much more beautiful than Earth women. According to him, on Gor, beauty is naturally selected for, because men only want to mate with the most beautiful women.

Now, firstly, the theory of natural selection is just that - a theory. Besides, Norman's research doesn't seem to have progressed much beyond Darwin's original version of the theory of evoloution; and there's enough people around who don't agree with any version of said theory, who've all been quite effectively alienated right from the start.

Secondly, the process of sexual reproduction promotes variation, not the other way around. The only way natural selection will have a significant effect on the population of a species is if a trait develops that gives a proportion of the population an advantage over the rest. Slight variation, such as Norman is describing, will have a negligable effect; except possibly in a situation where there was a vast imbalance in the ratio of male to female. Which is never suggested in any of the books, and would signify something was very wrong with the species, anyway.

Also, Norman has rather shot himself in the foot where this theory is concerned, by having all the most beautiful women enslaved, whereupon they are forced to drink slave wine (the Gorean equivalent of the pill - very neat, as it's effects are permanent, but can be reversed if you drink a releaser), and I didn't get the impression that they bothered to breed their slaves very often.

Besides, beauty cannot be naturaly selected for because Norman has again forgotten to take into account individual tastes. The preference may be for a general body type, but that would hardly be true in all cases. Anyway, people take what they can get. Especially if you live in the wastes of Torvaldsland and end up enslaving your next door neighbour's daughter for generations at a time.

Of course, Gor is simply a fantasy world (literally), and therefore the explanations for it's characteristics are not meant to be scientifically valid or deeply meaningful, they're just tacked on excuses for why Gor has ended up the way it is. Personally I think Norman would have made it much easier for himself if he hadn't have included Earth at all. Or made Gor into an alterate future. That way he could have neatly sidestepped some of the more problematic issues (Why do the Priest-Kings continue to bring Earth people to Gor when there's already a sizeable breeding population in residence? Why do neither Priest-Kings or Kurii show the slightest bit of interest in Earth, except to occasionally pinch people?) and some of the more cringeworthy moments (the characterisation of any Earth women). Then he could have developed Gor as it's own world, as opposed to constantly feeling the need to compare it to Earth, thereby simply highlighting the inherant flaws in the system.

There were some things about Gor itself that I really enjoyed and would have liked to have seen continued. The Priest-Kings, for example, over the course of maybe four books, went from all-powerful God-like beings who ruled the planet with a merciless rod of flaming death (which was cool) to a dying race being menaced by a load of giant teddy-bears with claws.

And what did happen to the flame death? Surely the minute Tarl Cabot renounced the Priest-Kings he should have been struck down dead...?

Having said that, both Priest-Kings and Kurii are nicely drawn-out races. Norman has taken obvious pains to describe them as being genuinely alien in their mannerisms, attitutes and communication; and they do come across as much stranger and more difficult to understand than the vast majority of alien species you come across (not naming any names, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye with aliens that were, if anything, disconcertingly human).

Having said (ranted) all that, I do still buy and read the books. And I don't know why. As I said, I like to thnk it's in horrified fascination, but maybe beneath all the hideous grammar and structuring, unsubtle and constantly repeated moral messages of questionable (at best) value, dull, repetitive characterisation and all the humour of dry anal penetration; Norman has actually managed to create a world that is interesting to read about...