![]() ![]() Kelly are bound to pique one’s interest…īut - and I KID YOU NOT - every time I have done this, I have found myself reading about the protagonist showing a proud woman how to be submissive, breaking her to the collar, demonstrating to her that a woman’s true fulfillment is found in slavery, etc. And those great, classic pulp covers by the likes of Boris Vallejo and Ken W. Major sci-fi/fantasy publishers were behind the first 25 books - first Ballantine, then DAW. Maybe there’s more to Gor? I mean, it is one of the longest running fantasy series of all time by a single author (1966 to the present: with the release this August of Plunder of Gor, it hit the half-century mark). Wondering if, in the later books, Norman is really as obsessed with sadomasochism as the critics contend. I have, on occasion, picked one up and opened it at random to read a paragraph or two. The Encyclopedia goes on to condemn later volumes in the series (which now total 34), noting that they “degenerate into extremely sexist, sadomasochistic pornography involving the ritual humiliation of women, and as a result have caused widespread offence.” DAW, which published the series from volumes 7 through 25, apparently dropped Norman for this reason (Naughty Norman!), and the subsequent 9 volumes are only available in e-book editions.Īs a collector and purveyor of vintage sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks, I happen to have several Gor books sitting in a pile here beside my office desk. As a boy, I was a huge fan of ERB’s John Carter of Mars stories and was looking for something else along those lines. As The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), a huge tome sitting here on my bookshelf, notes, the first Gor books were passable Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiches, and that’s the impression I came away with too. If I read any of the sequels, I can’t recall - although I remember enjoying the first book, at least the first part of it recounting Talbot’s strange experiences (involving a mysterious package, I believe) and subsequent relocation to another world. He quickly adapts, becoming a Gorean swordsman and assimilating into the culture of his adopted planet. There he encounters a Barsoomian-inspired sword-and-planet environment. ![]() That would be Tarnsman of Gor, first published in 1966 by Ballantine, which recounts how Earth professor Tarl Cabot is mysteriously transported to our solar system’s hidden tenth planet orbiting the sun in a position exactly counter to Earth’s. I’m positive that I read the first book in the, sometime back in junior high. ![]()
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