Tarnsman of Gor (Gor, volume 1) by John Norman

In this ERB pastiche, unremarkable academic Tarl Cabot reinvents himself
as a man of action on the counter-Earth, Gor. There's much less BDSM than
the series reputation would lead one to expect.

https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/what-you-critics-said

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My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll

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On 7/22/2025 8:04 AM, James Nicoll wrote:

Tarnsman of Gor (Gor, volume 1) by John Norman

In this ERB pastiche, unremarkable academic Tarl Cabot reinvents himself
as a man of action on the counter-Earth, Gor. There's much less BDSM than
the series reputation would lead one to expect.

https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/what-you-critics-said

Hmm. Maybe time for a reread.

Lynn


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On 22/07/2025 14:04, James Nicoll wrote:

There's much less BDSM than
the series reputation would lead one to expect.

As well as I can remember forty years down the line, that sort of
thing started as one feature of the stories and over a few volumes
became the main point.


-- 12345678902234567890323456789042345678905234567890623456789072345678908234567890

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On 2025-07-22, James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:

Tarnsman of Gor (Gor, volume 1) by John Norman

In this ERB pastiche, unremarkable academic Tarl Cabot reinvents himself
as a man of action on the counter-Earth, Gor. There's much less BDSM than the series reputation would lead one to expect.

https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/what-you-critics-said

The first five _Gor_ books are rip-roaring planetary romance in the
vein of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The dominant culture on Gor is a
pastiche of classical Greek and Roman antiquity, which appears to
be Norman's area of expertise. He's certainly illiterate when it
comes to the physical sciences.

Only in book six does the series take a weird turn, and starting
with volume seven it enters the territory it has become infamous
for: Norman writing ever longer diatribes how "women are natural
slaves", endless submission games, yada, yada. He still can write
a good adventure story, but he increasingly chooses not to.

Regarding Norman's prose, I'll point out that _Tarnsman of Gor_ was
the very first book I ever read in English, only equipped with the
sort of second-language English taught in German schools, and
I COULD READ IT. That was very encouraging. (The second author I
tried was Hal Clement, not exactly known as a paragon of style, and
that proved a lot tougher.)

Norman's dialogue is very stylized because he doesn't use contractions.

| Astonishingly, scurrilous rumour suggests that when Donald Wollheim
| tempted Norman away from Ballantine to DAW, one of the enticements
| was that Norman would no longer be edited.

I couldn't help but notice that Norman's paragraphs were becoming
longer and longer in the later books. I suspect he was given a
maximum page count and tried to fit in as much text as possible.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

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On Jul 22, 2025, ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan wrote
(in article <mea79uFfsrnU1@mid.individual.net>):

In article<105oi60$19b1$1@dont-email.me>, Graham<zotzlists@gmail.com> wrote:

On 22/07/2025 14:04, James Nicoll wrote:

There's much less BDSM than
the series reputation would lead one to expect.

As well as I can remember forty years down the line, that sort of
thing started as one feature of the stories and over a few volumes
became the main point.

The books were decent planetary romances with a bit more sex than
Burroughs until such time as Tarl Cabot himself got enslaved and never completely recovered. That actually turned out to be a decent book with
the epic "**This** is the homestone of Port Kar" sequence, but after that
the kink continued to rise at the expense of the story.

IMHO, Lynn would do better to start (re-start?) the Dray Prescot books
than the Gor ones.

He could also look at Stirling’s Lords of Creation books. The first two,
set on an extremely Burroughs-like but with twists Venus and Mars were fairly good. Stirling is (finally!) threatening to bring out the long (very long) awaited third.

We’ll just say that Stirling’s Mars is the anti-Gor not least due to how the Princess of Mars spends so much time rescuing her Earther boyfriend.


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Verily, in article <105ofuj$1iid$1@dont-email.me>, did lynnmcguire5
@gmail.com deliver unto us this message:

On 7/22/2025 8:04 AM, James Nicoll wrote:

Tarnsman of Gor (Gor, volume 1) by John Norman

In this ERB pastiche, unremarkable academic Tarl Cabot reinvents himself
as a man of action on the counter-Earth, Gor. There's much less BDSM than the series reputation would lead one to expect.

https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/what-you-critics-said

Hmm. Maybe time for a reread.

When I was a lass, I told a man I enjoyed fantasy novels. He said that
he also did, and he loaned me a little something called
_Slave_Girl_of_Gor_. We weren't dating much longer.

That series is terrible. It was porn for people who didn't want to admit
they read porn.

--
Saturday Doctor Who watch party 1:00 p.m. Pacific time

This week: Spearhead From Space [Third Doctor] https://discord.gg/Fd6Znkme?event=1396482295044640778

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James Nicoll wrote:

Tarnsman of Gor (Gor, volume 1) by John Norman

In this ERB pastiche, unremarkable academic Tarl Cabot reinvents himself
as a man of action on the counter-Earth, Gor. There's much less BDSM than
the series reputation would lead one to expect.

https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/what-you-critics-said

Most Gore devotees tell me I should read the first N books, where N
varies from three to nine.

Dreamer, who used to post here, defended the later books, at least those
in the high teens, though he was aware that there were problematic elements.

Fortunately for me, I was still suffering from a surfeit of ERB when the
fist Gor book hit the racks. One look at it and I passed, and though I definitely bought worse books, they weren't part of a series that my compulsion would have made me follow.

Once when I moved into a new apartment, someone had left behind a Gor
novel, somewhere around the eleventh. I got about 200 pages into it
waiting for furniture to arrive.

Tarl Calbot was not present, and while there was plenty of talk about
how women should behave towards men, nothing kinky occurred. Leaving
aside all the talk about slavery, etc, it was sufficient to keep my
attention. But I never finished it, once I had alternate reading
material. I wouldn't call it porn in even the slightest degree, but
then I have no idea what happened after Calbot showed up.

Only later did I discover that the previous tenants had also left behind
"Brat Farrar", an infinitely superior book. It pays to be observant!

William Hyde

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Verily, in article <105p7lv$lq3m$1@dont-email.me>, did wthyde1953
@gmail.com deliver unto us this message:

Tarl Calbot was not present, and while there was plenty of talk about
how women should behave towards men, nothing kinky occurred. Leaving
aside all the talk about slavery, etc, it was sufficient to keep my attention. But I never finished it, once I had alternate reading
material. I wouldn't call it porn in even the slightest degree, but
then I have no idea what happened after Calbot showed up.

It wasn't porn in the literal sense of depicting sex explicitly. It was
more that the entire theme and vibe were from porn. For instance, early
in the book, the protagonist is knocked to the ground by a man who's
angry with her. As she's sprawled and looking up at him, she thinks
about how beautiful she must look with her cringing posture and fearful expression.

There was more. I didn't finish it. I read enough to know it was both
eyerolly and disgusting, and then I just flipped through the rest.

Only later did I discover that the previous tenants had also left behind "Brat Farrar", an infinitely superior book. It pays to be observant!

I agree! I'd rather have Brat Farrar than twelve Gorn books.


--
Saturday Doctor Who watch party 1:00 p.m. Pacific time

This week: Spearhead From Space [Third Doctor] https://discord.gg/Fd6Znkme?event=1396482295044640778

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Melissa Hollingsworth wrote:

Verily, in article <105p7lv$lq3m$1@dont-email.me>, did wthyde1953
@gmail.com deliver unto us this message:

Tarl Calbot was not present, and while there was plenty of talk about
how women should behave towards men, nothing kinky occurred. Leaving
aside all the talk about slavery, etc, it was sufficient to keep my
attention. But I never finished it, once I had alternate reading
material. I wouldn't call it porn in even the slightest degree, but
then I have no idea what happened after Calbot showed up.

It wasn't porn in the literal sense of depicting sex explicitly. It was
more that the entire theme and vibe were from porn. For instance, early
in the book, the protagonist is knocked to the ground by a man who's
angry with her. As she's sprawled and looking up at him, she thinks
about how beautiful she must look with her cringing posture and fearful expression.

There was more. I didn't finish it. I read enough to know it was both eyerolly and disgusting, and then I just flipped through the rest.

Only later did I discover that the previous tenants had also left behind
"Brat Farrar", an infinitely superior book. It pays to be observant!

I agree! I'd rather have Brat Farrar than twelve Gorn books.

I'd rather have one Gor book than twelve Gor books.

William Hyde

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Melissa Hollingsworth <thetruemelissa@gmail.com> wrote:

It wasn't porn in the literal sense of depicting sex explicitly. It was
more that the entire theme and vibe were from porn. For instance, early
in the book, the protagonist is knocked to the ground by a man who's
angry with her. As she's sprawled and looking up at him, she thinks
about how beautiful she must look with her cringing posture and fearful >expression.

My ex described it as "porn with all the good parts left out." I think
that is pretty much a solid assessment of the situation.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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