To Gor Or Not To Gor.

It seems that Dark Horse may still be planning to release it's Gor omnibus. Or maybe they aren't. It certainly won't be appearing November 15 as originally planned, and a visit to Dark Horse's website by me trying to find out when the next Blade of the Immortal collection will be released(in February, if you're wondering) turned up no hint of a new release date.

Wherefore Art Thou Gor?

It's a sad commentary on how much my output via this blog has decreased that my July post about Dark Horse Comics resurrecting John Norman's Gor books is still visible on the main page. Be that as it may it's time for a brief update. Seeing Norman mentioned in the comments section of a Pharyngula post made me head over to Dark Horse's site to see when the first Gor omnibus would be released. But when I used the search engine to find the page for Gor I got no results. The press release I linked to in my previous blog post has vanished. Very interesting. Amazon.com still has a pre-order page up for the book, with a release date of November 15th. So does this mean the book is still coming out? Or has Dark Horse quietly shelved the project after getting a bunch of "Geez, how could you?" letters? I have no idea about the actual printing cycle of a modern paperback but it seems likely to me that Dark Horse has already had the books printed. Even if they don't I would assume cancelling a 10 thousand book order or whatever it is with their printers would be a major hit on their bankroll, as presumably there is some sort of financial penalty for cancelling an order pre-printing.

An Odd Choice.

Visiting James Nicoll's Livejournal tonight I found out that Dark Horse Comics, North American publishers of my fav manga, Blade of the Immortal, are going to reprint John Norman's Gor books. I've discussed the series before, but for those of you who missed those posts the short version is that the books took place on the planet Gor, where men are men and women are slaves or in their hearts want to be slaves. They'd likely be written off as crappy sword and sorcery fantasy if not for the bondage content of the series and the fact that John Norman by all accounts actually believes women really want to be slaves to men. And there are people in the real world who agree with him and base part or all of their personal lifestyles on these concepts. Interestingly the Dark Horse press release I linked to makes no real mention of the controversial content of the series, which I have to wonder about given that a lot of book sellers who sell other Dark Horse products probably aren't familiar with the notoriety of the books.

As you can imagine the announcement Dark Horse will begin reprinting the series has gotten some folks upset. I can't blame them given the sexism and misogyny that underlies the setting of the books. The obvious question is why Dark Horse decided to pick up the Gor series. I would suspect that in part it's because the rights are available cheap. Recent attempts to reprint them have been less than successful, so it would seem to be a bit of a risk for Dark Horse to release them. It will be interesting to see how well their omnibus release of the first 3 books does, and whether there will be a second release featuring the next 3 books. Or perhaps a better question is whether they will release a third omnibus, given that the second one is probably already late in the preproduction stage.

Bloggers of Gor?

It never ceases to amaze me what will generate hits on this blog. This post, about some fans of John Norman's Gor books getting into police trouble, has been generating at least one hit a week since I wrote it. I wouldn't have thought there would be so much interest in things Gorean. Of course anyone who is looking with blog search engines for the term Gor is mainly finding similar posts about the story in question, or things using the term gor that have nothing to do with Norman. It doesn't look like the ideas of the Gor books themselves have much of a foothold amongst bloggers. Perhaps "masters" are too busy to blog about such things, and their "slaves" aren't allowed to blog.

Gor Gor Girls.

If you browsed the science fiction and fantasy section of your local bookstore in the '70s and '80s the name Gor might be vaguely familiar. The planet Gor was the setting for a series of fantasy novels written by John Norman starting in 1966. Gor was located in the exact opposite orbital position to the Sun as the Earth, so it was sometimes refered to as Counter Earth. On Gor men are men and women are slaves, or secretly want to be slaves. The books claimed that slavery is the true "natural state" of women, and that they instinctively realise this. Most of the books were told from the point of view of Tarl Cabot, a man from Earth transported to Gor, although several were told from the point of view of female slaves, also taken from Earth. The series has sometimes been compared to Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars books, but with a high level of bondage content.

The series was published by DAW in North America, who are a mainstream sci fi publisher. The last DAW Gor book, Magicians of Gor, was published in 1988. It has been suggested by the Gor crowd that DAW dropped the series because of growing political correctness, given both the content of the books and Norman's stance that the philosophy of the books applied in the real world. A much more likely suggestion is that people had gotten tired of a book series that was increasingly overrought and repetitive, and that this was reflected in dropping sales, so DAW decided to drop a weak product. In any case the books went out of print, although old copies can be found in many used book stores.

Many people have taken the books as an inspiration for their own lifestyles. A group of such people have found themselves attracting the attention of the police in the UK. Durham police raided a home after a friend of a Canadian woman contacted them, fearing she was being held against her will. This proved not to be the case, but Norman's creation is getting some unexpected, and I suspect unwanted, publicity.

I can understand the appeal of using such a scenario for the occasional bit of fun in the bedroom. But living in such a fashion full time is another thing. Its not just the Goreans who live like that, there are others who follow other sorts of BSDM relationships. But the Goreans seem just a little bit odder given that they think their lifestyle would be applicable to the majority of society given the chance.

Julia Gracen wrote an interesting piece on Goreans for Salon in 2000, which you can read here.

As for the title of this post you're probably a fan of '60s cult films if you know where it came from.