Borders-verse flashbacks: Gor

[liz_marcs]

So here I am multi-tasking. Working on The Last Tin Soldier (beta notes have resulted in some changes all the way to the very end), checking out the Deep Space Nine episodes I can watch for free online at TV-Links, and checking my FList before toddling off to bed.

So, here I am, riding the kind of high that I can only get by basking in the awesome that is Kira Nerys, when I spy with my little eye from theantijoss_on_IJ that Gor of Losers is making a comeback.

Thanks to Dark Horse.

My irony meter just went off the scale.

Not to mention that I now have whiplash. From Kira to Gor. I need a frigging neck brace.

I tried to read a Gor book. Once. In junior high. (Although I'm very sure that if my dad knew, he would've had a heart attack. No. Make that a zillion heart-attacks.) I'm pretty sure that Gor pretty much planted my aversion-to-writing-smut seed. That shit was just ugly, yo. Me not a big fan of slave games, even consensual slave games. Although if it floats your boat, go and float, says I. Just don't make me wear the ball-gag and nipple clamps and we're cool. 

But even with my relatively innocent eyes, I could damn well spot a rape fantasy. Rape fantasies in and of themselves aren't bad, per se (even if it gets my squick running so hard that my knee starts jerking, if you get my drift). But this was a rape fantasy of a whole 'nother color. This was a rape fantasy for men. It's the really, really ugly shit where all women want it, all women deserve it, and all women will get it in the end. Failure to accept rape as a way of life is a brutal death sentence.

Why?

Because "no" ain't an option for women in Gor-world. Not when they're branded. Not someone chunks a slave collar on them. Not when they get assigned the role of "pleasure" slave, "reserve (virgin)" slave, or "scut work (not sexually attractive)" slave. Not when they get chained to a stone floor because they try to say no. Not ever.

Quick question kiddies: What's the difference between someone who's free, and someone who's a slave?

Answer: It's one word. "No." The power to say it. The power to think it. The power to act on it. One. Word.

Hunh. Guess the Gor books were edumacational after all. Who says the series is a total waste?

Well, actually, I do. Not even Dianetics comes close in the worthless books sweepstakes.

I remember my Bordersverse days rather fondly. I remember most of the customers rather fondly. I remember most of my co-workers rather fondly.

Know what I don't remember fondly? This one regular customer. He was a white male, always impeccably dressed in semi-expensive clothes. Glasses. Loafers. Sandy hair bordering on brown. About my age, more or less. Clean-cut. He looked like the type of guy who was involved in community service, or volunteering for some political organization or another.

Shit. I remember exactly how he looked, despite the distance of some years.

I also remember that he had this vibe. Long before I ever talked to him, I got the "something is just not right with that boy" radio signals so loud that my one tooth filling rattled every time he walked through the door. Straight ladies, gay men...I don't have to explain that whole serial-killer-in-disguise vibe to you, do I? I'm sure you've all had it once or twice. It's a feeling you don't forget. For the rest of you who don't know, the best way to explain it is as if someone's shadow just passed over your grave.

Anyway, I'd seen him around off and on for several months (and I always made it a habit to be elsewhere when he was looking for help). One day I didn't move fast enough and he got me.

Guess what our boy was looking for?

If you didn't say Gor books, then you haven't been paying attention.

Right. Needless to say, my brain went to DefCon 1 so fast that it's a wonder the word "tilt" show up on my eyeballs. Having no choice, however, I had to help Gor-man. A quick look into the database showed that we actually had a copy of the first book around (how, I don't know since they were out of print for a looooong time by that point). It wasn't in science fiction (Thank God!), but in erotica.

But that's not the real creepy part. The real creepy part is that Gor-man was talking about that damn book and how philosophical it was and how deep it was and shit like that. And he was asking my opinion about it.

Holy tomato, I thought to myself. Is this dude actually feeling me out about Gor?

Indeed he was. To be honest, I don't think he was hitting on me. I think he was on a little power trip. Obviously he saw my reaction when he asked for Gor, so I suspected that this guy — who towered over me by a good 6 inches — was trying to rattle my cage.

All he got for his trouble was my serene bookstore look: the one perfected over several years and honed in the fires of born-again customers trying to convert me to the Gospel according to Tim LaHaye, teenagers sneaking into the erotica section, and little kids running rampant in the children's section.

It's a look that's somewhat mask-like, coolly polite, vaguely condescending, and gives the cusomter abso-fraggin'-lutely nothing for their trouble.

Nothing pisses off a power-tripping customer more than that cool, polite wall of hell. They can't get over it, can't get around it, and can't dig under it. Hell, they can't even complain to the store manager about it. In short, they have nuffing! Once that mask is on, you will win power battle every. single. time. Plus, you get the joy of seeing a power-tripping customer go completely out of his or her tree.

Anyway, in the end, I advised Gor-man that if he wanted other books in the series, he'd have to trawl used bookstores, as almost the entire series was out of print. In fact, I expressed polite puzzlement that we had the first book in the series at all, while he expressed shock and horror that it was in the erotica section and not the science fiction section where, in his humble opinion, it belonged.

I saw Gor-man after that, of course (he was, after all, a regular). But he never asked me to help him out again. I did ring him up a few times though. His taste in reading material did nothing to dispel the kree-pee.

Anyway, if you want to be completely creeped out before bed, I highly recommend 7 year-old article from Salon about Gor enthusiasts recreating the series for real. The article is old enough that it's not tucked behind Salon's usual wall o' ads. It's totally free for the reading.

And per theantijoss_on_IJ, check out what Girl Wonder has to say about the Gor revival. Tamorah Pierce has a few choice words, too. Bellatrys_on_LJ has a whole collection of posts on Gor (scroll down to get to the really good, hard-core analysis of Gor). 

In the meantime, I'll be hoping like hell that Dark Horse loses oodles of money and earns a ton of bad publicity for trying to revive Gor.

Now I must cleanse my mind. Yeeeessss. I think I will watch the 'Crossover' episode of Deep Space Nine. Evil Kira in leather. It doesn't get any better than that.

X-posted to IJ, GJ, and JF

Comments

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

:;nods:; I hear you. I read them when I was a lot younger and into fantasy, fascinated in a sort of snake/bird kind of way. I had no access to fic that hit my kinks the way I do now (this was 25 years ago) and yeah, bits of them worked for me :;shrugs:;

But so very much of it didn't.

Part of it was the sudden flip the series took early on from, if you took away the slavery aspects, a derivative but not unreadable fantasy with actual plot and some interesting aliens, to a treatise on Women: the subjugation of.

He lost the plot. He lost a sympathetic lead. He made Elizabeth, the Earth woman who tried to change the society and who was intelligent, sassy and brave into one of a gazillion slaves mouthing platitudes.

And he got oh my God, so boring. He'd do an entire chapter on the coins of Gor. No joke. They were travel guides.

And the men who were worshipped by the scores of slaves were deemed worthy of that worship because they had a penis. End of story. They could be cowardly jerks, and many were, but even the best, brightest, noblest woman would still be expected to get off on kneeling to them. Hey, you earn that, mate.

I don't think I could read one now without frothing at the mouth and I really wish they hadn't been resurrected, but I have to say, there was a man who got paid for writing the same book 30 times; got to admire the scam.

Oh -- and I've just remembered what finally pissed me off enough to stop reading. I read them out of order but I got the idea that he was visiting a different Earth culture that just happened to have a counterpart on Gor with the exact same traditions as on Earth (yes. I know). So the lead would go to a country with Eskimos, Vikings, or Red Indians, or whatever. And he'd always sleep with their slaves. Always.

Then he went to The Jungle, with slaves that were black and did he sleep with them? Oh, no. Not once. In fact, he took along white, blonde slaves to use.

I'll put up with a lot to finish a series because I'm like that, but dull AND racist was just a bit too much.

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

You just made me laugh out loud with:

...there was a man who got paid for writing the same book 30 times; got to admire the scam.

See, now I'm wondering which Gor book I read through (they were still being sold in the SF section of the book store, so that gives you an idea how long ago this was), because I don't remember Elizabeth at all. I pretty much remember women dropping to their knees and worshiping Teh Penis!

Gah! Now this is going to bother me.

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

I'm renowned for having an excellent memory in one area only; Books I have Read :;g:: So even two decades on I can say, umm, I think she appeared in Nomads of Gor. Her slave name was Vella, I think. Elizabeth Cardwell. I remember one book ended with her grabbing some money off Tarl for wine and linking arms with a free woman and a slave to go off drinking, all three of them which, a few books later would have been impossible and would probably have got her executed :-(

God, why can I remember stuff like this when there are women at the school bus stop I see every day and can't recall their names?

[ladycat777.livejournal.com]

I only skimmed them, mostly because I looked at them young enough that I was still ashamed/nervous of how hard it hit my kink, and it freaked me out. When I was better able to handle it, I'd found internet porn by then, which was sometimes better written, or at least short enough that I didn't care if it was drek.

Also, it was free.

The reason why this is surprising to me isn't because of the sex issues, it's because of what you say -- they're bad. Genuinely god awful. And anybody who is reading them for the sex, well, you've got free and/or better options online. How on earth does DH think this is going to sell? I mean, sure, it's a classic. It's a bad classic!

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes; totally pointless now there's the net. Because they weren't at all explicit. Even on the coy and fade to black side, really. Some things were described in loving detail (like the brands :;shudder::) but the actual sex? Not so much...

[(Anonymous)]

I remember reading the first book when I was about 14 or 15. I liked it enough to steal some of the ideas for my D&D campaign (my players were NOT happy with the barbarians on the giant rocs). But seeing as I'd found it at a public library I didn't have much chance to follow the series so I only got to read one or two more in the series. A year or two later I happened across book 12 or something like that.

I couldn't believe the difference. If the way women were treated weren't bad enough it was boring as hell. I'm not sure there was an actual story in there anywhere but the pointless minutia put me to sleep more than once. If you haven't read the books just imagine how boring you'd have to be to put a hormone-driven teenage male to sleep while writing about naked women.

Why on earth would anyone anywhere think they could make money by bringing that crap back?

Dave

Dull and racist

[greree.livejournal.com]

You probably won't see this, since this is an old thread. I'll clear up a few of your questions. Earth cultures had a counterpart on Gor because the aliens that created Gor brought people from different cultures from Earth to Gor, during their Voyages of Acquisition. Eskimos, Vikings or Indians were actually Eskimos, Vikings or Indians transplanted from Earth. Why would they NOT have a similar culture?

Oh, and about the racist thing. It's obvious why Tarl Cabot only slept with white women while he was in the jungle. John Norman probably thought it was a bit too much for a white man to own or rape a black woman who was a slave in chains. He was trying to AVOID being labeled a racist.

Re: Dull and racist

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

LJ doesn't care about dates; it emails you replies to all posts and comments :-)

Umm, I take your point about the transfer of cultures but you have to allow for changes and there weren't any; no evolution of the culture, just a stereotypical mirroring.

And I really, really don't see that last bit being the case but YMMV.

Re: Dull and racist

[greree.livejournal.com]

First, let me explain something. I read about half of the Gor novels when I was younger, mostly out of order and over a period of years. Not too long ago I came across all the novels, so I figured I'd read the whole series in order.

The cultures didn't change because the aliens in charge prevented them from changing. There were rules spelled out detailing what people could and could not do. For instance, they couldn't experiment with improvements on weapons or transportation. Violators were killed. Also, keep in mind that this IS fiction, so it's possible from a fictional standpoint.

Also, I think the last bit is true. I read "Explorers of Gor" not too long ago. Norman was very careful that NO white person owned a black person. If he was actually racist, I would think that his protagonist wouldn't have sex with ANY other race, but that isn't true. Tarl Cabot owned and had sex with Indians, Asians, Arabs, Eskimos, and many others.

Oh, by the way, thanks for answering.

Re: Dull and racist

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

But, truly, don't you think making an exception is MORE racist? I get the Earth history and that Tarl would be aware of it as an Earth man (although place him in time and location; he's not from the 21st entury; when did he get sent there? 1960s? PC wasn't really that big back then) but that history just wouldn't apply on Gor.

Re: Dull and racist

[greree.livejournal.com]

I don't mean that Tarl Cabot thought about racism. I think the book was written that way because the author John Norman didn't want to be labeled a racist. He didn't want one of his white characters owning any black characters. In every other book Tarl Cabot owned and had sex with women of different races, and men of different races owned and had sex with white women. The only exception was this book. If John Norman was actually racist, I think he would have enjoyed writing about white people owning black people. But he didn't. He took great pains to avoid it. In fact, it actually made this book even more awkward than his other books.