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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