Read Part I of this series, Don Wollheim, Edwin L. Arnold, and Otis Adelbert Kline.

The most controversial of the second generation of Sword & Planet authors was certainly John Norman, which is the pseudonym for author John Lange, a philosophy professor. The first book, Tarnsman of Gor, was published in 1966 and then generally one a year until a break after 1988. There are a total of 37 books at last count but I’ve only personally read up to #23 and don’t own the rest.

From this series, I first read book 2, Outlaw of Gor, which has the main character, Tarl Cabot, enslaved. He must lead a revolt to free himself and other prisoners. Strangely enough, given the later reputation of this series, I found this book in my small town library in Arkansas, in the Bible Belt. That should tell you that the early books in this series were pretty standard fantasy. I found the book quite well written and enjoyable, and began to seek out more. (It was quite a few years until I was able to mail order a copy of Book 1.)

John Lange is a very well educated man and knows a lot about history. He borrowed the concept of the “counter-earth” from Greek philosophers. His planet, Gor, is in orbit directly on the other side of the sun from Earth and thus can never be detected by us (at least in those days.) Lange — as Norman — then liberally sprinkles real history into his fictionalized world. We see civilizations clearly based upon Rome, upon the Mongols, upon the Innuit, and upon Native Americans, as well as on many European sites with the ancient world. And where I am familiar with those histories, I can tell you that Lange is accurate in his portrayals. I once answered a question in a social studies class correctly based upon what Lange had said in one of his books.

Above is a picture of the first six books, and I’ll tell you that I enjoyed all of these, particularly #4: Nomads of Gor, which has Tarl Cabot meeting alternate Mongols. The first few books did not vary much from the John Carter formula, although the world building is deeper. But after #2, each book seemed to introduce a little more erotic elements. In book #6: Raiders, Tarl Cabot is himself enslaved and used sexually (although not in explicit details). This, to me, marked a big swing in the Gor series and the sexual aspects began to move more and more central to the stories, which — to my mind — greatly diminished my enjoyment. This marked the point where Tarl Cabot became “Gorean” and no longer expressed an Earthman’s sentiments and understanding of the world.

After enjoying the first six books, I naturally picked up #7, Captive of Gor. What a huge disappointment. I wondered if it was penned by the same author, but the prose style was the same.

The first six books featured Tarl Cabot, an Earthman, as the main character, but this one featured an Earth woman named Elinor Brinton, a spoiled rich girl who is transported to Gor and made a slave. Cabot only appears briefly as one of her owners. The Elinor character is so completely unbelievable. There’s no depth to her and much of the book has her going back and forth between “I’ll never be a slave” to “I am a natural slave.” This was the first book that really laid out the “Gorean” philosophy that women are natural slaves and will come to love their chains. It was laughable.

Had I not liked the first six books as much as I did, I would have stopped after #7, but I decided to give #8 a go: Hunters of Gor. I hoped for a return to form and it did at least feature Tarl Cabot and have some level of adventure, although there’s very little in the way of plot and way too much of the female sexual slavery thing. It was only marginally better than Captive. I decided I was done, but in the next year appeared Marauders of Gor.

The cover depicted a Viking-esque warrior facing off against a Wendigo looking creature with an axe. I bought it. I read it. And I liked it. Yes, there was a fair amount of the nonsense slave girl stuff, but it had a plot. Tarl must travel to the north to confront the alien enemies of the Priest-Kings, the giant, savage, furred Kurii. There’s a tremendous large scale battle that I liked very much, and I liked the idea that this tied in with the legend of Grendel, that maybe the Grendel from Beowulf was actually a Kur. Skipping over the slavery stuff left a pretty decent story at the heart of this book.

Alas, Marauders was to be the final true spark of quality. Tribesmen of Gor, #10, had a few flickers of story. And then it was over. Slavegirl, Beasts, and Explorers just sagged away to slavery upon slavery. And they were boring. I decided I was done, but then something new happened…

What kept me trying new Gor books? Well, Norman introduced a new character, Jason Marshall, an Earthman who also gets taken to Gor. ERB had done something similar with Ulysses Paxton in Mastermind of Mars, and I rather enjoyed it.

Norman wrote a trilogy about Marshall. The first was Fighting Slave of Gor, then Rogue of Gor and Guardsman of Gor. I hoped the new character meant an action-oriented tale. The first wasn’t bad. It was interesting to see Gor from a new character’s perspective, but the trilogy quickly turned into the same old women-slavery stuff.

I should have quit there. Inertia kept me going, maybe. The next two books offered Tarl Cabot again. He met with alternate Native Americans. A promising idea, but more more more of the same nonsense. Kajira of Gor was next. The very term means slave. I just scanned this one and found it a waste of time.

It turned out, though, that I did pick up a few more Gor books. Gor #20 was called Players of Gor. Norman had talked of these characters before. He invented a version of chess for Gor called Kaissa, played on a 100 square board of red and yellow, and he described it more fully in this book. (The name is based upon Caissa, an invented Goddess of Chess during the renaissance.)

Since at the time I was very much into chess, I bought and read the book. I also remembered fondly ERB’s Chessmen of Mars, in which he introduced Jetan, a Martian version of chess played on a 100 square board of black and orange. ERB included the rules for the game in an appendix in the book, and I even made a Jetan board for myself, though I had to leave it behind when I went to grad school.

Chessmen of Mars was one of my favorite Barsoom books outside of the first three, so I had hopes for Players of Gor. I enjoyed parts of it but the redundant sexual stuff really bogged it down.

I didn’t even try Dancer of Gor. I knew what it would be about, but I tried the next one in the series with the title Mercenaries of Gor. I found it godawful, but I had bought it with Renegades of Gor so I started that one, made it a dozen pages in, and finally, for sure, I was done.

There have been at least ten more Gor books published. I don’t have them. Someone seems to be reading them, but I can’t imagine I’ll ever go back to the series. This series remains for me — personally — my biggest disappointment in a life reading S&P fiction. It started with such promise but it — again in my opinion — went out with whimper instead of a bang.

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Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for Black Gate was The Fundamentals of Sword & Planet, Part I.