My Lord Barbarian (Del Rey, April 1977). Cover by Boris Vallejo

Andrew J. Offutt (1934 -2013) wrote a lot of books and I’m going to talk about him more as I go along. He wrote several Conan pastiches and a whole series of pastiches about Robert E. Howard’s character Cormac Mac Art. He also wrote porn or near porn in several genres under pseudonyms, which I’ll get around to. He has several S&P novels to his credit. Here’s one.

My Lord Barbarian was billed as a Sword and Planet novel, but it didn’t have much of the feel of such a novel to me. It was indeed set on another planet (several in fact), and the setting is S & P — an artificial solar system created by an advanced human civilization which has fallen into decay. Most worship “Siense” (Science) as a God now.

[Click the images for planet-sized versions.]

However, the majority of the action fits the pattern of general sword & sorcery, as the title, My Lord Barbarian, and the cover by Boris Vallejo suggests. There’s also almost no description of the worlds, which is not characteristic of S&P either, and the main character is not “transported” from anywhere but is a native to the setting.

As for the story, in which a newly minted conquering king comes to the capital planet to be honored but is instead betrayed and framed for the murder of the great king, I generally enjoyed it although it was too long in places and I would have liked more of a feel for the setting. The interactions between the main hero, Valeron, and women is very archaic and often wince-worthy for a more modern audience. The action is pretty well done, though.

Ardor on Aros (Dell, May 1973). Cover by Frazetta

Ardor on Aros has been called the first Sword & Planet novel to feature overt sex. The book was OK, but neither the sex nor the adventure were outstanding. Considering the time, the sex was fairly explicit, but not so much by today’s standards. The book is essentially a satire of ERB’s A Princess of Mars. There’s even a frame in which Offutt says he received the narrative as dictated on a cassette recorder. (Cover is an unusual Frazetta BTW.)

Hank Ardor, a recent college graduate, takes a job with a scientist who is working on a matter transmitter. Hank ends up accidently going through the transmitter and landing on the planet Aros. Because the story is satire and is supposed to reflect realism, he doesn’t become a hero or the greatest swordsman of two worlds. He stumbles into some things and occasionally gets lucky. There’s some decent scenery and a little action but the narrator is a “big talker” and the story rambles.

One strange and distasteful scene involved a rape. A woman is assaulted by two rapists but makes the best of it to have her own orgasm. That certainly felt uncomfortable to me, but the oddest element is that Hank is in telepathic contact with her at the time so he experiences the assault as if it’s happening to him.

The Crusader, Volumes I and II (Grove Press, January 1, 1980 and January 1, 1981). Covers by Sanjulian

Although I’m an experimental psychologist by trade, I don’t like the idea of analyzing writers from scenes they create. I’m a writer, too, and I craft scenes at times that I personally find unpleasant because the story requires them. However, Offutt wrote a lot about rape.

In 1975, using the pseudonym John Cleve, Offutt wrote four Crusader books. These are historical novels featuring Guy of Messaria, who becomes the heroic Crusader. Guy doesn’t have to rape because he’s desired by almost all women, but these books are full of graphic rape scenes by villains. The sex in these books is far more graphic than in Ardor on Aros, and some of it is exceedingly brutal.

Spaceways #12: Star Slaver (Berkley Books, July 1983). Cover by Ken Barr

As John Cleve, Offutt also wrote a series of “adult/porn” space opera novels — the Spaceways series. There are 19 books in the series, although quite a few had co-authors so I don’t know who did the heavy lifting. I read #12, Star Slaver, and found it just plain bad. I never read or bought any others. In fact, Offutt wrote far more porno than anything else. Other than what I’ve mentioned above, I haven’t read any so I don’t know if rape features prominently throughout.

I still have one more post about Offutt, though, which discusses some of his more classical S&P stories, as well as his contributions to Sword & Sorcery fiction. None of these involve pornography. Read it it here.

I discussed Andrew Offutt’s greatest contribution to Sword & Sorcery, the five book anthology series Swords Against Darkness, in an earlier post here at Black Gate last year.

---

Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. See all of his recent posts for Black Gate here.