ABSTRACT –
GOR ON
EARTH WEBSITE http://www.gor-on-earth.com/essayindex.htm From the mid 1960’s to the mid 1980’s a US philosophy professor churned out a twenty-six series of
increasingly tawdry fantasy
novels about a planet called Gor. He wrote under the name John Norman. The early books were basic sword and sorcery stories, poorly written, and very derivative of the Martian novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs and the Conan work of Robert E. Howard. By about book seven, the series grew increasingly erotic, with more and more emphasis on the BDSM
slave culture on Gor. The books focussed more and more on how women were shanghaied and kidnapped from their native worlds, including Earth, to be transported to Gor, where they were cast into slavery. In the books, the women grow to like their slavery. The few voices of feminism are quickly suppressed. The whole culture and economy of Gor was focussed on the slave trade. The author faced an increasingly angry feminist backlash, and eventually his publishers cancelled his contract for any more Gor novels. However, the Master-Slave
relationships in the books had a profound influence on the modern BDSM culture and Role Playing game circuit. A number of Gorian Internet communities arose, and a surprisingly large number of BDSM fetish groups actively use the Gor system in their master-slave relationships. This has spilled over in some groups into brainwashing, social control and cultism, rather than an occasional harmless pastime. In May 2006, a Gor cult slave was walked to her local butcher’s shop on dog leas. The website I am reviewing here is one of many Gor revival pages, though with few to its companion sites. Slave musings reflect on the slave’s willingness to submit to a stronger force as being natural to all. . There is a casual pride in abandonment of freedom and responsibility here. Many of the pages are for signed up subscribers only. Reviews of some of the Gor novels will follow soon.
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