Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman

[xerxez]

I am thoroughly enjoying reading this first tale in the very prolific (25 books?) GOR series. Anyone else?

Fast and heavy Sword and Planet with technology, flying warbirds called Tarns, an interesting City State culture on a planet much like Barsoom and and Bronze Age Greece.

It is quite obvious that Edgar Rice Burroughs captivated the author at some point because it is so much like John Carter that some dismiss it as a rip-off. I do not see it as that all.

It has plenty of uniqueness and actually, very good writing. I was aware of it's controversial nature owing to the author's interest in bondage and a female slave fetish, but at least in this book, it's pretty mild stuff, not even vaguely prurient. Don't get me wrong, a woman reading these depictions of thier sex will either be amused or, more likely, upset. The writer kind of softens the blow in these passages by having his central character express his distaste for Gorean slave customs and only playing along because it's the only way to deal with Gorean women who have the custom deeply ingrained and think a man weak if he is not dominant.

That said, Gor has riled up a lot of feminists over the years. But there is so much cool sword and planet in the take that I have no intention of setting it down! Keep thinking, God I wish Frazetta or Bakshi had done an animated Tarnsman of Gor! You've got airborne warfare on Tarns (giant Hawks basically), some with iron shod talons...you have dangerous swamos filled with sentient giant spiders, hungry giant lizards, tower cities, swords, Shields and helmets along side modern technology, said technology being monitored and kept at a certain threshold and confined to certain applications that are strictly enforced
By the mysterious Priest Kings, unseen watchers who are worshipped as gods.

Anyway, it's very well versed and fast paced but wide in scope. GOR us a Counter Earth behind our Sun that moves in synchronous orbit so we never see it and the Priest Kings see to it that our instruments never detect the gravitational emanations coming from Got.

Anyone a fan?

[Deleted]

A friendly reminder to everyone that OD&D's patient and calm customer service is ready to trim the tarns, pardon,
the tares of any discussions that look like they'll overgrow the flowerbed. Please, all, keep this thread friendly.

[Todd]

I’d never heard of this series. In doing some searching, found this: www.imdb.com/title/tt0095241/

Has anybody seen it?

[Deleted]

...No, but seeing that it stars Jack Palance and Oliver Reed, it might well be worth tracking down. Holy Hextor! This has all the potential to be awesome (in a campy way)!

Thing with the BOOK series is, though, the first few entries are clearly aiming at satirizing genre fiction, and poke fun at especially the (then apparently very popular) genre of sci-fi erotica of the sort that Andrew Offutt used to write on a monthly base. Later on, that satirical/"meta" edge gets lost, though - I skipped everything from about book five to fifteen, and when I re-entered the series it seemed it had turned into the kind of literature that it initially had tried to lampoon.

- That said, not a "bad" read; tacky, very tacky, but not "incompetent". There are certainly worse options within the genre to spend time on.


Also: Have you seen this?! John Carter, coming back with a bang, it seems!

[Todd]

There’s a Gorean RPG as well it seems: postmortemstudios.wordpress.com/2017/05/05/rpg-a-lengthy-good-review-of-the-gor-rpg/

[Todd]

Whoa, the movie even spawned a sequel: www.imdb.com/title/tt0098048/

[xerxez]

I have watched the opening scenes of the first Gor movie; it is very cheesy but also kind of cool. I like 80's camp sci fi and fantasy, Endgame being another favorite by Troma, one of their films that was bad but not complete suck. I think the setting would be great for RPG in many of its features. Tekumel is just as gritty when it comes to slavery in the game.

[xerxez]

Rafael if it is satire that went completely over my head, but I don't doubt it. I grimaced more than once.

[Deleted]

Hehe, I HOPE it is satire. But it's, like, mostly my opinion. I don't know for sure, but it would be surreal if it wasn't. But, who knows, maybe Norman pulled a "Starship Troopers"? - A book that everyone else will think is satire... Except for the author, apparently.

EDIT: To clarify, the first few books have a distinctive satirical edge, starting from rather bluntly porting literary images from genre classics (I remember, mainly a few scenes appearing to have been taken from "Three Hearts, Three Lions), to it obviously being the softcore version of John Carter. You can't really read that without smirking. - Whether that elements of satire are intentional, though, I don't dare to speculate.

[Finarvyn]

I have copies of both Gor movies on VHS. Not at all quality swords & sorcery, but not the worst movies ever.

I have read the most of the original Gor books (I think the author or a successor started cranking out more recently) and they are a mixed bag.
1. At their core, they are decent Sword & Planet books (like Barsoom)
2. They are extremely non-PC in their treatment of women. Females are just sex-slaves.
3. A cult of "lets be Gor people" has risen in the real world and take this stuff seriously. Not a good thing.
4. As such, Gor topics on the web tend to become volatile and hostile in a hurry.
5. In addition, there are some really dull parts in the books. Large essays about ship types, birds, whatever. Boring.

Having said all that, I think that there are some merits to the Gor series.
1. At their core, they are decent Sword & Planet books (like Barsoom)
2. Many of the early Blackmoor crowd read them, and Dave Arneson clearly based some Blackmoor stuff on them.
3. There are some interesting plotlines, such as the Priest-Kings and the Kuri, which could make a great setting.
4. A Gor RPG could be a good thing, if they focus on the setting and minimize the female sex-slave aspect of the books.

Taken in perspective, Gor is a good series. Particularly the first half-dozen or so books. After all many real cultures had slavery, there are slaves in fiction like Conan, and such things do not need to be treated in a juvenile manner. Unfortunately, most people in these threads start standing on soap-boxed and shouting about the bad things in the series instead of focusing on the good.

[xerxez]

I agree with all you have written, Fyn

I didn't think it would be much of a stir to mention here where I assumed many people had already read them.

I did rent the first Gor film in Amazon last night and I actually do like it. It's obvious the script writer has read the material. It swings far afield of it (in a movie called Tarnsman of Gor there is not even a Tarn!) but I thought it captured the flavor. Even a scene where they order Paga to drink.

Yes, there is a subculture of Gorean lifestyle, I don't know how prevalent it is. Though I firmly oppose censorship, socially or legally where adults are concerned, that would not be an attitude to encourage at all.

But the Tarns alone would be an excellent addition to any game of D&D. I could see porting Gor into a game by making it a culture in the desert part of the DMs world.

[xerxez]

As far as your take on Rafael, I agree, I did actually laugh a few times. I was like, you are kidding yourself dude! My wife would land a swift kick if anyone talked to her that way. For Halloween I one year we went to a costume party and had mashup themes, I went as Wolfman Jack Sparrow and she went as Alice in Chains, Alice in Wonderland with some light chains draped about her. I jokingly asked if she would let me lead her about the party in a chain and collar and she said don't you even think about it 😄

[geoffrey]

I know that Arneson's Blackmoor setting included tarns. In his Temple of the Frog module (included in Supplement II: BLACKMOOR) is the following note regarding room 4 of the temple's third floor: "There are landing points for Rocs along the outside edge [of the largest window in the world]." I wonder if the original had tarns instead of rocs.

[talysman]

Yeah, I dunno if I'd call the books "satirical". Cynical, maybe. I'm pretty sure any scenes in the first book or two that resembled scenes in other fantasy books were there because John Norman was trying to make a buck. And given that he wrote some kind of non-fiction book on his bondage fetishes, I'm also pretty sure he was serious about that, too. Still, I stuck with the series up to Book 20, skipping over about four or five of them, because some of the cultural details in the later books were interesting, and because laughing at how ridiculous his writing was getting was entertaining in itself.

Jan 22, 2018 18:29:34 GMT -6 Todd said:

Whoa, the movie even spawned a sequel: www.imdb.com/title/tt0098048/

I don't remember if I've seen the first movie, but the sequel was on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It's... special. Mike and the bots took special joy in pointing out all the buffalo shots in the movie.

[xerxez]

Lol. Love me campy 80s movies. Talysman I did have a copy from later in the series and interestingly when I read a couple chapters I didn't find it very interesting and it was considerably more ribald. So I have no idea if I will make it through. Just liked the first book alot. Bruce Galloway, the editor of Fantasy Wargaming made reference to the series in his inspirational fiction chapter and said they were interesting books but if your wife or girlfriend gets hold of it you will likely not hear the end of it. I'm pretty big on desert settings though, it's why I love Barsoom and the Gandlara series, and, need I say Dune.

[talysman]

It's actually not a desert. Not sure where the movies got that idea. The setting of the first couple books is supposed to be something like Greece or Italy, but Nomads of Gor was steppes, Raiders of Gor is swamp and seacoast... there's one book in a jungle, another in fjords, a third in tundra. Pretty much, it's just Earth with more slaves.

[xerxez]

Truly, there is alot in the book about swamps and forests.

I did find this blog which seems innocuous enough and SFW:

thecrucibleofgor.weebly.com/maps-of-gor.html

It has maps, races, castes and professions on Gor, with references.

Of interest to me was the Gorean Assassin: These renounce kith and kin, have no Homestone, consider killing by poison to be dishonorable, and are devoted wholly to thier profession.

Could be a cool hook for a game to lead to a visit to the Land of Gor, a PC being set upon by a strange foriegn assassin with enough clues to entice them into a journey to Gor to learn why they were marked for death by strangers from a strange land!

[Finarvyn]

I'm not a big fan of censorship but I think that if an editor could take the Gor books and clean up "the naughty parts" to make the thing more PC, it would have the potential for being a pretty popular mainstream fantasy series. Doing it right would be a real chore and the books would probably become a lot thinner, but there are really some good stories in the midst of the rest of the baggage.

[Deleted]

Jan 23, 2018 10:52:58 GMT -6 talysman said:

Yeah, I dunno if I'd call the books "satirical". Cynical, maybe. I'm pretty sure any scenes in the first book or two that resembled scenes in other fantasy books were there because John Norman was trying to make a buck. And given that he wrote some kind of non-fiction book on his bondage fetishes, I'm also pretty sure he was serious about that, too. Still, I stuck with the series up to Book 20, skipping over about four or five of them, because some of the cultural details in the later books were interesting, and because laughing at how ridiculous his writing was getting was entertaining in itself.

I think the case might be similar to Heinlein and "Starship Troopers" - basically, that the inherent message of the book is so absurd it appears to be satirical, but isn't.

Jan 23, 2018 9:14:51 GMT -6 xerxez said:

As far as your take on Rafael, I agree, I did actually laugh a few times. I was like, you are kidding yourself dude! My wife would land a swift kick if anyone talked to her that way.

This is exactly the thing; the novels were pretty rough fifty years ago. Today, they're an impossibility.

I am frankly surprised, though, that we don't have more popular books like those, in the wake of recent erotica like "50 Shades", etc. given how popular fantasy still remains.

[makofan]

Like the above posters, I thought Tarnsman was a rollicking fun yarn, written with a wink of the eye. Unfortunately, they went downhill fast. I once thought of getting text file versions of the stories, cutting out most of the 'philosophy', and producing a much slimmer tome with great adventures and action scenes, but decided it was not worth the effort

[xerxez]

Life got hectic and I slowed my reading pace, I only just picked it up again early this week and finished it. I loved it. Makes me want to set up a Tarn skirmish with several riders using the Jousting rules from Chainmail!

[xerxez]

Jan 22, 2018 18:10:10 GMT -6 @rafael said:

...No, but seeing that it stars Jack Palance and Oliver Reed, it might well be worth tracking down. Holy Hextor! This has all the potential to be awesome (in a campy way)!

Thing with the BOOK series is, though, the first few entries are clearly aiming at satirizing genre fiction, and poke fun at especially the (then apparently very popular) genre of sci-fi erotica of the sort that Andrew Offutt used to write on a monthly base. Later on, that satirical/"meta" edge gets lost, though - I skipped everything from about book five to fifteen, and when I re-entered the series it seemed it had turned into the kind of literature that it initially had tried to lampoon.

- That said, not a "bad" read; tacky, very tacky, but not "incompetent". There are certainly worse options within the genre to spend time on.


Also: Have you seen this?! John Carter, coming back with a bang, it seems!

Looks pretty cool!