How on Earth have I never come across
this website before? Hidden away on the Internet is an illustrated
version of (part of) Kajira of Gor depicting many scenes from the
novel. My thanks to Northern Tracker for bringing this to my
attention in the comments section to chapter 24 of The Slave World.
Kajira of Gor is the 19th
Gor book and tells the story of Miss Tiffany Collins, abducted from
Earth to act as a secret body double for the Tatrix of Corcyrus.
Obviously I haven't had time to go
through it fully (with this many pictures it takes a while to scroll
down on your screen) but it's obviously a painstaking project that
must have taken an incredible amount of time to render. Chloe I think
is going to be very interested in seeing this, as it's the first
example of anyone other than her working on a project of this scale
and magnitude.
According to Northern Tracker the
artist is Japanese and did two versions of the art, these pictures
being the second take – over 150 pieces in total, but other than
that information is scarce. The complete book was illustrated from
beginning to end, but the poster has not been able to locate all the
art, or any of the first version which he says is the best. I would
dearly love to see the rest of the art located and the project
uploaded in its entirety, but there's already plenty here to look at.
The style of the art is reminiscent of
old Hollywood movies from the late fifties/sixties, so if you can
imagine a sexy Gor film made in about 1959, this is kind of what it
would look like. It's a very different stylistic take to the more
common 1970s art of Gor (Achilleos and Vallejo), and some of the
Gorean costumes look like they might be from the cover of 1930s
copies of Weird Tales magazine, but that kind of thing adds to the
period setting charm.
This is most definitely worth checking
out.
If anyone knows more about this
project, the mysterious Japanese artist, or indeed the person who
runs The Gorean Way web page (I can't see any contact details, but
would love to drop him a PM to say hi) let me know.
You can view the page here:
I also came across a section of The Complete John Norman website related to this "bootleg edition" of Kajira of Gor .
ReplyDeletehttp://work.tcjn.info/g19blg01.htm
Mick of Milford
http://work.tcjn.info/g19blg01.htm#
DeleteMick of Milford
I notice this old website page mentions someone called 'Tracker'... is this our very own Northern Tracker? :)
DeleteGuilty
DeleteRegards
Northern Tracker
Emma thanks to you and Northern Tracker for bringing this to our attention. I am not sure I like the way that the Gorean men were depicted, there is something slightly unsettling in showing them as being almost sub-human in appearance. That could just be me, of course.
ReplyDeleteDonna of Dover
It was the tarns and the other beasts, some of which looked like brontosauruses from the Flintstones cartoons that I found disconcerting.
DeleteBest Regards
Northern Tracker
I know what you mean, Mistress. Some of those Goreans do look a bit... well... bestial... It is a very stylised personal take on the world of Gor with some un-Gorean designs (would a free woman really have bare arms?) but I applaud it for the sheer scale and dedication involved.
DeleteEmma the reason you did not know about this project of TheGoreanWay's is that when you went to bed on Friday Night - it DID NOT exist. He dropped the entire project, all 150+ some posts at once late Friday Night my time (7 hours behind London Time). He had all the illustrations for a number of years since I put them up for him in a private Tumblr called Kajira of Japan. (still there but with some pictures hidden because of Tumblr's slapdash censorship).
ReplyDeleteTheGoreanWay works like that. He prepares everything and then drops the entire thing at once. A couple of months ago, after not posting for months, he posted over a hundred Gorean Slave Positions in a few hours, then nothing until this massive project.
I must emphasize all the work of joining picture to extracts from the novel by John Norman is his. It must have taken weeks of non-stop effort.
I truly wish I had not lost the URL of the original website. The Japanese artist had so many projects going, and so much more Gorean material, including sketches of the all the major characters, including the Elder Tarl, Talena, etc.
I am quite pleased that you liked bringing it to your attention. I was not sure that I should be hijacking the comment thread for The Slave World to do so, and likely would not have done so, if it had not been set in your beloved Corcyrus.
Best Regards
Northern Tracker
Does he have other Gor material online? Your comments suggest so but I can't see any sort of index on his page, just the large scroll down post of Kajira of Gor? I haven't managed to get to the end of it yet so don't know if other material exists before it.
DeleteCorcyrus is sort of my 'go to' city as I role-played in it online for many years, long before I started this blog. I had some very fun times in Corcyrus when it was run by the Tatrix Andromache who still runs role-play cities on online Gor to this day, albeit with a different character name.
And the book Kajira of Gor is a favourite of mine. The scene where Tiffany Collins is escorted as a pretend slave-girl to view the slave pens was an inspiration for the slaver house scene in Mistress of Gor with Emma and Seremides.
The right most icon in the top right corner (if viewing as a member) takes you to the archive, a thumbnailed sort of index. At this site it is mostly many many pages of slave positions.
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Northern Tracker
Tal,
ReplyDeleteThis illustration project falls into the category of a "reimagined" Gor, in my opinion. I generally have mixed feelings about reimagined versions of earlier works. This brought to mind a mash-up of the Arabian nights, old sword and sandal films, and retro vintage pulp fiction art.
I agree the men looked creepy and the animals were an incongruous element. The image of "surfing a Tarn" is burned into my memory forever I think :) I was surprised to find I did like Tiffany Collins' Kajira outfits quite a bit.
I certainly respect all the time, effort, talent and imagination that went into the project.
Mick of Milford
It's fair to say it's not the way I imagine Gor to look either, Master, but then *my Gor* is definitely the lurid 1970s Chris Achilleos one. As you say, definitely a re-imagining, and perhaps it reflects the tastes of a Japanese readership 20 years ago. You are absolutely right with your mash-up sources. You can almost imagine how the Gor covers might have looked in say, 1955...
DeleteThe pic shown here (and the one's i remember) i believe to be made with an early version of Poser. At the time there was nowhere like the resources and tòols available today.
ReplyDeleteHaving finally found the time to go through the site my feeling of early Poser art is pretty confirmed (I would guess around 2002 to 2005 ish).
DeleteBack then artists pretty much had to use clothing, hair, props that were available and the tools we have now simply weren't available. For example, a slave tunic that I could create now in less than a day would have take considerably longer back then. That probably accounts for the FW having bare arms :)
Incidentally, I did a count recently and I'll be over the 300 mark for number pictures by the end of Ubara :)