The Emma of Gor Trilogy: An Introduction

The 'Emma of Gor' trilogy is a series of fan-fiction books set on John Norman's Counter Earth world of Gor. Chronologically speaking, they occur in the following order:

What Remains of Rebecca Palmer Chapter Thirteen

 

Chapter Thirteen: Leonard

 

The file came up late in the morning, just before I was going to head to the cafeteria for lunch, and so I almost closed it without thinking. 

 

Ellory, Mara.

Age: 17

Inner Party 

Transfer Origin: Ravenscourt Hall.

Compliance Index: 6.4 (volatile trend).

 

I stopped breathing for a moment as I read the name, Ravenscourt. The word sat on the screen as if it had weight, and I told myself it was simply coincidence. My old school. I didn’t know anyone called Mara Ellory, but it was my old school, and she would have been a few years behind me. The system processed hundreds of monitoring updates every single day. It didn’t mean anything significant.

 

I scrolled down and saw a list of petty offences that slowly built up over time into a profile of a young woman with a wild, rebellious streak. Each point of inflection registered a score, and bit by bit the score built up. 

 

Cafeteria non-response to supervisory prompt.

Dormitory light-out breach — 00:19 hours.

Counselling notation: affective detachment.

Passive-aggressive response to New Feminism

Unorthodox approach to school uniform regulations

Baseline cortisol variance elevated.

 

It was nothing, but it was also everything, because I knew now how this worked. I knew the thresholds. The Purge instigated by the vengeful Frick family hadn’t stopped with me, my father, and my mother. There were eyes everywhere now – especially in a boarding school for the precocious daughters of Inner Party members who had been seen to be loyal to Karl Magnus. A sustained score above 6.5 combined with a resistance marker triggered a Reclassification Review. And Reclassification led ultimately to Relocation Assessment.

 

And Relocation meant ‘does not come back’.

What Remains of Rebecca Palmer Chapter Twelve

 

Chapter Twelve: Voight-Kampff

 

I stepped into the assessment room, and for a moment the stark utility of Chastity Reach fell away. The room had been deliberately softened, almost prettified, in the way one might arrange a consultation suite to calm a nervous patient rather than interrogate a worker. Pale beech panelling lined the walls, broken only by a single long expanse of reinforced glass that stretched the entire length of one side. Beyond it lay the wild, windswept landscape of the Isle of Jura - now renamed Chastity Reach - its dark, sullen moors rolling toward jagged sea cliffs under a bruised Autumnal sky. Thin sunlight silvered the heather and caught on distant whitecaps. It was the first real view of the outside world I had been permitted in over a month; my usual workstations sat deep in the complex, lit by artificial panels and pierced only by narrow arrow-slits for security. The sudden breadth of landscape hit me like cold air after confinement, beautiful and disorienting.

 

Two low armchairs faced each other across a small, round table of polished oak. On it rested a plain ceramic teapot, two cups, a small dish of shortbread, and a single white orchid in a glass vase - subtle touches meant to signal civility, safety, routine. A soft wool throw lay folded over the back of one chair. The lighting was warm, indirect, from recessed fixtures rather than the harsh fluorescents of the corridors. Nothing in the furnishings shouted surveillance, yet I knew better. Dr. Fenella Voss rose as I entered. She was younger than I had expected, with long, wavy dark brown hair that cascaded past her shoulders in soft, voluminous waves, and a deep side part that gave it an effortless elegance. Her skin was fair and smooth, and her makeup was subtle but polished - rosy lips, defined brows, and just enough eyeliner to make her striking blue-green eyes stand out even more behind those stylish black rectangular glasses. They had a slight cat-eye tilt that suited her oval face perfectly.

What Remains of Rebecca Palmer Chapter Eleven

 

Chapter Eleven: Surveillance State

 

The days turned into weeks and those turned into a whole month. 

 

I became… acclimatised. 

 

For most of the day I’d been reviewing the routine surveillance files on my primary assignment - Dr. Eleanor Vale - that sat waiting for me each morning like an early Christmas present begging to be unwrapped. It was like a regular window into her life, and a window to the world outside of Chastity Reach, off the coast of Scotland. I was becoming fascinated with Dr. Vale’s daily life. 

 

I drank my body weight in coffee as I flicked between the reports, audio files, location flags, and transcript downloads that filled out the Eleanor Vale file each day. I nibbled my lower lip and glanced around the wide office, seeing all the other women like me, similarly dressed, gazing at their own terminals, listening to audio files through their earpieces. No one spoke to one another except in passing by the coffee machine, and even then we were aware we could be overheard. My fingers fluttered over the keyboard. Files sprang open for me. 

 

DEVICE HARVEST — SUMMARY (PREVIOUS 24 HOURS)

 

Email Traffic: 42 inbound, 17 outbound. Notable correspondents: two university colleagues, one literary editor, one unknown encrypted address (flagged for investigation).

 

Content themes: lecture revision, book proof corrections, interview scheduling.

 

I always opened the encrypted exchanges first. They were always the most intriguing. This time the message exchange was short and ambiguous:

 

“They’re escalating their tone. Be careful with phrasing this week.”

 

Vale’s reply simply read, “I’m aware. I won’t give them theatre.”

 

I flagged the exchange for narrative reframing: Secretive communications/paranoia indicators, that sort of thing. I was actually getting good at this. The Steel Worlds would be proud of me. 

What Remains of Rebecca Palmer Chapter Ten

 

Chapter Ten: Target Acquisition

 

The studio lights were soft enough to flatter, and bright enough to expose. I watched from my workstation in Sector 4, the broadcast split across my screen alongside live sentiment metrics and engagement graphs. Comments scrolled in real time beneath the video feed, all flagged and colour-coded for my ease of understanding.

 

On screen, Dr. Eleanor Vale sat with the easy composure of someone long accustomed to public scrutiny. She wore tailored dark slacks paired with a sharp navy jacket over a simple white blouse, the lines of her outfit precise without being ostentatious. The jacket was structured but unadorned, signalling professionalism rather than vanity. On her feet were modest heels - practical, elegant, and understated. Her jewellery was minimal: small stud earrings and a fine, almost invisible necklace at her collarbone. Her hair, chestnut brown and cut to shoulder length, was styled in a smooth, professional blow-dry that framed her face without distraction. Everything about her presentation suggested discipline and clarity - nothing superfluous, nothing accidental.

 

Opposite her, Marianne Holt – the public voice of New Feminism in the UK - presented a carefully curated vision of mid-century domestic grace. She wore a pale blue dress patterned with neat white polka dots, cinched at the waist and flaring softly at the skirt in unmistakable 1950s fashion. The fabric sat primly at the knee, modest and demure, as though lifted from another era’s catalogue. Around her neck rested a single strand of pearls, matched with pearl earrings that caught the studio lights when she turned her head. Her blonde hair was styled in a sculpted, vintage wave, swept back and pinned into a polished half-up arrangement that evoked the golden age of televised homemaking. The look was immaculate - every curl set in place, every detail deliberate. Her warm smile completed the tableau, reassuring at first glance, though held just a fraction too long to feel entirely natural.

 

Between them, Fiona Bruce, the BBC moderator, smiled. “Tonight,” she began smoothly, “we’re discussing the growing influence of New Feminism and whether it represents a cultural correction or a step backward for women.”

 

She turned first to Holt. “Mrs. Holt, I’ll begin by asking you, is New Feminism restricting women’s freedom?”

What Remains of Rebecca Palmer Chapter Nine

 

Chapter Nine: The Kajira

 

Several Years Ago:

 

I was fifteen years old, going on sixteen, when my father showed me a kajira for the first time. Julia and I were enjoying a half term break from Ravenscourt school for girls and were trying to relax from the stress of our upcoming exams. 

 

The Manor, as Father always called it, or Chessington Grange, as the postman knew it, was a sprawling 18th-century pile deep in the Wiltshire countryside, with its high ceilings, polished oak floors, and walls lined with portraits of stern ancestors who had no idea what secrets their descendants would keep. The air smelled of beeswax polish and the faint lavender from Mother's sachets, but today there was something else - a subtle, unfamiliar perfume, like exotic spices from one of Father's hidden shipments. Julia was beside me, her arm linked through mine, her usual bubbly energy subdued into wide-eyed curiosity. We had been summoned here after lunch, and just before we were due to play tennis, Father saying it was time for us to ‘understand more about the worlds we serve’. Coming of age, he called it. We'd grown up hearing whispers about Gor, of course - the hidden planet, and the Steel Worlds orbiting the Jupiter belt, where our benevolent patrons, the Kurii suffered in exile, but much of it was abstract, like stories from one of those forbidden books in the library. Until now.

 

Father sat in his favourite wingback chair by the fireplace, the one with the carved lions' heads on the arms, looking every inch the Inner Party elite in his tailored suit, hair impeccably combed, a glass of single malt in his hand. His eyes, sharp and calculating as always, flicked to us with a nod. "Come in, girls. Rebecca, Julia – please sit. There's someone I want you to meet."

What Remains of Rebecca Palmer Chapter Eight

 

Chapter Eight: Chastity Reach

I stood out on the open deck when the ferry rounded the last shoulder of the Isle of Jura, off the rugged west coast of Scotland. The wind came at us sideways, sharp and wet, driving the rain in needling sheets that found every gap in my coat. It tasted bitterly of salt and iron. The sea below was slate-dark and restless, slamming against the hull with a rhythm that felt less like travel and more like warning. I gripped the rail with both hands, knuckles already numb, my short hair plastered to my face as I gazed out at the bleak coastline.

 

No one else stayed out on deck for long. We were all women, all with similar haircuts, wearing the same drab overcoats, and underneath those coats, we wore the same utilitarian, knee-length grey dresses with long sleeves and fold down collars. We had all been processed. 

 

Most of the women had retreated indoors, leaving the deck sparsely populated by the stubborn and the foolish. I told myself I wanted air. I told myself I needed to see where we were going. After having been locked up in a security installation for a couple of months I wanted to breathe clean, fresh air again. 

 

The island rose out of the water ahead of us, bleak and treeless, its hills flattened by cloud. Rain blurred the edges of everything, collapsing distance so that land and sea seemed pressed together, indistinct and hostile. For a moment, I thought the rumours had been exaggerated — that Chastity Reach would be hidden somewhere inland, modest, easily missed.

 

Then I saw it. The complex did not emerge gradually. Rather, it announced itself. A cluster of tall, angular structures clung to the shoreline like a deliberate wound, all concrete and steel, their surfaces darkened by constant exposure to weather. Nothing decorative. Nothing accidental. The buildings were laid out with a cold precision that made the surrounding landscape feel irrelevant, as if the land itself had been pressed into service and stripped of choice. Lights glowed behind narrow windows — white, unwavering, indifferent to the storm. Even from the ferry, they looked clinical. Watchful. I felt something tighten low in my stomach.