Read-Along-A-Gor: ‘Fighting Slave of Gor’ by John Norman

 

 

So, what’s this, you say, with the probing insight I have long come to expect from my lovely readers? Well, it’s a sort of book club, or ‘read-along-a-Gor’ in which I, your humble narrator, re-read, chapter by chapter, one of the earliest Gor novels I bought as a precocious teenager, and discuss the stylistic flourishes, tropes and things that make the book work (or not). Along the way I’ll point out what Mr Norman does that is good, and what he does that isn’t necessarily so good, and you’ll get an idea how I craft my style into a sort of pastiche of his works, but also how I subvert some of the central concepts.

 

The novel we’re reading is book 14, published in 1980 by DAW in America, and reprinted shortly afterwards in the UK in 1981: ‘Fighting Slave of Gor’. I’ve chosen that book because I have fond memories of it, and I seem to recall a few of you do too. It’s also set in Vonda, which links in to the current Simon and Cassandra tale, and features some strong female characters, whom I’ll discuss in detail when we meet them. It’s also quite unique in the Gor series, in that free women play an important role and it makes clear how they maintain and use silk slaves for their own pleasure. This is something that the Tarl Cabot and PoV slave narrated books tends to gloss over. I’ll be examining the themes of female domination over male silk slaves, and how this stands out from the usual male domination tropes, as we get to the relevant chapters. 

 

If you want (and I would certainly encourage you in doing so) you can pull your own well-worn copy from your book shelf or, if you don’t currently possess a copy, buy one from eBay or AbeBooks and join in, chapter by chapter, with comments as this read-along progresses. If there’s just a deathly silence, I’ll probably end up sulking with only a bucket of sugary baklava for comfort. 

 

Beat up reading copies are plentiful and cheap enough. And as you can see from the photo, mine (tastefully photographed lying on a back drop of one of my bedtime silk chemises!) isn’t exactly in *ahem* ‘Near Mint’ condition. 

 

By the time Fighting Slave was published, I believe Mr Norman was at the height of his popularity, and his books were displayed prominently in most book stores. For the time they were BIG books with thick spines. I have somewhere (I tried finding it, but gave up after seven minutes of half-assed looking) a vintage SF magazine (possibly called Future?) from the period that actually has a full page ad for this book, suggesting the publisher had a decent promotional budget for the Gor series. “John Norman Gors us again!’ was the tag line over the cover art. All this is from memory as I have no idea where the wretched thing is. There’s probably a cat sitting on it. And the ad made a thing about how it was ‘that year’s’ Gor book, because by then the Gor books were an annual event (at least). 

 

Norman’s popularity at the time is also underlined by the fact that (in the UK at least) this book was available as a hardback. To my knowledge (aside from some of the very early ones) only Kajira of Gor got the same treatment during the initial 24 book run that saw print in the UK (we never got Magicians of Gor published over here).

 

It was also the point where the slavery tropes were in full swing, but before they became so entrenched that they nudged out the actual story telling. I’ll be curious to review exactly how much of the philosophical ramblings on the ‘true nature’ of the sexes is present in book 14, because that sort of thing must have started creeping in (unwanted) by that time. 

 

The UK cover features the typical airbrush art of the seventies with Jason standing defiant in his chains, all manly muscles and tidy side parted disco era hair, not to mention obligatory sword and sorcery nappy about his loins, as a beautiful slave girl (Beverly Henderson) kneels at his feet on a dais, her neck chain and wrist chains relaxed in contrast to the way Jason strains at his own. She wears those cute, decorative, metal breast covers that you often saw on these kind of paperback covers, obscuring any hint of a nipple. The UK Gor font is dynamically present on the top third of the book and evokes all that Prog Rock lettering of 1970s album covers by artists like Roger Dean. I’ve always felt the UK editions nailed it with the font style for the titles, in comparison with the American versions. In the background are various alien looking beasts and architecture plodding from left to right. The back cover reads:

 

‘Enter the turbulent and barbarous realms of Gor, Earth’s dark twin planet, alien domain of Masters, Mistresses and slaves, governed by the ruthless whims of a corrupt aristocracy. A society in which captive slaves are used as nameless fighting toys in the brutal entertainments of their rulers.

 

Into this world is thrown Jason Marshall, the first male of Earth to be brought to Gor as a slave. He is swiftly and harshly trained as a kajirus, a warrior slave bound to serve the magnificent ruling caste of Gor. As silk-slave and gladiator to the Lady Florence of Vonda he proves his worth, fighting for her honour, his freedom, and for the dark-haired slave of Oneander of Var.’

 

It’s interesting to see how the blurb emphasises a ‘corrupt aristocracy’ and ‘brutal… rulers’ which doesn’t necessarily represent the actual themes or plots of Norman’s writing. It also suggests that a ‘kajirus’ is a ‘warrior slave’ when of course it is a generic term for any male slave. It also plays up the trope (popular in the sixties and seventies) of the male slave-gladiator fighting for the honour of a beautiful female who owns him, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Lady Florence is some damsel in distress that Jason champions and falls in love with. 

 

Not quite.

 

The seventies (certainly the early seventies) enjoyed a surge of soft porn slavery/adventure books, replete with full blown bondage scenes, many of them published by New English Library, and many of them revolving around either Roman era slavery or Deep South, pre-Civil War, plantation slavery. They all had lurid covers (see below). The Gor books tapped into this vein, but as the genre died out, Norman’s books carried on regardless. And none of these books were tucked away onto 'erotica top shelves’ but rather neatly filed in amongst the SF and adventure sections of a bookshop. 

 

Next time around, we crack open the cover and delve into chapter one: ‘The Restaurant; The Cab’ where we are introduced to Jason Marshall and Miss Beverly Henderson of New York, Earth, and discuss how and why they encapsulate the familiar tropes of the John Norman Earth man and woman.