Close to 25 years ago, a friend and I did a similar gag, but for Pern novels. We dropped these flyers off at various cons in the southeast. Word was McCaffrey got a good laugh out of it.
9 Likes
Like others who have replied, I liked reading them in my late teens until they got grody. The houseplant spoof is spot-on. I couldnāt believe what a downer that was!
After reading one of the early novels, I had a sudden flash of memory. The two major plot hooks that the novel had used had come straight out of an A.E. Van Vogt short story that I had read a couple of weeks earlier. I remember that one of them was placing a sharpened piece of spring steel, bent and tied with string inside of a hunk of meat as a way of stopping a predator. Once the string dissolves, the ravening beast has indigestion. I canāt recall the other idea, but I was deeply bothered to find that Normanās book included both from the earlier story.
Iām not sure why I still remember this, but it probably has something to do with having to look up the story in the days before the internetsā¦
1 Like
Surprisingly, thatās exactly how Iād imagine him to be.
3 Likes
I work in a library-related field, and one time we received part of a large collection of science-fiction and fantasy books. I was really hoping Iād be able to help process them through our system, but I work mostly with French academic titles, and we were heavily backlogged. But finally, one late afternoon, I had a window of opportunity! Unfortunately the SF project was nearing its end. I picked a random box - and it had 15 Gor books in it. One of my co-workers dropped by, who had read tons of SF, to grin sympathetically at my plight. After a little while, another co-worker came over to see what the fuss was about. It was difficult to explain the full horror to him. Finally I said, āLook - take any one of these books, open it at random, and start reading. See how long it takes you to find something that sounds like a bondage or slavery reference.ā Incredulous, he did so. It took about eight seconds - he looked away and rolled his eyes, snapped the book shut and handed it back as fast as he could.
Anyway, that first co-worker remarked at the time, āYou know, you can make almost any title sound ridiculously over-the-top and dramatic by adding āā¦OF GOR!ā to the end of it.ā After seeing this BoingBoing article - Yup, he was completely right. 
5 Likes
Hmm. āhat of gorā is interestingā¦
I find it interesting that the āhat of goreā cover features an actual fedora, rather than a trillby, which is the had the douches are most famous for wearing, and always refer to incorrectly as a fedora.
1 Like
Mostly, itās because people are still having a hard time accepting that games are as much an art form as any other creative product.
1 Like
The Sword of Truth series is actually significantly less bad, if you can overlook the veiled misogyny and not remotely veiled ayn-rand worship.
Gor isnāt crappy fantasy novel bad, itās crappy pornographic-conan-fanfic-written-by-an-MRA bad.
5 Likes
Well, Iām already assuming itās bad. Iām just wondering if itās also funny. Looking at the book titles, it appears that Gor is overstocked with low fantasy tropes but lacking in everything else.
Games donāt really have to be art in order for there to be āgames journalismā. Any subculture can generate news, and reporting on that news makes people journalists. There are, in fact, āmusic journalistsā and āmovie journalistsā, as well as critics/reviewers.
1 Like
South Dakotans of Pern ??? Thatās embedding a fantasy-land in a fantasy-land. Now, The Corn Palace of Pern or The Corn Palace of Mars makes more senseā¦ [1]*
Large Idiots With Stuffed Dragons on Their Shoulders of Pern without the Pern, I think this has seen a resurgence, latelyā¦
* Today only, for a limited time, I am putting some links into brackets. Because: reason.
1 Like
Has anybody brought up this afwul thing yet?
I started to watch it on Netflix, once. Started. Once. And before I had ever heard of Gor.
Ugh.
Watching the film dubbed in Hungarian improves it a bit.
For non-Hungarian speakers, anyway.
2 Likes
Also handy with other peopleās porn anthologies if you want to see what really gets them offāitās the ur-browser history. (Not that, er, Iāve ever done this. I totally respect everyoneās privacy! Honest!)
2 Likes
OH MY GOD NO Ā
2 Likes
Iāve seen it, and itās unremarkably bad. Not even in a good way. Generic 80s fantasy set on the planet of the pant-less people. The highlight of the film is that the main characterās name is āTarlā.
1 Like
Thatās because heās not a douche he is a barbarian master.
4 Likes
Featuring a future Gladiator and a Page 3 girl!
Ya know, Iām kinda hoping thatās a suppository.
Second Life has far more than sex in it, but there is a lot of creepy behaviour, not just the Gorean sort, in the places where the sex is commonplace. And it gets the headlines. The early Gor books seemed to have better history behind them, and āGorā in Second Life has some well-made ancient/medieval buildings and props. Since Second Life is built on user-created content, and the marketplace has an age-related filter system you can avoid the blatantly sexual. Gorean or not.
Unfortunately, the sex gets the headlines and attracts customers, so it is never going to go away. I prefer the weekly dance at NCI South.
Itās a Turkish dub, actuallyā¦
