John Norman
John Norman , actually John Frederick Lange Jr. , (born June 3, 1931 in Chicago , Illinois ) is an American writer and philosopher . The focus of his work lies in the genres of fantasy and science fiction .
Life
Norman received his bachelor's degree from the University of Nebraska in 1953 and his MA in 1957 from the University of Southern California . In 1963 he earned a doctorate from Princeton University and long taught philosophy at Queens College in New York . The title of his dissertation is "In defense of ethical naturalism : an examination of certain aspects of naturalistic fallacy , with particular attention to the logic of an open question argument ". In addition to his academic career, he was a high school spokesperson and editor for KOLN in Lincoln , later also as a film writer for the University of Nebraska and material analyst for Warner Bros. and editor for Rocketdyne . His novels reach international editions of several million copies. He has been married since 1956 and has three children.
plant
The entire work of the writer reflects his view of the relationship between male dominance and female submission . Here, Norman mainly uses fantasy and science fiction scenarios to represent his individual view of D / S ( dominance and submission ). His characteristic writing style is kept simple, very descriptive, and often rambling. These digressions were often shortened in the translations in order to streamline the plot and at the same time to escape indexing .
Novels
The Gor cycle
In his writing, Norman devotes himself almost exclusively to the Gor cycle, in which events on the planet Gor, the counter- earth , are described, a planet that is in orbit with the earth , but is exactly opposite it and therefore because of the intervening ones Sun cannot be seen from there. The ruling society on Gor is shaped by cultural elements from bygone worlds. The most striking feature of Norman's Gor novels is the detailed description of slavery in addition to the ancient character of the culture . In some volumes, Norman describes male slavery as a first-person narrator, but more often it is about the subjugation of women, who are often kidnapped from earth to introduce a novel and taken to Gor by spaceship and their experiences there are then described, with the World of humans obeys archaic principles on Gor and space travel or the like does not play a role there. However, this world is ruled by the insectoid race of the Priest- Kings, who have the latest technology and disc-shaped spaceships. Their nest is under the Sardar Mountains in northern Gor. Their constant opponents are the furry Kurii (singular: Kur), whose own homeworld has been destroyed, and who are now looking for a new home with their huge spaceships, the Steelworlds, and who want to take control of both Gor and Earth . Both Priest-Kings and Kurii hardly appear themselves, but remain in secret and use Goreans and humans as agents for their intrigues and battles. The earth serves both to enslave young women, as these " barbarians " make excellent slaves in their eyes. Therefore, on Gor one very often encounters slaves who originally came from Earth.
The Priest-Kings do not allow other beings on Gor to use any aircraft, communications equipment, or modern weapons for their own safety. Common are therefore swords , bows and arrows , spears , etc., and as most modern weapon, the crossbow . Similar to ancient Greece or Rome, people on Gor live in city-states that repeatedly wage war with one another. They are organized in castes such as warriors, doctors, house builders or "knowledgeable" people, but also farmers, slave traders and metal workers. Warriors are the highest caste with a very sophisticated code of honor . Much of the economy and society is based on slavery, which also affects men but mainly women. Anyone can be enslaved at any time if he cannot defend himself against it or is protected by stronger people. Anyone who has once been a slave allegedly can no longer return to a free life, but that is exactly what Norman's books do again and again (exclusively for men). The Goreans love their world and its nature, they make sure that it is not exploited or polluted. Earthlings / Terrans entering Gor for the first time are particularly noticeable about the fresh air and cleanliness.
Most of the books, beginning with the first volume, tell from the perspective of Tarl Cabot, a native of England who is kidnapped to the other earth Gor and meets his missing father there. He is trained as a warrior and learns to understand the Gorean way of life. In the largest city of Ar, he takes the daughter of the reigning Ubar Marlenus, Talena, both as a slave and a wife (No. 1). The Priest-Kings transport him back to earth, however, whereby he loses Talena again. After his return to Gor, the search for Talena takes up several volumes. It also explains how the manuscripts of at least the first volumes come into earthly hands and can be published. John Norman claims that it was Tarl Cabot himself who recorded his experiences and that Gor really existed. Later, Tarl Cabot is drawn into the war between Priest-Kings and Kurii when the city of his father Ko-ro-ba is destroyed by the Priest-Kings (No. 2). The purpose of this is that Cabot sets out to visit the Priest-Kings, which he actually does, and thus is introduced to the secret of the Kurii and recruited to fight against them. Cabot is the only person to get to know her nest in the mountains and befriends the Priest-King Misk (No. 3).
In each case a framework story summarizes several volumes, first the search for Talena, then the war against the Kurii, and later the war between Ar and Cos. After Tarl Cabot was once the prisoner and slave of a woman, which he regards as a betrayal of his warrior honor, he adopts the new identity of the privateer captain Bosk in the port city of Port Kar, which is very similar to Venice (No. 6). He later kept this name, but also appears again as Tarl (Cabot), Port Kar, however, remains his hometown. Together with the slave trader Samos he takes on orders for the priest-kings. Even when he renounced the Priest-Kings, he continued to fight the aggressive monsters all over Gor. He enters various areas of Gor, from civilized cities to steppes, sandy deserts, jungles to the polar ice, and describes their respective peculiarities and inhabitants who are very similar to their earthly counterparts.
Between the Tarl Cabot volumes, individual characters with other main characters are always embedded, with Cabot occasionally appearing in the background as a minor character. These are either the female slave novels (Nos. 7, 11, 19 and 22) or the three books about Jason Marshall (Nos. 14-16), who like Cabot is kidnapped from earth, but first of all enslaved and his own Has to laboriously fight for freedom and his place on Gor.
Norman's writing style, which is sometimes criticized by his followers as too simple and too rambling (this is also a parallel to Karl May), is secondary to his description of a world with rules that are clearly different from the usual here for a large part of the readership . The fantasy world he describes with simple, authoritarian structures is simple. The power structures he describes, which take place there between free and unfree people, attract a lot of attention in the BDSM scene (although Gor is more to be viewed as D / S, dominance and submission), and his works are often interpreted accordingly and taken as the basis for a “virtual get-together” on the Internet.
In 1966 the first volume Tarnsman of Gor was published (published in German under the title "Gor - Die Gegenerde" or "Der Krieger").
The Gor cycle currently comprises the following volumes:
| tape | German title (year of publication) | ISBN (German-language first or new edition) | English title (year of publication) | annotation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gor - die Gegenerde (1973) or The Warrior (2007) | ISBN 3-453-30762-3 , ISBN 3-935706-30-8 | Tarnsman of Gor (1966) | |
| 2 | The Outlaw of Gor (1973) and The Outlaw (2008) | ISBN 3-453-30834-4 , ISBN 3-935706-31-6 | Outlaw of Gor (1967) | |
| 3 | The Priest-Kings of Gor (1974) and The Priest-Kings (2008) | ISBN 3-453-30869-7 , ISBN 3-935706-36-7 | Priest Kings of Gor (1969) | |
| 4th | The nomads of Gor (1974) and the nomads (2009) | ISBN 3-453-30876-X , ISBN 3-935706-44-8 | Nomads of Gor (1969) | |
| 5 | Assassin of Gor (1974) and The Assassin (2010) | ISBN 3-453-30884-0 , ISBN 3-935706-47-2 | Assassins of Gor (1970) | |
| 6th | The Pirate City of Gor (1975) or The Pirates (2011) | ISBN 3-453-30951-0 , ISBN 3-935706-50-2 | Raiders of Gor (1971) | |
| 7th | Slave on Gor (1975) and The Slave (2011) | ISBN 3-453-31043-8 , ISBN 3-935706-52-9 | Captive of Gor (1972) | |
| 8th | The Hunters of Gor (1975) and The Hunters (2012) | ISBN 3-453-31071-3 | Hunters of Gor (1974) | |
| 9 | The Marauders of Gor (1976/85) and The Marauders (2012) | ISBN 3-453-31126-4 | Marauders of Gor (1975) | |
| 10 | The tribal warriors of Gor (1977/85) and The Tahari (2013) | ISBN 3-453-30453-5 | Tribesmen of Gor (1976) | |
| 11 | In slave chains on Gor (1978) and the slave girl (2016) | ISBN 3-453-11936-3 , ISBN 978-3-935706-95-7 | Slave Girl of Gor (1977) | |
| 12 | The Beasts of Gor (1982) and The Beasts (2016) | ISBN 3-453-30761-5 , ISBN 978-3-935706-97-1 | Beasts of Gor (1978) | |
| 13 | The Explorers of Gor (1984) and The Explorers (2018) | ISBN 3-453-30987-1 , ISBN 978-3-935706-02-5 | Explorers of Gor (1979) | |
| 14th | Battle slave on Gor (1984) or Der Kampfsklave (2019) | ISBN 3-453-31061-6 , ISBN 978-3-947816-00-2 | Fighting Slave of Gor (1980) | |
| 15th | The Rogue of Gor (1984) | ISBN 3-453-31110-8 | Rogue of Gor (1981) | |
| 16 | The Bodyguard of Gor (1985) | ISBN 3-453-31145-0 | Guardsman of Gor (1981) | |
| 17th | The Savages of Gor (1985) | ISBN 3-453-31168-X | Savages of Gor (1982) | |
| 18th | The Blood Brothers of Gor (1985) | ISBN 3-453-31203-1 | Blood Brothers of Gor (1982) | |
| 19th | Kajira of Gor (1985) | ISBN 3-453-31258-9 | Kajira of Gor (1983) | |
| 20th | The Players of Gor (1995) | ISBN 3-453-08714-3 | Players of Gor (1984) | |
| 21st | The Mercenaries of Gor (1998) | ISBN 3-453-09488-3 | Mercenaries of Gor (1985) | |
| 22nd | The Dancer (2009) | ISBN 3-935706-40-5 | Dancer of Gor (1985) | |
| 23 | The traitors of Gor (1997) | ISBN 3-453-11953-3 | Renegades of Gor (1986) | |
| 24 | The Vagabonds of Gor (1997) | ISBN 3-453-13346-3 | Vagabonds of Gor (1987) | |
| 25th | The Wizards of Gor (1998) | ISBN 3-453-14927-0 | Magicians of Gor (1988) | |
| 26th | The Witness (2014) | ISBN 3-935706-84-7 | Witness of Gor (2001) | |
| 27 | The price of Gor (so far no German-language edition) | Prize of Gor (2008) | ||
| 28 | Kur von Gor (so far no German language edition) | Kur of Gor (Nov 2009) | ||
| 29 | Swordsman of Gor (so far no German-language edition) | Swordsmen of Gor (Dec 2010) | ||
| 30th | Seafarers of Gor (so far no German-language edition) | Mariners of Gor (Sept 2011) | ||
| 31 | Conspirators of Gor (so far no German-language edition) | Conspirators of Gor (July 2012) | ||
| 32 | Gor smuggler (no German language edition yet) | Smugglers of Gor (November 2012) | ||
| 33 | Rebels of Gor (so far no German-language edition) | Rebels of Gor (October 2013) | ||
| 34 | Victims of Gor (so far no German-language edition) | Plunder of Gor (August 2016) | ||
| 35 | Hunted by Gor (so far no German-language edition) | Quarry of Gor (June 2019) |
The first two volumes were filmed. The content of the two productions, however, differed greatly from that of the books.
Norman's style aims primarily to break American taboos and thus to describe other compulsive situations such as bondage, forced nudity and sex as well as corporal punishment in addition to a person's lack of freedom. For him, the real lack of freedom lies in the social conventions of the earth, which compulsorily equalize men and women, which is contrary to their true nature. The two-way relationships in his novels mostly dissolve in a happy ending , in which the submissive and the dominant main character happily start a life together. Men, even if they were caught or even enslaved in the course of the book, always end up being masters, while women basically end up as slaves. Only in these roles, which Norman describes as the only natural ones, can they be happy. (Gorean role-players orientate themselves on these person descriptions and try to live them in the context of BDSM .)
The US reissue of the Gor series in the late 1960s / early 1970s by Ballantine Books was illustrated by Boris Vallejo .
Since submission with sexual motives was repeatedly described in the books, the Federal Testing Office for writings harmful to minors has repeatedly placed volumes from the cycle on the index , for example Die Wilden von Gor and Kajira von Gor . In the German editions of the volumes, Heyne-Verlag has already shortened approx. 45% of the original text, including all harder passages. Nevertheless, these “defused” works were often indexed shortly after publication. Later editions therefore cut even more to avoid indexing and to tighten the plot, so that the books became shorter and shorter. Interested German readers therefore often switch to the English-language original editions.
Since 1989, many publishers have refused to continue the series. That is why some American fans of the Gor books founded the publishing house “World of Gor” in 2001 , through which John Norman was able to publish “Witness of Gor” . The publisher had to file for bankruptcy in 2004.
Very few copies of some Heyne editions have survived, as some of their editions have been destroyed due to the indexing that has since been canceled. These achieve collector prices of up to over € 100. New publications in German failed for a long time due to Heyne-Verlag, which owned the rights and did not want to publish them, but at the same time was not interested in a new edition of its own. An authentic representation of the Gorean understanding of D / s has therefore only been available in German since the uncensored and uncensored new editions of the Basilisk Verlag. Since 2007, this publisher has been issuing a complete new German edition of the Gor cycle in an unabridged new translation, which will also include volumes 22, 26, 27 and 28 that have not yet been published in Germany. Up to February 2019, 16 volumes of this new edition had been published (volumes 1 to 14 as well as 22 and 26). For the third volume of this new edition, John Norman wrote an exclusive foreword for German readers.
Telnarian Histories
The Telnarian Histories published since 1991 are a series in the tradition of hard science fiction , enriched with the philosophy of the author. The series has been repeatedly criticized for its content deviating from the well-known baseline of the writer. The series has been published in German by Basilisk Verlag since spring 2012.
It consists of the following volumes:
- The Chieftain (1991) - The Chief (2012) ISBN 978-3-935706-53-7
- The Captain (1992) - The Captain (2015) ISBN 978-3-935706-92-6
- The King (1993) - The King (2017) ISBN 978-3-935706-01-8
- The Usurper (2015)
Short story collection
The short story collection Normans Invasions ISBN 0-7592-9577-8 was published in 2009 . A varied collection of stories that brings together all previously unpublished items, including a handful of directly Gor-related pieces and several stories that address Gor-like female slavery and submission.
Some stories are SF, some are horror, others can be classified as "mainstream". Among the characters in the various stories are frogs, independently thinking computers, quite a number of philosophers, and a number of clinical psychologists or psychiatrists. A bizarre mix. The fans will probably appreciate the Gor stories included. However, this collection gives a delightful overview of the thinking of John Norman over many years of his work and is by no means boring to read. A German version is currently not available.
Historical fiction
- Time Slave (1975)
- Ghost Dance (1979)
- The Totems of Abydos (2012)
Non-fiction
- Imaginative Sex , (1974)
The handbook, first published in 1974, describes the importance of the mental and spiritual aspect of sexual intercourse. Norman describes this connection using the typical scenarios of male dominance. The manual consists largely of detailed role-play scenarios between a single man and a single woman. In contrast to the Gor series, he repeatedly and emphatically emphasizes the need for BDSM to always be based on Safe, Sane, Consensual . Though the Sex Guide was considered groundbreaking at the time of its publication, Norman has subsequently been criticized for his one-sided view of male dominance and female submission in relation to the development of sexual spirituality.
In 1997, Masquerade Press published a new edition with a foreword by Pat Califia .
- Dissertation: In Defense of Ethical Naturalism: An Examination of Certain Aspects of the Naturalistic Fallacy, With Particular Attention to the Logic of an Open Question Argument. (1963)
- The Cognitivity Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Claims of Philosophy , (1970), Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-07159-4 .
- The Philosophy of Historiography (2010) [as John Lange], ISBN 1-61756-130-4
- Philosophy and the Challenge of the Future (2012) [as John Lange], ISBN 1-61756-733-7
literature
- Jeffrey M. Elliot: Size is my goal. An interview with John Norman, aka John Lange, the author of the GOR novels. In: Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): The Science Fiction Year 1986. Heyne, ISBN 3-453-31233-3 , pp. 326–347.
Remarks
- In the area of BDSM, the GOR series developed into a subculture in which the scenario described is used in role play.
- In 2006, in Darlington , UK , police officers discovered a BDSM group who basically lived their lives based on the Gor novels and called themselves Kaotians . The group distanced himself earlier in the media of Britain's much more widespread Goreans (Engl. Goreans ), which are directly related to the work of Norman.
- For the role-playing game Ultima Online, there were two freeshards named UOPortKar and World of Goreans , which made it possible to act virtually in a Gor-based environment.
- Hundreds of virtual environments for role-playing for those interested in GOR can also be found in Second Life , or here: https://www.counterearthgrid.com/ where appropriate accessories (clothing, slave positions, etc.) for the avatars are also available for purchase. It is the largest Second Life RP community. RP training and various lectures and discussions (including Gorean Campus) are also offered for players. There are also libraries with documents on practically all subjects in the Gor world. Extensive role-playing games can extend over several months. The virtual world of Gor is divided into different language areas. So there is the largest selection of game environments for English-speaking players. But there are also play areas for German players (largely based on the Heyne books), French players, Spanish players, Russian players, etc. Here you have to consider that not all books are published in the different languages, so the level of knowledge of the players is very different. In contrast to Secondlife, Counterarth is almost free as long as you don't need your own land (Sim). The functions are the same and the game structure is similar.
- Various role-playing events have taken place in recent years. So there was the game series Abduction to Gor in the English-speaking area . Here, with a lot of effort, corresponding kidnapping passages in the books were recreated and completed with additional acts. The places on earth varied. There were trips to the USA, Russia, Brazil, Canada and France. There are also slave dance contests, kaissa games (Gorean chess), Tsar (another board game), Gorean streaming radio programs, poetry competitions, and much more. A very lively and creative community.
- In 2009, various GOR role players from Second Life published a collection of short stories in book form under the title "Three Moons and the Southern Cross". The publisher Thor Tracer announced a competition in 2008. Anyone could submit a short story and present it within Second Life. The stories ultimately published were selected by the players by choice.
- After Norman had already participated in several World Science Fiction Conventions , he received an unfounded cancellation for the 59th Convention in 2001 in Philadelphia. Norman responded with an open letter to the organizing committee accusing him of open discrimination against his work.
Film adaptations
- 1988: Gor (Gor)
- 1989: Outlaw of Gor (Outlaw of Gor)
Web links
- Literature by and about John Norman in the catalog of the German National Library
- John Norman in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (English)
- John Norman in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- John Norman in the Science Fiction Awards + Database (English)
- Works by and about John Norman at Open Library
- John Norman's Chronicles of Gor
- Gorwiki
- New German translation unabridged and uncensored
- Most important website of the Second Life Gor Community
Individual evidence
- ↑ Indexing decision No. 2681 (V) of September 16, 1986
- ↑ Indexing decision No. 3585 of February 20, 1986
- ↑ cf. BBC News, May 19, 2006, Officers discover sex-slave cult
- ↑ The Book for Christmas - from the Gor RP. Retrieved August 26, 2016 .
- ↑ cf. October 14, 2001, Open Letter
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Norman, John |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Lange, John Frederick Jr. (real name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American writer and philosopher |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 3, 1931 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Chicago , Illinois , United States |