TARNATION :

In Defense of John Norman (Hank Parnell, The Texas Mercury)

Perhaps the best, and certainly most controversial, works of science fiction to have been inspired and influenced by Edgar Rice Burroughs are the novels of a Princeton-educated professor of philosophy and history named John Frederick Lange, who writes under the pseudonym "John Norman."

As Norman, he is the author of the much-derided "Gor" novels, about an earthlike planet on the other side of the sun that exists in a kind of barbaric Greco-Roman splendor, where women are the absolute slaves of men. [...]

There are those who maintain that the first six books of the Gor series, along with Ghost Dance, are the only books Norman wrote that are worth reading. They are certainly the best reads. But over the years I have stuck with Norman. I have many times disagreed with him, and have been exasperated by him, but I have never given up on him, nor shall I. Norman and I not only agree on the biological superiority of the human male over the human female, but Norman is also one of the very few and perhaps only openly Nietzschean science-fiction writer in existence.

To be perfectly honest, Hank Parnell is starting to scare me, but he can be forgiven much for his willingness to treat what is often dismissed as mere pulp fiction with the seriousness that, given its massive readership, it deserves. I have to admit, I'm one of those who could never get past about Book 6 of the Gor series, but those six got me through puberty. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 12, 2002 8:42 PM