About The Books of Gor

"It is not necessary to burn a book, if one does not permit it to be published."

— John Norman

While "Gor" was not created by John Norman, the books which he wrote developing this world is his creation. It has been said that perhaps Nietzsche was an influence on the author. Perhaps this is true, although, while John Norman's psychological profile seems to acknowledge him as a woman-hater, Nietzsche was in love with his sister.

The books themselves are not particularly well written, often becoming boring diatribes of the writer's thoughts and assertions, exploring the existence and purpose of men and women, and their relationship to one another and their world, lampooning liberalism and feminism of the modern Earth. John Norman's influences of course begin with Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, but because this harsh world is truly a zoo of collections, peoples of various time periods have come to Gor, thusly influencing how the world evolved. You will read of peoples much akin to the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Vikings, and the Mongols, among many others.

These science fiction novels, comprised of twenty-six volumes, have sold over twelve million copies world wide. It is rumored that the twenty-seventh novel is being negotiated for publication, tentatively entitled Prize of Gor. However, it seems that the only publishers willing to produce his works are such small companies, they cannot afford to do so. Companies of poor repute, such as Masquerade, have disappeared into the shadows. Masquerade, in fact, owes me quite a sum of money, which I long ago resigned I'll never see.

The series are mostly action adventures, with many of the military engagements liberally taken from historic ones. An example is the trireme battles of the ancient Greeks. The great city of Ar is very much like ancient Roman and Babylonian periods — and the "margin of desolation? I found reference in a site that mentioned Gu-Edin being the original margin of desolation. So I googled Gu-Edin and found this:

Gu-Edin was a flat field in Sumer, in modern day Iraq. It lay between Umma and Lagash. Enakalli, Ensi of Umma, purposefully destroyed the irrigation works in the field to create a "margin of desolation" on behalf of his god. The destruction of Gu-Edin is paralleled in John Norman's Gor novels. — Wikipedia

What is wrong with this from Wikipedia? For one, it relates immediately to John Norman and Gor. Secondly, Wikipedia is not a true encyclopedia. It's a collection of pieces of information that is gathered and added by people just like you and me. As compared to, say, Encyclopedia Britannica, which is written by scholars. The information in Wikipedia does not need to go through stringent checkpoints and guidelines, and therefore, much of the information is either missing key points or is utter nonsense.

With the case of this Gu-Edin? I did some research and there are several "references" found on Google. Each reference is a carbon copy of Wikipedia, again from resources that are placed online without the stringent checks and balances. One such reference gave me a link to the following website: http://www.angelfire.com/art2/assyrian/Umma.html What I found interesting on this page, is that it is made to look like a real essay for a school project, but after a bit of investigation, it was clearly placed as it was, to give the illusion of being factual. What this essay does not give, however, are the references that he or she used to gather this information. There are no references, reliable or otherwise, notated on this page, which leads me to believe that whoever wrote it, was trying to give some sort of basis for the Margin of Desolation with regards to Gor. Perhaps he or she ran a chat room and needed "proof" offered to his or her chat mates.

Note: Apparently criticism arrived that particular author's way and upon looking at it in February, 2007, the site is lacking any sort of formatting, although the information is there. The following is from the Umma page:

Umma (Tell Jokha):

Only lately a proper excavation was conducted by the Iraqi Archaeologists at the site, after discovering the exact site of the city, apparently mentioned in foreign archeological books! The site had been extensively ransacked of all its important cuneiform documents and artifacts, which are now probably in private collections around the world.

Umma, a city near Lagash renowned for the wars it fought trying to free it-self from paying tributes to Lagash (A more powerful city-state), and also the control over water and some border disputes had played a roll in the conflicts between Umma and its neighboring city Lagash; Documents show that an all-out war broke out on a certain field called Gu-edin which lay at the border between the two states and was claimed by both:

Enakalli, the ensi of Umma, at the command of his god, raided and devoured the Gu-edin, the irrigated land, the field beloved of Ningirsu (Ningirsu; a temple build in Lagash by a prince of unknown origin named Mesalim probably king of Kish!) He ripped out the steel (set up by Mesalim) and entered the plain of Lagash.

The infantry of Lagash, armed with long spears and protected by heavy shields, met in battle the soldiers of Umma, Eannatum king of Lagash won and erected 'the stele of the vultures' in celebration of his victory.

Administration texts from Umma, has provided an extraordinary picture of day to day life; daily number of men working in the fields, digging canals, loading and towing canal boats were all recorded. The amount of work completed was noted, and rates of work and payments calculated. A 'constable' of the king often carried out, inspections and according to one text even by a royal princess.

'Royal', 'strong' and 'weak' beer were brewed. Closely associated with the control of the state herds was a profitable industry in wool and leather.

So, I did further research. I went to Encyclopaedia Britannica and looked up Lagash and Umma. Seems the "ensi" (or king) as quoted in this "official research" and in Wikipedia is absolutely wrong.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica:

Umma:
Lugalzagesi, also spelled Lugalzaggisi (reigned c. 2375–50 BC), ensi ("sacred king") of the southern Mesopotamian city of Umma, who first conquered the major cities of Lagash (c. 2375 BC) and Kish, then overcame the Sumerian cities of Ur and Uruk (he alone represents the 3rd dynasty of Uruk). After uniting all of Sumer, he extended his dominion to the Mediterranean coast; but, after a reign of 25 years, he lost his empire to the ascendant dynasty of Sargon, the powerful Semitic ruler of Akkad. — Encyclopaedia Britannica ©2006

Lagash
(modern — Telloh) One of the most important capital cities in ancient Sumer, located midway between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southeastern Iraq. The ancient name of the mound of Telloh was actually Girsu, while Lagash originally denoted a site southeast of Girsu, later becoming the name of the whole district and also of Girsu itself. The French excavated at Telloh between 1877 and 1933 and uncovered at least 50,000 cuneiform texts that have proved one of the major sources for knowledge of Sumer in the 3rd millennium BC. Dedicatory inscriptions on stone and on bricks also have provided invaluable evidence for assessing the chronological development of Sumerian art.
       The city was founded in the prehistoric Ubaid Period (c. 5200–c. 3500 BC) and was still occupied as late as the Parthian era (247 BC–AD 224). In the Early Dynastic Period the rulers of Lagash called themselves "king" (lugal), though the city itself never was included within the official Sumerian canon of kingship. Among the most famous Lagash monuments of that period is the Stele of the Vultures, erected to celebrate the victory of King Eannatum over the neighbouring state of Umma. Another is the engraved silver vase of King Entemena, a successor of Eannatum. Control of Lagash finally fell to Sargon of Akkad (reigned c. 2334–2279 BC), but about 150 years later Lagash enjoyed a revival. It prospered most brilliantly under Gudea, who was probably a governor rather than an independent king and was nominally subject to the Guti, a warlike people who controlled much of Babylonia from about 2230 to about 2130.
       Lagash was endowed with many temples, including the Eninnu, "House of the Fifty," a seat of the high god Enlil. Architecturally the most remarkable structure was a weir and regulator, once doubtless possessing sluice gates, which conserved the area's water supply in reservoirs. — Encyclopaedia Britannica ©2006

Still unsatisfied, I dug further in Encyclopaedia Britannica and found this:

Mesopotamia, history of
The Sumerians to the end of the Early Dynastic period

       Kish must have played a major role almost from the beginning. After 2500, southern Babylonian rulers, such as Mesannepada of Ur and Eannatum of Lagash, frequently called themselves king of Kish when laying claim to sovereignty over northern Babylonia. This does not agree with some recent histories in which Kish is represented as an archaic "empire." It is more likely to have figured as representative of the north, calling forth perhaps the same geographic connotation later evoked by "the land of Akkad."
       Although the corpus of inscriptions grows richer both in geographic distribution and in point of chronology in the 27th and increasingly so in the 26th century, it is still impossible to find the key to a plausible historical account, and history cannot be written solely on the basis of archaeological findings. Unless clarified by written documents, such findings contain as many riddles as they seem to offer solutions. This applies even to as spectacular a discovery as that of the royal tombs of Ur with their hecatombs (large-scale sacrifices) of retainers who followed their king and queen to the grave, not to mention the elaborate funerary appointments with their inventory of tombs. It is only from about 2520 to the beginnings of the dynasty of Akkad that history can be written within a framework, with the aid of reports about the city-state of Lagash and its capital of Girsu and its relations with its neighbour and rival, Umma.
       Sources for this are, on the one hand, an extensive corpus of inscriptions relating to nine rulers, telling of the buildings they constructed, of their institutions and wars, and, in the case of UruKAgina, of their "social" measures. On the other hand, there is the archive of some 1,200 tablets—insofar as these have been published—from the temple of Baba, the city goddess of Girsu, from the period of Lugalanda and UruKAgina (first half of the 24th century). For generations, Lagash and Umma contested the possession and agricultural usufruct of the fertile region of Gu'edena. To begin with, some two generations before Ur-Nanshe, Mesilim (another "king of Kish") had intervened as arbiter and possibly overlord in dictating to both states the course of the boundary between them, but this was not effective for long. After a prolonged struggle, Eannatum forced the ruler of Umma, by having him take an involved oath to six divinities, to desist from crossing the old border, a dike. The text that relates this event, with considerable literary elaboration, is found on the Stele of Vultures. These battles, favouring now one side, now the other, continued under Eannatum's successors, in particular Entemena, until, under UruKAgina, great damage was done to the land of Lagash and to its holy places. The enemy, Lugalzagesi, was vanquished in turn by Sargon of Akkad. The rivalry between Lagash and Umma, however, must not be considered in isolation. Other cities, too, are occasionally named as enemies, and the whole situation resembles the pattern of changing coalitions and short-lived alliances between cities of more recent times. Kish, Umma, and distant Mari on the middle Euphrates are listed together on one occasion as early as the time of Eannatum. For the most part, these battles were fought by infantry, although mention is also made of war chariots drawn by onagers (wild asses).
       The lords of Lagash rarely fail to call themselves by the title of ensi, of as yet undetermined derivation; "city ruler," or "prince," are only approximate translations. Only seldom do they call themselves lugal, or "king," the title given the rulers of Umma in their own inscriptions. In all likelihood, these were local titles that were eventually converted, beginning perhaps with the kings of Akkad, into a hierarchy in which the lugal took precedence over the ensi. — Encyclopaedia Britannica ©2006

Therefore, there is mention of a particular strip of fertile land that served as a border between Lagash and Umma. This strip was in the region known as Gu'edena (not Gu-Edin). Later, Eannatum, ruler of Lagash, forced the ruler of Umma to create a dike in that region as an effort to stop the crossings over that border. Though it was not really a margin of desolation, it did serve to disassociate one city from another.

And LOOK! In the passage, the means of war between cities at that time depicts the war on Ar by Pa-Kur almost word for word. So, in conclusion, the Gu-Edin doesn't exist, and the king in question didn't exist, the Gu'edena region did exist, and there was a border created to keep those of Umma out of Lagash. It's similar enough to the reasoning behind the margin of desolation that Marlenus created for Ar.

The first few books in the series is very similar to the first book of the Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Both the Norman adventures and Barsoom feature the protagonist narrating his fabulous and curious adventures after being transported to another world.

Besides the philosophical basics of the novels, the series is truly about good versus evil. The curious, intelligent, yet self-absorbed insects known as the Priest-Kings and the aggressive and blood-thirsty Kurii, both aliens of foreign star systems. The Priest-Kings act as the custodians of Gor (or perhaps zookeeper is the better term), while the Kurii wish to colonize both Gor and the Earth, eradicating the Priest-Kings in the process. It's a power struggle of alien beasts (Predator versus Alien?) of who has the final control.

The question one has to ask, however, is:    Are the Priest-Kings truly good?

 

 

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Special Note

Because of the differences in publishing the books, depending upon whether published in the U.S. or Europe, depending upon whether a first publishing or a Masquerade Books release, page numbers will often vary. All of my quotes are from original, first-printing U.S. publications (see The Books page for a listing of publishers and dates) with the exception of the following books:

  • Tarnsman of Gor (2nd Printing, Balantine)
  • Outlaw of Gor (11th Printing, Balantine)
  • Priest-Kings of Gor (2nd Printing, Balantine)
  • Assassin of Gor (10th Printing, Balantine)
  • Raiders of Gor (15th Printing, Balantine)
  • Captive of Gor (3rd Printing, Balantine)

Disclaimer

These pages are not written for any specific home, but rather as informational pages for those not able to get ahold of the books and read them yourself. Opinions and commentaries are strictly my own personal views, therefore, if you don't like what you are reading — then don't. The information in these pages is realistic to what is found within the books. Many sites have added information, assuming the existences of certain products and practices, such as willowbark and agrimony for healing, and travel to earth and back for the collection of goods. I've explored the books, the flora, the fauna, and the beasts, and have compiled from those mentioned, the probabilities of certain practices, and what vegetation mentioned in the books is suitable for healing purposes, as well as given practicalities to other sorts of roleplaying assumptions.