Argon’s Other Eye 6 – Harold the Barbarian
For as long as the krutty end of fantasy has existed, there
have been scantily clad slavegirls, co-existing with the squamous horrors from
Beyond Sanity, cackling black-goateed wizards and muscular savages with
cat-like reflexes and perfectly smooth chests (when have you ever, ever seen a picture of Conan with body
hair? Is he merely testosterone deficient (surely not!), or does he somehow
find the time in his busy schedule for regular waxing sessions?). However, only
one man has had the balls to move the focus away from the sweaty man-beast with
the helmet with little horns on it to the big-eyed beauty in the artfully
ripped silk whotsit and that man is WONDER NORM, aka John Norman, author of the
seemingly never-ending chronicles of Gor.
Starting off as more or less regular Sword and Planet, with
all the elements you’d expect – random earthman is transported to far-off
planet where he suddenly becomes the greatest swordsman in the universe, slays dozens
of massive, vicious monsters with stupid names and saves a princess – the Gor
books gradually move from S&P with kinky bits to full-on 550 Shades with
occasional sword fights. The hero, Tarl Cabot, is an academic from Bristol,
selected by the Priest-Kings to do all the normal things you’d expect and
finish off feminism once and for all at the same time. He does this by dressing up as a proud warrior
of ancient Greece, flying on giant death chickens and tripping over slave girls
every few minutes – not hard to do, as they are as plentiful on Gor as frothing
at the mouth but deeply unhappy inside Dworkinites are in the world of Wonder
Norm. This can get distracting, as in ‘Priest-Kings of Gor’, where what is a
pretty solid work of Science Fantasy is derailed by the obligatory appearance
of a young lady with no clothes on who wants to be tied up and flogged in order
to feel like a woman-shaped woman fully fulfilled in her essential womanish
womanliness every few pages.
You see, Wonder Norm believes that men and women are very
different – men are hairy Dominators, designed to slay, capture and ravish,
whereas women (the young and pretty ones, anyway) are soft, tearful, yielding
Submitters, there to serve and pleasure and desperately unhappy if forced by
closed-minded, fat ankled feministiks to go out and take control of their own
lives. WN, as a top philustufer, has seen with his own eyes the results of this
madness in the college in which he teaches (taught?) and has nobly harnessed
Aristotle, Plato and Nietzsche to his leather philistuflickal chariot with
scythes of Truth on the wheels in which he will charge through the ranks of the
androphobes and rout them once and for all. I suppose if you do see masculinity
and femininity as eternal, unchanging archetypes which are more real and
essential than our warped, pathetic, PC attempts to evade the Truth then Normo’s position makes sense; he certainly isn’t
shy about letting you know what his opinion on the whole business is. In ‘Outlaws
of Gor’, for example, Trowel Cardboard is catapulted into a truly nightmarish
situation – he has to enter a city ruled by women! As you might expect, in this
horribly unnatural state, love and happiness are banned by the silver-masked
and fully clothed (in dungarees and unwashed jumpers, I bet!) ladies in charge,
but luckily, Cabot comes along to save the day, spank the female antagonist’s
bottom after saving her from the dreaded argle-bargle beasts and remind her of
her true reason for being, namely pleasuring a middle-aged West Country English
lecturer dressed up as a hoplite. The book might as well have a mile-high neon
sign on it saying ‘GET YER DEVASTATING SATIRE ON RADICAL FEMINISM HERE! ROLL
UP, ROLL UP FOR THE DEVASTATING SATIRE ON RADICAL FEMINISM – STEP RRRIGHT THIS
WAY! FIRST 10 ENTRANTS GET A FREE CUBIC ZIRCONA ENCRUSTED HOME STONE WITH
SUMPTUOUS LOG FIRE EFFECT AND GO-FASTER STRIPES!
Yes, readers, young women, especially stunningly attractive,
college educated young women from earth, seem to arrive on Gor with monotonous
regularity, generally losing their clothes in the process. Then they get
trussed up, beaten, humiliated, raped, tied up in sacks full of shit and so on,
and although they may cry a bit at the beginning, they end up absolutely loving
it, because, as Wonder Norm never tires of pointing out, it’s how things are
meant to be, as opposed to the mimsy politically correct version that is sending
the deracinated members of Counter-Counter Earth to hell in a Tuchuk wagon.
Gorean women who are old, fat, grumpy, on their periods, etc are dealt with in
the Saudi Arabian manner, i.e. swathed in acres of cloth and left to stew in
their own misery as opposed to making the place look unsightly as they do in contemporary
America.
Why do these books sell (and boy, do they sell) ? Possibly
because lots of people like a bit of kinky porn, myself included. Possibly
because they take the clammy-palmed adolescent male sociopath fantasy developed
in yer regular low rent S&S novel and pump it full of super-steroids and
male hormones forever. Possibly because, putting everything else aside, Wonder
Norm’s world building skills are very good indeed.
Maybe too good – how much detail do you really want about
Gorean hoe design (the agricultural implement!), for example? Does that help
immerse you in the beautiful world the Normanator has created or take up
valuable space that could be taken up with more nudie slave girls? Do you
really need to know about the number, colour and quality of the heroine’s
teeth? Can’t we just assume that she has some and leave it at that?
Evidently not. You would have though his editors would have
snipped that bit out, but Wonder Norm is as real a man as his heroes and knows
how to deal with beasts like those, as this transcript proves
(The scene: Wonder
Norm’s golden tower of phillustuphy. WN himself is seated in an ivory throne,
surrounded by gorgeous young coeds who are fanning him, serving him cold drinks,
begging to be slapped, lick gruel from the floor in front of him, battle each
other to the death for the chance to be forced to fellate him, etc. There is a
knock at the door, and at Normanus Caesar’s manly bellow of ‘ENTAAH!’, a crowd
of cringing Editors enter on their knees, kow-towing vigorously as they inch
forward)
Eds, in unison: “Wonder
Norm, we exist only to serve You. We are but Instruments of your Will”
WN: “Ah, there
you are! Wanda, clean these gentlemen’s feet with your tongue or I won’t have
you whipped. Now, scum, I called you here today to discuss my latest Work of
Genius, which much against my better instincts, I somehow feel is only
99.9999999% perfect. You see, there’s this bit about Judy Thornton’s dental
setup, which is maybe...
Eds, horrified: “No
no, Wonder Norm! Whatever you do, don’t cut out the bit about Judy’s teeth!”
And thank goodness they didn’t, as that makes the whole
book.
Harold the Barbarian, by the way, turns up in ‘Nomads of Gor’,
a novel about quasi-Mongols - called Harold – and is the best thing about the novel.
I’ve only read four out of the thirty or so books in the series and I really
hope Hazza appears in a subsequent volume, but I bet he doesn’t. Still, that’s
what fan fiction’s for!
Speaking of which, I might delve into the foetid cave of
slash fic next time, in search of gay barbarians. I know stories featuring
heroes with hard-ons exist without searching for them, in the same way I know
that the sun will rise tomorrow morning without my needing to conduct human
sacrifices, or so my probation officer tells me, but it’s always good to get
first-hand confirmation. This may well be an experience I shall never recover
from, though, so wish me luck.
