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.