A while ago on Fuldapocalypse I reviewed the first, comparably sane (but only comparably) entry in the “legendary” Gor series, Tarnsman of Gor. Since then, it quickly devolved into what it became infamous for. Which is to say, a series devoted entirely to talking about how the natural, right, and proper order of things is for men to be masters and women to be slaves. And I mean this literally.

One might think that Gor would have a tiny fig leaf of sword and planet adventure to go into ‘slave sleaze’. While true, it also has a tiny fig leaf of ‘slave sleaze’ to go into talking in gargantuan walls of text repeatedly saying the exact same monologue repeatedly. So why has it become so infamous?

I think there’s a few reasons. The first is that it had a degree of mainstream (by sci-fi standards) exposure. More “importantly”, it had a small degree of mainstream pretentiousness. So in its heyday (and in a smaller book market), you had this thing that acted like heroic fantasy and wasn’t honest enough to admit on the cover that it was smut. And it rubbed a lot of people quite reasonably the wrong way.