FREE/BARGAIN — Science Fiction & Fantasy

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

The first 3 (or 4) are not bad. They're very 'Burroughs-ish' and 'Kline-ish'.

The rest stink something horrible.

This, but with a little more nuance…

The first few books are kind of Burroughs’s John Carter (Earth man taken to alien world) in kind of a Conan-ish world, with the main distinguishing feature being prominent slavery – menial for men, sexual for women. They have an adventure plot, one which is standard enough if you set aside the slavery stuff, and in that respect they’re not that horrible.

After that arc, though, Norman quickly resorts to cranking out variations on three different outlines:

1. The travelogue, in which the original hero visits a new area or subculture on Gor. Just an excuse to show off some new worldbuilding.

2. A man gets taken to Gor as a slave, trains up as a gladiator, earns his freedom, and acquires an adoring slave girl or three along the way.

3. A feminist woman gets taken to Gor as a slave, trained in the arts of pleasure and the “natural duty” of submission, and eventually embraces her new role when she falls in love with her new master.

After about the first half-dozen books, that’s all there is to them… at least, through the first 25, which is when I jettisoned the series. (I was a teenager.)

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I read the first Mission Earth book and felt I lost a valuable part of my life reading that awful book. It was really really bad.

Anyone who reads the entire series needs to be locked up as sanity is completely gone.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Battlefield Earth is a horrible book.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The editing they need is very easy. Forget the red pen. Get the red paint and the roller and go over each page. There, edited.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Rendezvous With Rama is so dry with very little actually happening.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There is one Titan book written by just Michael martin and it's a real stinker. The frst Titan book is good.

Your posts are a hoot.

[salty-horse]

The Quantum Magician and its sequel The Quantum Garden by Derek Künsken are on sale for $/£0.99 and $/£1.99 respectively
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

The Quantum Magician and its sequel The Quantum Garden by Derek Künsken are on sale for $/£0.99 and $/£1.99 respectively
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk

Highly recommended for weird science beyond the limits of current ideas.

[Manabi]

Originally Posted by GlennD

Bad in a different way. The Rama books were just poorly written and kind of ruined the original classic.

The Gor books are advocating a mindset and behavior that most people find pretty repugnant (the sexual slavery of women).

Good to know, I'll definitely be taking a pass on those.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Rendezvous With Rama is so dry with very little actually happening.

Even if you dislike Rendezvous With Rama, the book presents an optimistic future where mankind has spread throughout the solar system. In the sequels that's all gone and Rome got nuked in the interval between the two. (Literally nuked, by some terrorists if I recall correctly.) And despite that pessimistic beginning, it keeps getting darker and more depressing throughout the sequels. Every time you think things have hit rock bottom, they get worse, with humanity even attempting genocide.

I came out of it seriously wondering if Gentry Lee needs some counseling, because he seems to think humanity is completely hopeless and beyond redemption. There was not even the smallest bit of hope in the sequels.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Manabi

I came out of it seriously wondering if Gentry Lee needs some counseling, because he seems to think humanity is completely hopeless and beyond redemption. There was not even the smallest bit of hope in the sequels.

Yeah, Clarke with collaborators is hit and miss. But Clarke and Stephen Baxter paired very well. The Light of Other Days was terrific.

[binaryhermit]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Highly recommended for weird science beyond the limits of current ideas.

I enjoyed both of em.

[Manabi]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Yeah, Clarke with collaborators is hit and miss. But Clarke and Stephen Baxter paired very well. The Light of Other Days was terrific.

That sounds really interesting, I'll have to read it sometime.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Manabi

That sounds really interesting, I'll have to read it sometime.

Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter have a lot in common as far as styles and themes. If you like books by one you will likely like books by the other. That's probably why they collaborated so well.

[ReadingManiac]

Originally Posted by ottdmk

What scares me is that all of the Gor books are available in Canada with a Kobo Plus subscription.

I've heard such terrible things about them, I might take a look at the first one just to see how bad it really is... (I decided to take advantage of the free month trial.)

I tried reading one of those once years ago. If you consider Stephanie Meyer a literary genius, you'll get on fine.

[GlenBarrington]

Originally Posted by ottdmk

What scares me is that all of the Gor books are available in Canada with a Kobo Plus subscription.

I've heard such terrible things about them, I might take a look at the first one just to see how bad it really is... (I decided to take advantage of the free month trial.)

They are perfect for the 14 year old anarchist in us all.

[ZodWallop]

All this Gor talk has me curious to read the first book. It's $9.99, so I won't bother.

I have the book in paperback. My grandmother (who loved sword and planet stories) sent it to me. I mainly remember the Boris Vallejo cover.

The weird slave and master philosophy takes a bit to creep into the series, if what I've heard is correct.

[Dr. Drib]

The first 3 or 4 are not like the rest of the series.

If you enjoy Burroughs-type fiction, then you might enjoy those first 3 or 4 in that series.

That $9.99 price, however, is outrageous.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

All this Gor talk has me curious to read the first book. It's $9.99, so I won't bother.

I have the book in paperback. My grandmother (who loved sword and planet stories) sent it to me. I mainly remember the Boris Vallejo cover.

The weird slave and master philosophy takes a bit to creep into the series, if what I've heard is correct.

The slave/master philosophy is present in the first 3-4 books but as a more of a background to the story. By book 5, it became the foreground of the story.

[hobnail]

I will say that I do like that torrid art work by Boris Vallejo on the covers of earlier ones.