Books - Poorly written.
Movies - Poorly made.
While the science fiction made up world of Gor is not a bad idea, it's really just a glorified BDSM world. He takes a little bit of many ancient and mythological societies, tosses it into a jar, shakes it around, and what do you have? Gor. How so many people became a fan of his books is beyond me. They're third rate science fiction porn novels at best.
I can't comment on the films, having never seen them, but clearly, you have not read the books and are only going along with the series' (not entirely undeserved) reputation. Norman's style may by suspect, but the first novel (which features no "porn" as you call it), moves along like the first Star Wars film (in fact, there are even similarities between the two (Lei=Talena), although Norman's novel clearly came first), and can hardly be called "third rate."
Later on, certainly the series deteriorates into themes of B&D, but the first few books are fine examples of fantasy fiction (people forget the first book was widely heralded and that many believed Norman would soon be a Nebula award winner).
Yeah, I'd say that the series really started to get stupid at around book six. The signs of what was coming started with book two, but it didn't really start going downhill fast until after book six.
Years ago I found one in a used book store for about 15 cents that was numbered in the high teens. Made it through about four chapters and chucked it in the fireplace. Bad book, but great cheap firelighter.
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
what disapointed me about the books was the lack or infreqency of bdsm. ya had to wade through like 80 pages of ho hum sci fi until a hot bdsm scene ...and then it was only like a half a page. I'd rather have it the opposite 80 pages of hot bdsm action and a half of a page of sci fi set up. I read half of one book then just started skipping through pages looking fer fun stuff.
shareAt least you're honest.
Most people watch poor movies etc and say "it was good - you got to see <insert actresses name> boobs".
Hell, hire a porn movie and be honest about it.
You're being honest saying that you'd prefer to read the BDSM and not get bogged down in the stuff in between. I think that is a good thing.\
SpiltPersonality
What bdsm? Bdsm is bondage/discipline for sport, pain for pleasure. This is merely an alien culture based on a caste system. The lowest of the lows are the slaves who they happen to keep chained so they dont escape. Sure, they may stuff a gag in ones mouth and throw a hood on em, but its not for sexual kicks, its discipline. There are no HOT BDSM porn sequences in any of the books.
Plain old porn in a Gor novel? You mean someone saying " use me master", and then one line about being 'taken to the furs'? If your looking for porn, a Norman book is the last place you want to try and get your fix.
Norman would take a culture and write it into his series. Gor being a planet populated by different Earth cultures through the ages by a race of super intelligent alien bugs, resulted in vikings in one book, and Mongols in the next. Sprinkled liberally with Normans ' Gorean' philosophies about men being men, and women being subserviant burka wearing underlings, he actually brought an alien civilisation to life. Mixing up a bunch of cultural stuff in a jar? The books are filled with detail, sometimes excrutiating so, the guys done his research, and there is humor as well. BDSM porn??? No. Are the movies total crap? Absolutely. Are the books decent, subversive, sci-fi-ish fantasy, even after book six? Definitely. When Ivan Forkbeard jumped off his funeral platform and started hacking the initiates up with his axe in book eight, MARAUDERS OF GOR, that was entertaining! Get over it.
"Pffft, my suspension of disbelief has higher standards than that"
Sorry, but the bondage and dominance is pretty prevalent, if rather devoid of real eroticism. Normans' "Imaginative Sex" was laughable. Most of the fantasy scenarios were pretty bargaion basement and not much above something like the Joy of Sex. Even the 40s Wonder Woman comics were more imaginative. Norman's reputation was rather inflated, though that was in comparison to the rather bland field he inhabited. Samuel R. Delaney and Philip Jose Farmer handled sex far better in their works.
I thought the first book was pretty good, and the second just ok. They got worse from there and I gave up with the 4th or 5th one. Even the first was mostly just a Burroughs rip-off, though fairly entertaining. The series was never more than a cult thing.
"Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!"
peeps b like el low down on other peeps like fantasy
or like guilty pleasure
peeps b peeps
no
?
got Ollie a paycheck
made some prof somewhere a hero 2 like lotto other peeps
might put some effort in2 finding this
4 aoolie Reed
can't b as bad as all that
sat thru Conana
with Aronld
& that Beatles rip off with all the scenes made by different production values
so
this
might b a "wait, what?"
or it might not
O the buchen
2 each dey own
Ja?
there's like lotto wurste stuff
& like lotto besser
Ja
soooo
shum lieben PKDick
& others r like
what?
ubik?
Ja, ja, ja, so, no rilly - wait, what?