Michael Chrichton; Gor

Hard to imagine a more staggering or influential career in popular fiction than that of Michael Chrichton. Jurassic Park alone made him immortal, on film if not in literature. I prefered his early novels, A Case of Need (his Edgar winner as by Jeffery Hudson) being my favorite. I also really amdired The Great Train Robbery--a masterful historical and a damned fine suspense novel. And that's not to forget Wstworld, which is still a lot of fun to watch.

---GOR

Back in the Sixties stoners of the male variety used to sit in college dorms and read passages of John Norman's Gor novels out loud. I knew a few guys who actually believed that they weren't for real, that somebody at the National Lampoon (then at its zenith) was cranking them out as a goof. I mean, they were beyond sexism, delving into (you should pardon the verb) a view of women that was really too insane to take seriously.

Part of the fun of any romantic relationship is the give and take out of which lasting bonds are made. I've been told (and I suspect it's true) that women can be smart, tough, industrious, loving, tender and just sort of wonderful to have around. I even suspect that they can be funny as hell. I also suspect that in most ways they're superior to men (Carol being proof absolute--no kidding there).

I hadn't thought of Norman for many many decades but then he shows up cited on the e-fanzine Ansible:


"John Norman plugs his new Gor novel: 'What man, in his deepest heart, does not want to own a female, to have her for his own, utterly, as a devoted, passionate, vulnerable, mastered slave, and what woman, in her deepest heart, does not want to be so intensely desired, so unqualifiedly and fiercely desired, that nothing less than her absolute ownership will satisfy a male, her master?' "

Ed here: The thing is I no longer believe this old fart is kidding.