It is easy to make a fantasy story look a little like Gor.
Put swords in the hands of the men. Put collars around the women. Add a slave market, a few barbaric customs and perhaps a hero who prefers settling disagreements personally. If we are feeling particularly enthusiastic, we can throw in a tavern full of slave girls and have somebody called “Master” before the end of chapter one.
But that does not necessarily make the story feel Gorean.
For me, Gorean-style fiction is much more about the assumptions underneath the story than the furniture sitting on top of it. John Norman's Gor works because the world genuinely believes in itself. Its institutions connect to one another. Power matters. Sexual hierarchy matters. Slavery matters. The sword matters. Most importantly, the people who inhabit that world do not behave as if they have wandered out of twenty-first-century society wearing costumes.
That is the part of Gor that has influenced my Hyperborean books most strongly.
I have taken those ideas somewhere rather different. Hyperborea is prehistoric Earth. Lovecraft's gods and monsters are real. Human beings have been stolen from different periods of history and dumped into the same impossible world. My books are also much more sexually explicit than Norman's.
Yet when I ask myself whether something feels sufficiently Gorean, I am rarely asking whether there are enough collars in it. I am asking whether the world has the same confidence in its own rules.
That, I think, is where we should begin.
A Gorean-Style World Cannot Be the Modern World in Sandals
The first requirement is deceptively simple: the civilization must genuinely be different from ours.
Fantasy writers are often very good at changing technology while leaving psychology untouched. We get bronze weapons, horses and city walls, yet everyone has remarkably current opinions about individual rights, relationships, class and sexuality.
That is safe.
It is also rather boring.
The great pleasure of Gor is entering somewhere with different assumptions and then discovering the consequences of those assumptions. If slavery is normal, it should affect the economy. If personal violence is normal, it should affect manners. If women can be owned, that should affect everything from architecture and inheritance to taverns and warfare.
Hyperborea works the same way.
One of Gerard's encounters with Kovan the Longshoreman gives us a good example. Kovan is an Armanean refugee whose people are trying to re-establish some dignity and power after catastrophe. He explains his position to Gerard:
“For a man to stand with a straight back out here, he needs a hard fist, Gerard.”
That is not simply tough-guy dialogue. It tells us how political order works beyond the reliable protection of a strong state. Kovan's men need one another because strength creates security. Reputation matters because reputation can prevent violence before the sword ever leaves its sheath.
If we want Gor-inspired fantasy to feel convincing, ideas like this have to travel through the entire culture.
Power cannot be important only when the hero wants sex.
It must be important when someone wants land, safety, money, revenge or respect.
The Sword Has to Mean Something
There is another difference between a sword being present and a sword actually mattering.
We can give our hero an enormous blade because fantasy covers look better that way. But if every meaningful conflict is resolved by institutions that operate much like ours, then the sword remains a costume accessory.
In Gorean-style fiction, armed men possess personal agency.
That does not make them omnipotent. Quite the opposite. Other armed men possess agency too.
Gerard gets himself into trouble repeatedly because he is very good at direct action and much worse at understanding what follows afterward. He can defeat an enemy in a fight and still discover that the man's friends, relatives or political allies remain inconveniently alive.
That becomes especially clear when Gerard advances into Dura's politics. Iskelda, who understands political power far better than he does, repeatedly has to explain that being able to kill somebody is not the same as being able to control a city.
At one point, after Gerard has once again transformed a crisis through personal action and created a considerably larger political problem in the process, she greets him with:
“Gerard, my dear, beautiful idiot. What have you done? What have you done?”
Gerard's answer is absolutely characteristic:
“What none of you would do.”
There is the heroic impulse and the flaw in the same exchange. Gerard acts because other people hesitate. Sometimes that saves everyone. Sometimes it produces an entirely new disaster.
That is how I like masculine power in fantasy. It should be tremendously useful without becoming magical.
Gorean Fiction Needs Men Who Want Agency
This is one of the less discussed parts of what makes Gor attractive.
Gor is not only a fantasy about women submitting. It is also a fantasy about men acting.
That distinction matters.
A good Gorean-style male protagonist wants control over his own life. He wants to choose where he goes and what risks he takes. He may choose badly. He may fail. But he is not comfortable living according to a script written for him by somebody else.
One of the reasons Gerard connects so well with Juskar is that Juskar gradually discovers the same appetite.
Juskar was a farmer. Adventure gives him very little certainty and a considerable chance of dying horribly, yet when Gerard asks why he continues, Juskar answers:
“I have nothing. No land. No slaves. No coin. But I have more now after having met with you than I ever had as a farmer.”
Gerard points out that becoming a wandering vagabond is hardly a sensible life.
Juskar's answer is better:
“It is a better life than letting others decide what mine should be.”
That, to me, is fundamental to the masculine fantasy behind this genre.
The hero does not need to begin powerful.
In fact, I usually prefer that he doesn't.
What matters is that he values agency enough to go out and acquire power.
The Slave Girl Must Be Part of the Civilization
Of course, we cannot talk seriously about Gorean-style fiction without talking about slave girls.
For many readers, the kajira is the most immediately recognizable Gorean image. The collar, the kneeling position, the master/slave language and female submission have become inseparable from people's understanding of Gor.
But simply putting a woman in chains is not enough.
Her slavery should mean something to everyone around her.
This is one reason I spend so much time showing ordinary life in Hyperborea. Slave girls appear while men are eating, conducting business, plotting politics, traveling and entertaining guests. They work in brothels and harems, but they also carry water, translate texts, serve food and become part of the machinery through which households operate.
There is a wonderful observation from Iskelda when Gerard discovers that she knows considerably more than he expected about the secret plans of powerful men:
“Because you are a man, Gerard. When men plot, they keep the slave girls in the room to pour them wine.”
Then she adds:
“That is why I know this city's secrets and pour my own wine.”
That is the kind of detail I love. Slavery produces consequences even powerful men fail to notice. The slaves are considered unimportant, so men talk freely around them. Information therefore flows through the very women society has trained itself not to see.
That makes the institution feel real.
A Slave Economy Should Actually Be an Economy
This follows naturally.
If women are property, there will be prices. There will be cheap slaves and expensive ones, specialist traders, trainers, buyers, breeders, brothels and markets. Wars and disasters will alter supply. Fashion will alter demand.
The entire economy begins bending around the institution.
Gerard's own life makes this wonderfully clear. By the time he is established in Dura, he owns businesses, brothels, slaves and eventually a breedery. He thinks about women sexually, certainly, but he also thinks about them economically because Hyperborea has taught him to do so.
When he approaches his private breedery, the two warrior women guarding it tease him.
One asks:
“Come for your special whores?”
Gerard objects:
“They’re not whores.”
The guard replies that all slaves are whores.
Gerard's distinction is gloriously mercantile:
“Whores bring in the silver. These ones cost me gold.”
That exchange tells us more about the society than a page explaining that slavery is normal.
Everyone understands the categories.
Everyone understands the money.
Nobody stops to debate whether owning the women is acceptable.
They are arguing about accounting.
That is how a Gorean-style setting starts to feel lived in.
The Erotic Hierarchy Must Exist Outside the Sex Scenes
This is another point where I think some Gor-inspired fiction goes wrong.
If men and women occupy radically different sexual positions only during the explicit scenes, then we have BDSM erotica rather than a Gorean world.
There is nothing wrong with BDSM erotica. I write plenty of BDSM material myself.
But Gor is doing something different.
The erotic hierarchy extends into ordinary social space.
A woman may be kneeling while men discuss war. A man's slave may be sitting against his legs while he negotiates a business deal. A host might offer a guest food, drink and women in the same breath because hospitality itself has developed around the culture's assumptions.
Kovan does exactly that when Gerard visits his enormous yurt. They are discussing violence, Armanean dignity and political order. Kovan nevertheless pauses to ask:
“May I send for kumis and roasted eel? It is a cold night outside, Lightning Shield. Perhaps a couple of warm girls to rub your feet?”
The girls are neither the subject of the meeting nor irrelevant to it. They are simply part of how hospitality works.
That is much more Gorean to me than merely having a spectacularly explicit sex scene every fifty pages.
The fantasy permeates the environment.
The Women Need Personalities Precisely Because They Are Slaves
This matters enormously.
A slave girl who happily agrees with everything before anyone has done anything to her gives us very little drama.
I prefer difficult women.
Gerard does too.
Later in his career, when discussing a particularly troublesome captive, he says:
“I do prefer the snarling bitches over the pets.”
There is a reason. Resistance gives the relationship somewhere to go.
A proud woman can be humbled. An intelligent woman can calculate. A defiant woman can decide when obedience serves her interests. A frightened woman can learn confidence within the boundaries of her captivity. Women can compete for favor, form friendships, become jealous and develop their own hierarchies.
The slave population therefore becomes a society inside the larger society.
This is important because the women should not cease being people merely because the men around them cease regarding them as free ones.
Indeed, the contradiction makes them more interesting.
A slave girl can understand her owner perfectly while having very different feelings about what she understands.
One of Gerard's more thoughtful handlers, Durumzar, eventually reduces good management to something very simple:
“People will tell you everything, Gerard. You just have to learn to listen.”
That advice applies equally well to writing characters.
A Truly Gorean Story Should Not Be Embarrassed by Its Fantasy
This may be the hardest quality to imitate.
Norman is not embarrassed by Gor.
You can dislike his conclusions. You can argue with his philosophy. You can find passages outrageous. But the books themselves do not constantly glance over their shoulders to reassure the reader that the author understands how naughty everything is.
That confidence is important.
Gorean-style fiction becomes strangely lifeless when every erotic or hierarchical idea is immediately followed by an apology for having imagined it.
If we are writing a male fantasy, then we should write a male fantasy.
That does not mean every male character needs to be admirable. Gerard certainly isn't always. His decisions can be foolish, selfish, impulsive and destructive.
But the story permits him to enjoy his world.
It permits him to enjoy women.
It permits him to like power.
It permits the fantasy to function from the inside rather than constantly submitting itself for approval from somewhere outside the book.
This is one reason I enjoy Iskelda's exasperation with Gerard so much. After he insists on pursuing his own terms even while she is trying to save him politically, she finally snaps:
“You are a rutting animal. You belong in a cage, Gerard.”
His reaction?
“Now that’s a compliment!”
There is Gerard in two lines.
Gorean-Style Fiction Still Needs Adventure
This is where I think Gor overlaps beautifully with older sword-and-sorcery.
The hero cannot simply stay home.
We want roads, ships, ruins, wars, hostile cities, strange peoples and dangerous men. We want him to enter situations where status is uncertain and discover what he can make of himself.
Gerard's story expands in exactly that way.
He begins as an outsider. Then a swordsman. Then a slaver and businessman. He becomes entangled in Dura's politics. Eventually the city itself cannot quite decide whether he is an asset or a menace.
That is the trajectory I like.
The erotic rewards become more satisfying because they belong to a larger acquisition of power and status.
Likewise, the protagonist should have male relationships that matter independently of the women. Gerard's friendships with Fogrim and Juskar give the series much of its character.
They argue with him.
They mock him.
They rescue him.
They occasionally think he is an idiot.
And they still follow him into appallingly dangerous places.
Those relationships stop the story from becoming a procession of women orbiting an empty protagonist.
A masculine fantasy needs men in it too.
Male Friendship Gives the World Weight
The phrase “sword brother” matters in Hyperborea.
It is not merely somebody the hero drinks with.
These are men who have survived danger together and expect one another to act accordingly.
Juskar's decision to remain with Gerard is a good example. He does not stay because Gerard is rich; at that point Gerard hardly represents a secure investment. Juskar stays because the life they are building gives him something he did not have before.
That makes male friendship another form of power.
One man alone is dangerous.
Several men who trust one another are much more so.
That network eventually expands. Gerard attracts adventurers, soldiers, refugees, sailors and political followers. Personal relationships become institutions.
This is another quality I associate with good Gorean-style fiction: power accumulates socially.
The hero becomes important partly because other people decide that standing near him is preferable to standing against him.
That is far more satisfying than merely declaring him an “alpha male” in chapter one.
The Hero Should Change Enough to Frighten His Old Self
This may be my favorite part of the whole exercise.
Gerard should not finish Hyperborea as the same man who entered it.
If he does, the world has failed to matter.
His changing relationship with slavery is one obvious example, but the transformation goes much further. He becomes comfortable with violence. He acquires status. He begins thinking politically. He collects artifacts and maps. He accumulates dependents.
Most importantly, his frame of reference changes.
Things that would once have been extraordinary become ordinary.
His old friend Fogrim notices this.
When Fogrim questions Gerard's slave girls about changes in their master, one finally admits how long it has been since the Gerard Fogrim remembers behaved the same way:
“A year and three months ago.”
Fogrim asks:
“Is that when he changed?”
The answer is:
“Yes, Master.”
That little exchange is powerful because the transformation is not being explained by Gerard himself. Someone who knew him before can see that Hyperborea has gotten inside him.
For me, that is essential to outsider fantasy.
The outsider gives us entry.
Then the world consumes him.
Worldbuilding Has to Extend Beyond Slavery
This is also crucial.
Gorean-style fiction cannot survive on sex alone because Gor itself does not.
We need religion, economics, geography, warfare and politics.
Hyperborea gives me enormous room to play with those because the setting is deliberately impossible. Civilizations descended from people taken across human history coexist with prehistoric ecosystems and eldritch powers.
Religious differences actually matter.
Gerard and Juskar encounter a Mi-Go cult whose beliefs fit into a wider Hyperborean pattern: religions often contain nested levels of secret knowledge rather than the broad, direct access to divinity familiar to Gerard from the modern world.
Political structures vary too.
Dura has its Burgher Council. Elsewhere there are priest-kings, warbands and communities held together mostly by kinship and reciprocal violence.
Even municipal infrastructure becomes political.
Gerard tries to persuade Dura to build sewers and discovers that being correct is much less useful than he expected. After being procedurally blocked in council, Iskelda laughs:
“And so the great whoremonger and war veteran is silenced.”
That is one of my favorite things about Gerard. He can survive monsters and battles and still be defeated by committee procedure.
The contrast keeps the world alive.
The Strange World Should Have Ordinary People in It
Another thing I learned from the kind of fantasy I love is that weirdness works best against normality.
If every building is an eldritch temple and every character is a sorcerer king, nothing feels strange after a while.
Hyperborea therefore has laborers, shopkeepers, fishermen, farmers, bureaucrats, tavern owners and people worried about the price of tin.
They happen to inhabit a world where giant prehistoric fish swim under the docks and gods may actually be alien entities.
Gerard once listens anonymously while dockworkers debate his proposed sewer system. They have misunderstood almost everything about it. One believes Gerard wants Dura to construct altars to a god named Sewer who will protect them from evil spirits in excrement.
Then Gerard reveals himself.
The joke works because the men are not fantasy exposition machines. They are workers gossiping about something they only partly understand.
That is how a setting becomes somewhere rather than merely something.
The Erotic Fantasy and the Adventure Fantasy Should Strengthen Each Other
This is where all the pieces come together.
A Gorean-style story feels strongest when the sex and the adventure come from the same underlying rules.
The warrior possesses women partly because he has power.
He seeks power partly because power makes possible the life he wants.
Slave markets exist because warfare and raiding create captives.
Brothels exist because cities create concentrations of wealth.
Harems become status symbols because powerful men can afford both the women and the infrastructure required to keep them.
Nothing needs to feel bolted on.
That is what I aim for with Gerard.
His sexual life expands as his worldly position expands. The man who begins with very little eventually has a villa whose rooms contain maps, ancient manuscripts and artifacts from across Hyperborea—and another half devoted to his women.
Likewise, his responsibilities expand with his pleasures. More property means more people depending on him. More status means more political enemies. More fame means more strangers expecting things.
Power gives Gerard what he wants.
Then it gives him problems appropriate to a man who has what he wants.
That is much more interesting.
Gorean-Style Does Not Mean Copying Gor
This is worth saying clearly.
I do not think a story becomes more Gorean merely because we borrow Norman's terminology.
You can use the word kajira repeatedly and still create a world that feels nothing like Gor.
Likewise, we can write something with entirely different cultures, cosmology and history that nevertheless appeals strongly to the same reader.
That is what I am trying to do with Hyperborea.
My setting has no Priest-Kings of Gor. Instead, it has Landing Beasts, Great Old Ones, Deep Ones, ancient human civilizations and prehistoric ecology. Gerard is not Tarl Cabot. Dura is not Ar. Hyperborean slave culture has developed its own practices.
What I borrow is something deeper: the willingness to build a fantasy civilization around power and then actually let that premise change the people living inside it.
The guide to my wider writing identifies this same intersection very clearly: Gorean fiction and erotica mixed with male-dominant BDSM, sword-and-sorcery adventure, harem and slavery fantasy, and Lovecraftian cosmic horror.
That is influence rather than imitation.
So What Makes a Story Truly Feel Like Gor?
For me, it comes down to whether the whole world participates in the fantasy.
If the sword matters only during fights, something is missing. If slavery matters only during sex scenes, something is missing. If the hero is supposedly a dangerous adventurer but spends the entire novel reacting rather than acting, something is missing. If everyone in an ancient slave society somehow possesses exactly the assumptions of contemporary middle-class life, something is definitely missing.
Gorean-style fiction works when power, sex, culture and adventure all belong to the same world.
That is what I want when I read this kind of fantasy, and it is what I try to create in Hyperborea.
Gerard is useful because we can watch the process happen to him. He arrives carrying the assumptions of our world. He makes friends. He learns the sword. He acquires women and wealth. He gets involved in politics. He discovers that force solves some problems beautifully and creates others just as efficiently.
Eventually, the man who once belonged to our world becomes somebody Hyperborea understands much better than we do.
That is when the setting has succeeded.
And that is when, to me, a story truly begins to feel like Gor.