Gorean Latitudes

By Hersius

This essay advocates a latitude-based view of cartographic Gor. A separate essay will advocate the complimentary longitude-based conceptualization of Gorean regional and cultural geography.

Verisimilitude in one’s concept of Gorean cultural geography has no importance to some fans. With a click of a mouse one can travel from Torvaldsland to Turia. One can even make an online Homestone at a place that is a geographic impossibility according to the Books. To other fans, however, Book-accurate cartography is a goal, whether it is intended to simply help one get one’s bearings or choose a place for a Homestone, or for use as one more way to comprehend the saga portrayed in the Books. The Gor series is a panoramic unfolding of an adventure covering a supercontinent, and the setting is always a vital part of the storytelling. Norman spends time detailing the flora, fauna, and the very look of the land as well as the lifestyles and customs which vary according to climate-based cultural geography. Understanding the map of Gor - to the extent that any such understanding is possible - gives background that helps make the adventure come alive.

The Problems

There are three main cartographic problems that a latitude/longitude-based view corrects. The first is that regions are drawn on existing published maps of Gor without respect to their relative sizes, giving mis-impressions of their intended spatial extents. The second is that any sense of latitude and longitude appears based on a map-making style that employs equal-area grid squares, which severely distorts regional sizes and the distances between places, especially between coastal places and places in the interior of the Gorean continent. The third, which is the apparent directional problems involving whether, for example, a given place is more north or northeast of another place given certain approximate distances and general directions, is likewise solved when one uses curved coordinate lines as on a globe rather than two-dimensional equidistant grid lines.

Maps of Gor have traditionally suffered from inadequate attention to latitude and longitude. Maps of Gor tend to be based on relative directions. It is often enough for a map that the Tahari is northeast of the rainforests and that Port Kar is west of the Voltai. Distances are estimated according to such Book clues as how far Cabot would have walked in so many months, or on how many days it takes a tarn to fly from one place to another times the distance a tarn can fly in a day, or on which places are grouped together when mentioned in certain passages. Map-making tends to be an exercise in relative positioning and in grossly estimating ground distances. As a result, maps of Gor tend to bunch the known areas together. Norman’s descriptions of the rough dimensions of each area show that one should instead think expansively of the continental land mass, and he even makes the delightful statement that the actual land mass of Gor may be greater than the entire land mass of Earth (Book 4, p.3).

The Implications of a Latitude-Based Cartography

Latitude is an angular measure originating from the equator marking degrees of arc. If a planet were a perfect sphere, the arc measurements of its circumference would be of equal lengths. However, terrestrial planets are not perfect spheres. As a result of their manner of formation, terrestrial planets are somewhat flattened at the poles and somewhat wider at their equators. From origin coordinates at 0 degrees latitude 0 degrees longitude, the distance traveled by the lines of latitude to the 90 degrees east and west longitude points is greater near the equator than near the poles. This means that the arcs formed between latitude lines near the equator cover more distance than the arcs formed near the poles. There is therefore more distance between 0 degrees latitude and 20 degrees north latitude than there is between 70 degrees north latitude and the north pole, which is 90 degrees north latitude. The latitude lines are simply farther apart near the equator than they are near the poles.

The idea that latitudinal ranges are of differing sizes has implications for the imputed relative sizes of Gorean geographical regions. Two-dimensional maps based on equal-distance gridlines encompassing equal-area grids may be spatially accurate near the equator, but they increasingly distort spatial distances toward the poles. This is why Greenland looks as large as Africa on some maps of Earth. Maps of Gor tend to be based on such equal-distance grids, whether implicitly or explicitly. This can make Torvaldsland look huge. A grid that has shorter latitude arcs near the poles makes Torvaldsland look, relative to the entire continent, itsy-bitsy (I think that’s the technical term. This alone may make those who role-play Torvaldslanders reject the use of latitude in the conceptualization of Gor’s cartography). Likewise, distances among northern places are not artificially enlarged when shorter latitude distances are taken into account.

Latitude-Based Climate Regions

Climate is a complicated function of many factors, only one of which is latitude. One can over-simplify the role of latitude, however, and make generalizations such as “Most of the world’s deserts will be found between ‘a’ and ‘b’ latitude degrees, most of the world’s rainforests will be found within ‘c’ and ‘d’ latitude degrees, most of the world’s tundra will be found within ‘e’ and ‘f’ latitude degrees, etc.” It appears to me that Norman has done exactly that in creating the different climate regions of Gor.

Norman begins his description of the planet Gor by saying that it is not a sphere but is instead spheroid and that the southern hemisphere is somewhat more massive than the northern hemisphere. He says that the planet has northern and southern poles and an equatorial belt, with northern and southern temperate zones in between (Book 1, p.43). This sets up a latitude-based view of Gor.

At several places in the Books, Norman speaks directly of latitudes in reference to the geographic cultural regions. These references are easily overlooked, but once you hunt for them, you will find them. The impression begins to form that regions in Norman’s mental map template are latitude-based. Once this premise is considered, the regional map of Gor transforms from scattered clues and begins to take definite shape. The internal consistency of Book geography becomes clearer as well. Descriptions of the map of Samos specifying places in a north-to-south order suggest north-to-south geographical cultural regions corresponding to latitude zones (Book 10, p.7). The Books, as they go along, then fill in specific information as each Book highlights a climate-based cultural geographic region.

Comparisons of Earth and Gorean climate regions based on latitude

The following tables take their Earth information from the geologist Arthur Holmes (1890-1965). Holmes is famous for developing the geologic time scale and for promoting plate tectonics theory. The information is found in his book, Principles of Physical Geology, 2^nd. ed. 1964, p. 476; the third edition was published in 1978 and the fourth in 1993, so the information should not be too hard to find. The point is that this information was available – undoubtedly from many sources -- when Norman wrote the Gor series.

Gorean cultural geographic regions parallel Earth’s climate latitude ranges. Note even the clue provided in a region’s name: Earth’s “Boreal” region (“boreal” refers to trees) becomes Gor’s “Northern Forests.”

This table compares Earth climate regions and Gorean climate / cultural regions.

Following the general guidelines provided by Holmes as to where, in terms of latitude, most of the world’s climate zones can be found, the following table gives the Earth generalities (which use Europe and Africa as models) and then posits a similar scheme for Gor.

Impressions

Following the second table, many regions are huge, just as Norman describes them. The rainforests are immense, easily encompassing a river winding for thousands of pasangs as they band around the continent until the Ven Highlands (or some other place) rises enough in altitude to contain them and permit a southeastern corridor of plains over which the armies of the Wagon People rode to Ar itself. The southern plains likewise are large, resembling the southern extent of Africa in shape and volume. The Tahari by comparison is only about half as wide as either of those regions, giving it the trapezoidal shape specified in the Books and telling us that if it is almost a continent of desert, then its mass must be accounted for mostly by longitude rather than latitude. The Northern Forests are narrower yet, accounting for Norman’s focus on the idea that they might extend the entire east-west distance of the continent; their longitude extent, not their latitude range, is what gives them their massive character. The tundra polar plain is also narrow, even more than the forests, given that the latitude lines are closer together at that range, and since Torvaldsland encompasses a fraction of that latitude distance (there is tundra beyond the mountains and glacier bordering Torvaldsland), that area, which excites the imaginations of so many, must be compact indeed. The fact that the high mountain has a view of the coast supports the view that the action in Torvaldsland takes place in a geographically restricted area.

Conclusion

It is time to abandon the early maps which made each climate-based cultural geographic area small and bunched the regions together. It is time to embrace the fantastic scale of the land and sea on which Norman placed his heroes and villains. Gor’s terrain is not a simple contrivance but is rather a thoughtfully-constructed diorama that is true to planetary climatology. It is possible, with the help of a latitude-based perspective, to see a true to life stage on which the action and philosophy are realized.