This month the editors at Thr Gorean Voice received a very interesting letter and would like to present it here to the readers.

Tal,

Just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy The Gorean Voice, especially Ubar Luther's essays on the Philosophy of Gor. Literally can't wait for the next installment!

I am not a Gorean lifestyler or any of those other things, just a guy who has been reading and enjoying Norman since 1975, and a politically-incorrect genre writer who has run into the same brick wall of censorship that he has. Doubtless you have read his "Open Letter" to Locus from last year; he is 100% dead-on.

Recently I have found something of a home on The Texas Mercury, a Houston-based little ezine that attempts to recapture the spirit of Mencken's old American Mercury. I am working my way through Burroughs, Heinlein and others and eventually plan to have a piece or two (or more) on Norman, and Gor, and his publication troubles. I am personally going to start putting some of my own "unspeakable" fiction out as print-on-demand books, and I think this would be a wonderful way for Norman to continue to reach his audience, as well as, perhaps, being the "wave of the future." Certainly it is a means of bypassing the commercial publishers and their idiotic refusal to "offend" certain groups (i.e., the feminists).

Personally, I wish Norman would continue to write, regardless of whether he has a publisher or not. He is no spring chicken; he was cranking out a novel a year there for a while, and I regret he hasn't kept up that pace -- that would have given us another 14 Gor books, instead of the 3 Telnarian books, which, I think we all agree, are not up to the standards of Gor. (Though admittedly my favorite of Norman's works is Time Slave, which I read hot off the presses in college at the tender age of 21. It, and Heinlein's Starship Troopers and Schoendoerffer's Farewell to the King, rest by my bedside where another might keep a Bible.) I like Norman's ideas; before I finally joined the rest of the world and got on the Internet last year, I used to think I was unique in that; and I discount many of the obvious "flaws" in his writing style because the man has something to say that I think is worth listening to. I for one continue to write, regardless of the prospect (or rather the lack of the prospect) of publication; but then, that is just me -- to paraphrase Tarl Cabot from Renegades, "I see things that do not please me, and I write, but so, too, might a tarn fly and a kaiila run."

In sum: best of everything to you; and thanks for The Gorean Voice.

I wish you well,

Hank Parnell
Durham, NC

If you have anything to present to the Gorean public, please write to the Editors here at The Gorean Voice

BennKar