He isn't John Norman, of course, you are talking about John Lange, author of the Gor series.
As I understand it he suffered from some kind of seizure around book 9 and the books after that one were rather circular in plotting and (can we say) even less well written than his earlier books.
As I understand it, John Lange has a love/hate relationship with his creation since it has created a rather large cult following which he abhors (except for the royalty money) and has prevented him from being taken seriously as a SF writer of stature, I guess something he genuinely aspires to.
The stories, although you didn't hear this from me, were said to have emerged from John's connection with (VEHEMENTLY DENIED) the Boston Dungeon Society http://www.ne-ds.org/home.htm in one of its much earlier forms and certain club members feuded with John in the aftermath of the books publication for pilfering scenes he had witnessed and/or physical descriptions of women in the group to include in the book. (both things STRONGLY against the rules in such communities)
Gossip goes further to suggest that John's participation in this community was not with John in a masterly role.
To understand things a bit more you have to remember that said 'community' was WAY WAY underground at the time John wrote these books and public association with them on his part would have been credential destroying.
For the vast unwashed - there is a robust 'Gor' community in the United States and in parts of Europe (chiefly Germany and Holland) of persons who embrace the descriptions of relationship so carefully portrayed by John in his stories. These groups and his cult following generated reissuing of some of his books in the recent past. I can't quite remember when or if more are coming out. But it used to be true that if you clandestinely owned a complete collection of Gor novels - during their out of print days - that you could easily resell these battered (really bad paper in these) and yellowed paperbacks for near a $1,000 bucks!!! Yowsa!
...John Norman
As I understand it he suffered from some kind of seizure around book 9 and the books after that one were rather circular in plotting and (can we say) even less well written than his earlier books.
As I understand it, John Lange has a love/hate relationship with his creation since it has created a rather large cult following which he abhors (except for the royalty money) and has prevented him from being taken seriously as a SF writer of stature, I guess something he genuinely aspires to.
The stories, although you didn't hear this from me, were said to have emerged from John's connection with (VEHEMENTLY DENIED) the Boston Dungeon Society http://www.ne-ds.org/home.htm in one of its much earlier forms and certain club members feuded with John in the aftermath of the books publication for pilfering scenes he had witnessed and/or physical descriptions of women in the group to include in the book. (both things STRONGLY against the rules in such communities)
Gossip goes further to suggest that John's participation in this community was not with John in a masterly role.
To understand things a bit more you have to remember that said 'community' was WAY WAY underground at the time John wrote these books and public association with them on his part would have been credential destroying.
For the vast unwashed - there is a robust 'Gor' community in the United States and in parts of Europe (chiefly Germany and Holland) of persons who embrace the descriptions of relationship so carefully portrayed by John in his stories. These groups and his cult following generated reissuing of some of his books in the recent past. I can't quite remember when or if more are coming out. But it used to be true that if you clandestinely owned a complete collection of Gor novels - during their out of print days - that you could easily resell these battered (really bad paper in these) and yellowed paperbacks for near a $1,000 bucks!!! Yowsa!