Disambiguation

The word Gor is used in at least three senses. In its original literary sense it refers to the imagined Counter-Earth of John Norman's novels. In a communal sense it refers to Gorean communities and their traditions. In a philosophical sense it is sometimes used as shorthand for a body of ideas about honour, order and hierarchy that participants draw from the novels.

Gor is the name given to a fictional planet described in the Gorean Saga, a series of speculative-fiction novels by John Norman first published in 1966. Within the novels, Gor is presented as a Counter-Earth, a world orbiting the Sun opposite our own, on which a highly stratified society is imagined in detail. Outside the novels, Gor is the collective name used by readers and communities who have drawn cultural, philosophical or relational inspiration from that setting.

The first novel, Tarnsman of Gor, appeared in 1966. Reader communities began forming around the books in the following decades, first through fan correspondence and print zines and later through online forums, chat rooms and virtual worlds. The term Gor is used both for the literary setting and, by metonymy, for the communities that engage with it.

Communities and writers distinguish between Gor as fiction and Gor as living cultural practice. The Lexicon treats Gorean concepts as cultural and historical material, not as descriptions of any real place.