Even taking into consideration that many online role players use multiple names, there have to be thousands of virtual Goreans, and it is unusual for any fan base of that size to be left untapped in today's cutthroat publishing industry. But Norman's current publisher, Vision Entertainment Ltd., has faced an uphill slog the past few years in its attempt to bring the series back to the market. The small New York publisher plans to return six of Norman's Gor novels to print and to publish a new Gor novel ("Witness of Gor") by the author, and it has invested heavily in the creation of GOR Magazine, a serialized graphic novelization of Norman's books -- all with Norman's approval and oversight.

Vision has run into a series of setbacks, however, culminating in a run-in with Canadian customs that scuttled plans to introduce the graphic novelization to the public via an excerpt in Heavy Metal magazine. Under Canadian customs law, according to Darrell Benvenuto at Vision Entertainment, "You can show a lady with her hands tied. You can show a naked lady. But you cannot show a naked lady with her hands tied -- that's 'bondage,' and is not allowed across the border." In spite of these reversals, Benvenuto expects the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Vision has already sunk into Norman's works to eventually pay off, and after looking at the phenomenon that is Gor fandom, I have little doubt that he's right.

The Gor society on the Internet is in many ways a microcosm of society in general, complete with "religious" conflicts, "in" groups and "out" groups, wars and rumors of wars, hoaxes, celebrities, propaganda, changing fashions, romance, boredom and widespread emotional misadventure (arising from both virtual iniquity and actual crimes). The fights are mostly over matters of interpretation, definitions of terms, what a particular reference from the books means in context, whether free women should be allowed to drink in a tavern, whether "no kill zones" are legitimate, how much "respect" -- if any -- a master should show a slave and so on. People also fight over how much license should be allowed for the fact that they are not on Gor but on Earth, and not actually swinging swords on Gorean battlements but talking to one another over a computer network.

But the main schism within Gor fandom is between the role-playing Goreans and the tiny minority of real-time lifestyle Goreans, and it is a bitter split indeed.

"Bear," a prolific poster on the Gorean Public Boards, has lived a Gorean lifestyle for almost 20 years. He is married to a "free companion" and has two female slaves. One of the slaves has lived with him and his wife for the past eight years. The other, his slave for about a year so far, is married to another man, and she and Bear are only occasionally able to see each other in real life (with the full knowledge and sanction of her husband).

Bear has "collared" and later dismissed other women, who have lasted, on average, about one to three years. A slave "fails" when she is unable to submit herself totally to a man's control, when she rebels against her collar or wants release from her Master. (Failure is possible only on Earth, because on Gor slavery is not consensual, as it has to be here.)

Bear considers the Internet role players a threat to his way of life. "These people harm us by reputation -- our philosophy comes from a series of SF books, we have a hard enough row to hoe here in our pursuit of simple regard and respect -- without the kids taking the ethos and philosophy and turning it into a game, with rules for rolling dice to see if your slave is pregnant."

"Ubar Luther," the leader of a "city" of Gorean role players on America Online and author of the definitive Educational Scrolls of Delphius, says that the lifestylers' antagonism toward role players is based on a fallacious argument: "The books were written as entertainment only. They were not written to be a lifestyle guide. So anything outside the books has the same validity. Role-playing and real-time are on the same level. Neither was intended. Real-time has no special claim on the books." And, he says, "even the real-timers engage in some role-playing. They hang out in a 'cyber' tavern and get served 'cyber' food and drink. They often assume fictional nicknames."

Luther's idea that the lifestylers have made a "special claim" on the books is revealing. Among Goreans, conflicts about how to interpret and use what Bear reverently refers to as the "source texts" are rampant. There is a kind of continuous holy war going on over what constitutes Gorean orthodoxy and non-Gorean heresy, and not only between the lifestylers and the role players. Internecine conflict often breaks out within the lifestyler and role-playing communities, too.

In the online role-playing community there are literalists, traditionalists, liberals, sophists and the Gorean equivalents of dervishes, charismatics, voodooists and snake handlers. The virtual cities, taverns, camps, caves and castles are often at war with each other, and the excitement of these virtual "raids" can add to a slow night at the Web site. Contemptuous rhetoric flows freely in all directions, and the faithful are exhorted and admonished, chaffed, chivied, reprimanded -- and regularly excommunicated from one sect, only to join another.

There are some common ritual requirements for most Gorean role-playing venues. Free women are supposed to be rare -- their participation is even prohibited by some Goreans -- but they are fairly common on most of the role-playing sites. Masters and Mistresses (free women with slaves) take names with capital letters, and slaves' names are all in lowercase, followed by the initials of their Masters in "curly" brackets. Bear's married slave, for example, would identify herself online as "tessa {B}."

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