RE: Was John Norman blacklisted?

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RE: Was John Norman blacklisted? - 3/8/2010 1:47:34 PM

Musicmystery

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Naw...the Bizzarati.

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RE: Was John Norman blacklisted? - 3/8/2010 1:56:07 PM

Jeffff

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Opps... My bad....

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RE: Was John Norman blacklisted? - 3/8/2010 3:44:35 PM

Nephilim

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Lol, never said or thought it was because JN was a libertarian. I think I said it was because he isn't likable, may not be a good business decision, and his books hammer on making points counter to the accepted views. Things like saying over and over again in a book, women are natural slaves doesn't really endear a person to a potential employer. Nothing sinister about not liking someone or what they believe (racism, sexism, etc). It is only a conspiracy when they use coercion to keep it from being produced when it normally would. There was some evidence that a blogger would like to have JN censored; they proposed a ban on the publisher. If the same thing had happened among most members of the publishing community, then the claim would make some sense but there is no evidence of that. The books found publishers. Contracts came and went with sales and management. Seems to be business as intended.

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RE: Was John Norman blacklisted? - 3/9/2010 12:17:16 AM

Malkinius

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Greetings Moonhead....

Science fiction writers run the gamut from extreme liberal to extreme conservative with most being on the socially liberal side with heavy doses of libertarianism. There are more very liberal authors than very conservative ones, especially the religious right types. Of the Deans of Science fiction, Heinlein, Azimov and Clarke, Heinlein was the most conservative and the most libertarian of them. Isaac Asimov was the most liberal of the three. Heinlein was also the kinkiest of them as well from the stories I have been told by "the people who were there." Philip K. Dick was one of the most liberal of SF authors. When it comes to SF fandom the bias is more towards the social liberal and fiscal conservative with a large dose of "keep your hands off me" types. Political correctness was rampant in fandom in the 70's and 80's and has mostly died out since then. It always was more egalitarian than the mainstream culture. Gender doesn't matter as much as ability is the way it has worked with most groups even through the PC days.

Norman is the only author that I can say from my own knowledge and experience who has been blacklisted tho I think there may have been a few others who were not as well known over the years. I will check with some friends I have in SFWA about that. There certainly have been authors whom no one liked before and after him but that was based on personality rather than ability or political correctness. Harlan Ellison is someone who pissed off many people over the years and a lot of people really don't like him. He was still published despite that. He was a better writer and editor.

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RE: Was John Norman blacklisted? - 3/9/2010 6:09:21 AM

Moonhead

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Malkinius
Norman is the only author that I can say from my own knowledge and experience who has been blacklisted tho I think there may have been a few others who were not as well known over the years.

How about Karl Edward Wagner? I think he was more or less given the black spot when he was destroying his career by spending a decade drunk.

I'd question that SF, taken as a whole, is all that liberal, but then I lean to the left myself, so the authors I disagree with tend to be far more conspicuous. It sounds like you might have the same problem with the Moorcocks and LeGuins that I do with the Pournelles and Drakes...

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RE: Was John Norman blacklisted? - 3/9/2010 12:38:33 PM

SimplyMichael

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I was in junior high in the late '70 and my parents ran a used bookstore. I was a teenage male and would wack off to almost anything. I loved sword and sorcery stuff and played D&D nonstop. I loved the first couple of books...the next few were more of a slog and at some point I just said "what the fuck IS this shit" and stopped reading them.

We had shelves of his stuff and I don't remember if that was because it sold well or because it didn't. Any publisher is going to look at reprints to see if there is a huge NEW market and there isn't. First editions can be had cheap even if a few nuts pay $50...you can find them for under $10 all the time. So, the market for the old titles isn't there and his later stuff? TINY market people.

As for being blacklisted...sorry but this is a market economy and if there was money to be made, somebody would have printed them, they didn't because he wasn't marketable.

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RE: Was John Norman blacklisted? - 3/9/2010 1:40:38 PM

Moonhead

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quote:

ORIGINAL: SimplyMichael
As for being blacklisted...sorry but this is a market economy and if there was money to be made, somebody would have printed them, they didn't because he wasn't marketable.

Yep. If the books weren't freely available for peanuts second hand, it'd be a lot more worthwhile for somebody to reprint them. I really don't think the PC argument has any bearing on this, besides providing Norman with an excuse that makes him sound rugged and individualistic, rather than like a self pitying whiner. I mean Robert E Howard's attitude towards women is arguably even worse than Norman's, and there's nothing even remotely PC about the Conan stories, but they're still in print, for an arm and a leg. Surely the Gor fans will have seen that huge centennial hardback that was published the other year?

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RE: Was John Norman blacklisted? - 3/19/2010 10:12:45 PM

roughleather

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Dinnardin
his utter lack of talent as a writer was equally involved.

He never did master the art of writing dialogue. And eventually, he ran out of plot ideas. He did get 26 books published in the Gor series; that hardly counts as censorship.

Romance novel sections are full of male domination. I doubt that was the problem.

Even "Imaginative Sex" is again in print, both in paperback and in various e-reader formats.

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RE: Was John Norman blacklisted? - 3/21/2010 9:11:25 PM

Cherylmazana

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So according to you the fact that he is being published now means he was never blacklisted?

Interesting logic there, I expect then you would say that DH Lawrence’s book Lady Chatterley’s lover was never banned in its original unedited form because it is now published unedited, or that the Sex Pistols song Friggin in the rigging was never blacklisted by the BBC because you could buy it elsewhere. Or even the Da Vinci code which has been banned in Lebanon. The list of books banned or blacklisted because of personal beliefs, religious views or obscene words or behavior is very long.

The fact that something is now available has no connection with it if was blacklisted in the past. The only difference between the examples I gave you and Normans books is that those two examples are a matter of record where as Normans books were never officially banned, the last book banned by the US government was Fanny Hill in 1821, un-official blacklisting is the only way publishers can ban books in the US.

If there had been an official statement of blacklisting or publishers banning their printing due to anti feminist views I expect they would have made sales records as people bought them to see what the fuss was about and those who blacklisted his books were not that stupid,

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