Old Pulp Gender Role Bending

[bellatrys]

This isn't the Barsoom post I was intending to write (still working on that one) or rather, it's a chunk of it broken out, because it was obviously not all going to fit under one essay-umbrella. In honor of the possibility that Dark Horse has thought better* of gambling a dozen or more thousand simoleons on the dark horse named "Gor", as noted over

Comments

[jordan179]

You really understood what ERB was getting at!

This makes me take back everything I was thinking of saying about you just looking for things to hate in pulp sf. You are an honest critic, and I respect you.

(*doffs imaginary cap*)

[archangelbeth]

Thank you so very much for reviewing this! I'm going to have to dig up those books again sometime. (I was so depressed that he died and left a cliffhanger.) I'm glad to know that my childish recollections of it as SO MUCH BETTER THAN GOR were real.

Have you ever read the Scorpio/Kregan/Antares series? By Alan Burt Akers/Dray Prescot? It had a zillion books (at least 30ish, as I recall), arranged in sub-series arcs, and was definitely a knock-off of Barsoom in many ways -- but somewhere in there, the women acquired exclusive fighting schools with dagger, claw, sword, and whip, and Dray's princess-spouse got a whole book to herself, even...

It's been some time since I read them and -- should you be intrigued enough to check them out -- I'd be fascinated to see them reviewed by someone who, well, knows how to review. (When my kid is older, too, maybe I can acquire a more complete set than I've got right now, and we can read them one after the other, as my mom did with me...)