Captive of Gor chapter 4

In which absolutely nothing happens. It is time, boys and girls, for EXPOSITION. We are about to find out what's going on. Because KIDNAPPING isn't clear enough at this point.

So Strawchick is taken into a clearing where men are loading other drugged girls onto a UFO. Because Elinor Brinton is SO VERY NOT SPECIAL she gets the drug-free kidnapping treatment. You know. Because when we're reading about girls kidnapped and sold into slavery on alt-Earth we want the alt-earth stuff to start five chapters in. Why am I reading this again?

...because I wanted to. Right.

The dude removes the collar Elinor was given. Why? Fuck if I know. Why was she given one in the first place? Again, how the fuck should I know. At this point it's just psychological torture porn. She attempts to bribe her way out, they laugh--

--wait a second. Remember that part in chapter one?

Yet on this world I am a fifteen-gold piece girl, more lovely than many, yet far excelled by many whose stunning beauty I can only envy.

Yeah. That part. If she's worth so little on the slave block, and she's handing over oodles and oodles of gold and diamonds...why not take her up on the offer? I'm pretty sure they've made their quota, and I'm pretty sure they could find her again if they need to squeeze more cash out of her. "Pay us or we'll sell you into alien slavery" is a pretty good blackmail tactic when you can back it up with your space ship. If she talks about aliens she's just another space-brained blond. Nobody's going to listen to her...and again, you can back the threat up with a space ship. And maybe earth-cash ain't worth much but as far as I can tell, gold on alt-Earth is still fucking gold. She's a fucking millionare, boys, and she could probably hook you up with a couple nice slaves a month via fake jobs for less experianced models. The girls dissapear, hey, it's NYC baby. AND you've just made your case for women being horrible, horrible creatures who should be locked up and punished, sexily.

Anyway, they laugh, take her money anyway, and she fights them with the knife she's still got in her purse.

Again: WORST. SLAVERS. EVER.

They disarm her, which I need to point out would not be necessary if they'd drugged her in the first place, then try to fix the damage they she has done to her face by resisting and making them hit her, which also wouldn't be necessary IF THEY HAD DRUGGED HER IN THE FIRST PLACE, then elaborately showed her how they tracked her with their space ship. Bug in the purse. Which I pretty much guessed.

Again. Awful lot of technology there when they could have just DRUGGED THE IDIOT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Yeah. These guys and this chick totally deserve each other.

Oh, hey, I think these sentences are too long. Do you think these sentences are too long? Let's let John Norman show us how it's done:

“The light,” I said, “it couldn’t catch me.” 

“You think it was simply your misfortune, a mere coincidence, that you stumbled into our camp?” he asked.

 I nodded, miserably.

 He laughed. 

I looked at him, with horror.

 “The light,” he said. “You ran always to avoid it.”

 I moaned. 

“You were herded here,” he said.

 I cried out with misery.

Like we didn't figure that one out six fucking pages ago. One paragraph, John, that's all I'm asking.

So the dude, whose sole job is apparently to get Strawchick used to being a slave, gently urges her up into the spaceship, instead of IDK hauling her up by her hair OR DRUGGING HER (WHY IS SHE NOT DRUGGED LIKE THE OTHERS?) and then...John Norman does something that's actually kind of cool:

I saw the sun’s rim at the edge of my world, rising, touching it. In the east there was dawn. It was the first dawn I had ever seen. It was not that I had not stayed up all night, even many times. It was only that I had never watched a sunrise.

This perplexes me, and not in a bad way. Why is her first dawn on Earth also her last? This has some kind of umph to it, like rebirth or something else metaphysical. Like an inkling that this experience (being sold into slavery) is the start of her new, true life. Which is oh, so very ick, but let's not go messin' with the zen thing, man (/Jeff Bridges FTW) While the first sentence can go die on a piling (what touched what? Earth touched the sun, sun touched the earth? Elvis touched Miranda? What?) but the concept here is actually kind of awesome.

Does it go anywhere? No. Instead we get Strawchick's description of the slave holding area, where she is dragged kicking and screaming which, may I needlessly point out for the nine billionth time, would be a whole lot easier IF THEY HAD DRUGGED HER FIRST. They lock her in for the voyage, give her air, and we get today's contender for MOST OBVIOUS STATEMENT EVER:

The rich, clever, vain, insolent, proud Elinor Brinton, it was clear, had not escaped.

It took you two pages to described being locked into a vacuum-sealed tube. No shit, Sherlock.

TOMORROW: Alt-Earth, aka GOR, the world of a thousand raging hormones without soap.  Be there. Bring gas masks.