Let’s talk about one of my favorite subjects: biology in general and evolutionary biology. Well, no, I’m not going to spread my science, nor my love for the imaginary creation of living worlds. Well, yes, actually; sorry folks, but I hope it will be entertaining and exciting to read.

That said, that’s what Gor is: a strange planet and a living world with its own flora, fauna and biological rules.

PS: I’ve written all this while sick with a stomach flu and high fever. So please forgive my mistakes, even though I’m trying to be careful.

1- Gor, terraformed planet

Gor is an artificial planet, terraformed by the amazing technology of the Priest-Kings, moved from another star into the solar system (it’s not logical, I know; but are you shocked by the scientific nonsenses of Star Wars?), and transformed into a kind of giant zoo.

So it’s not a world that obeys the logic of natural evolution! Rather, it’s a jumble of animal and plant species imported here and there, which have evolved on this new world, but are not native to it. Also, while there are references in the novels to hominid fossils, there are none to older creatures. So, are there any dinosaur fossils, for example? In my opinion, there’s no more reason for Gor to have been home to such eons-extinct creatures than there is for us to find any. Do what you will with this question. After all, it has no real impact on role-playing in the world of Gor.

Just remember this: the planet Gor is artificial! It’s a real planet, geologically and astronomically speaking, but biologically speaking, the life it harbors is the result of a long process of terraforming and importing species from all over the universe. Including from Earth.

2- Gor, artificial life

My personal thesis? There is no longer any real flora or fauna native to the planet Gor. To successfully move a planet barely smaller than Earth from another distant star, and to terraform it with the ultimate aim of settling humans in a suitable and welcoming environment, the Priest-Kings had to tinker with, modify and adapt all forms of life. This is the very principle of terraforming.

It’s important to understand that the chances of a planet harboring complex, evolved life possessing all the properties ideally suited to human life are incredibly low. You need: a perfectly breathable atmosphere, gravity that’s almost perfectly adapted, a virtual absence of deadly exotic viruses and bacteria, a stable tilt of the planet on its axis to ensure regular seasons, a climate system that ensures relatively gentle living, a stable planetary crust that avoids too frequent volcanic events, a magnetic shield strong enough to avoid bombardment by high-energy particles, and so on. Basically, we need an Earth. Gor is another, virginal Earth, but it only exists because it has been totally terraformed for this purpose. Gor is an artificial world, and none of Gor’s flora and fauna exists naturally.

3- Taxons and biological reigns

That said, life on Gor follows similar rules to life on Earth. There are almost no exotic taxa, such as the yellow creature from the Turia basin, which is clearly a kind of giant paramecium, or the giant insects with lungs, the best-known of which is the golden beetle, which is almost the size of a tank.

Note: a taxon is a conceptual entity that groups together all living organisms that share certain well-defined taxonomic characteristics. The species is the basic taxon of systematic classification. The higher the rank of the taxon in the classification (vertebrates, invertebrates, insects, mammals, etc.), the lower the degree of similarity of the individuals concerned.

But in both cases, these creatures are extremely rare, if not unique, which leads us to speculate that they were occasional imports by the Priest-Kings. The rest of Gor’s flora and fauna, though sometimes strange, is common to us: reptiles, amphibians, mammals, birds, agnathans, cartilaginous and bony fish, insects and arthropods, etc… The majority of Gorean fauna, however, is clearly exotic for an earthling, and has a definite tendency to be giant.

On this subject, my hypothesis for the Gorean fauna’s tendency to gigantism is quite simple, and twofold: on the one hand, Gor’s fauna has been imported from many different worlds, and I strongly suspect that the Priest-Kings favored dangerous (but not too invasive) animal species to ensure the success of their experiment in the evolution of the human species, in their personal zoo. On the other hand, the 10% lower gravity and, a priori, a slightly richer oxygen atmosphere did the rest of the work.

On this subject, and to avoid remarks about how species evolution works, two clarifications:

Evolutionary convergence: if life always takes forms that are recognizable to us, it’s because, faced with the same environmental problems, the simplest rules of physics impose the same evolutionary solutions. To swim efficiently underwater, the torpedo shape is essential. This evolutionary convergence has been demonstrated to such an extent that it explains a phenomenon that has been noticed on Earth: carcinization. In crustaceans, everything tends to want to become a crab, because this shape is the most efficient for fighting environmental pressure. The same effect can be seen in a host of terrestrial animals that all look like hedgehogs, even though they belong to a variety of different and very distant species.

Rapid evolution: if, as a general rule, evolution takes its time to modify the traits of a life form, and natural selection is slow (environmental pressure on life), there is another rule, expressed in epigenetics: a sudden change in environmental pressure influences the genome of a living being, which modifies itself by activating or deactivating certain genes to improve survival (e.g. hunger, lack of oxygen, cold, etc.) and this modification is transmitted directly to descendants. A well-known and well-studied example concerns humans. After the Second World War, the Dutch born from 1949 onwards, and for a whole generation, were smaller, had a lower life expectancy, and were in poorer health than their parents. They had inherited epigenetic modifications from their parents, who had endured years of famine and intense stress, and, nature being well made, but not that well made, this rapid evolution had the utility of improving the chances of survival of the generation to come, but with, at the same time, side effects, even though the Netherlands had regained a wealth allowing them a good standard of living. That’s why this rapid evolution lasted only one generation. For certain species, such as two separate colonies of lizards on two islands in Corsica in the mid-20th century, rapid evolution can create, in two or three generations, two subspecies which, although similar, are clearly separate, both in size and in diet.

4- Earth’s animals

Some of them! There are also animals that seem to be from Earth, but we’re not sure. The tarsk, for example, is a sort of Gor’s domestic pig, but with a spiky mane and six tusks, and some giant subspecies, it doesn’t really resemble a pig, or even a warthog or a babyrousa.

It’s safe to say that vulos (pigeons), verrs (goats), gloves (geese), bosk (buffalo and bison) and lice and fleas (we’d like to do without them) originated on Earth, for example. But fundamentally, few Earth animals were imported to Gor, and most notably, very notoriously, neither dogs nor horses nor cats – gianis are small felines, but clearly not Earth domestic cats; they look more like little ocelots or servals.

And I have a hypothesis on this subject. The priest-kings created, at least initially, Gor as a stellar zoo, and an experiment to see how humans can evolve under their control, in an environment of high evolutionary pressure. Dogs and horses have been mankind’s sidekicks for millennia, making life a whole lot easier. Both animals are easy to breed, feed and use. And given the purpose of the Priest-Kings experiment, ease was not desirable.

Well, there’s another possible hypothesis, but one that doesn’t convince me. Perhaps these two animals didn’t adapt to Gor and died out. This would be consistent with the fact that horses and dogs are legends, for the people of Gor. But I think this legend comes from the first populations of humans imported to Gor by the Priest-Kings; these legends have endured, and as the Priest-Kings have continued to import earthlings to Gor for millennia, the tale of the Earth animals continues to spread.

Conclusion

Well, I’ve finished showing off my science and my imagination. Norman described quite a few creatures, but also plants. Sometimes he just gave them a name and a few words, sometimes he described them in detail. He didn’t necessarily think about how these animals live, or how, for example, goreans might consider a carnivorous mount like the tharlarion to be so practical that it’s the clear replacement for the horse on Gor.

Personally, I’d put my money on the bosk. It’s certainly slower, but for traveling, it’s not a worry, and it feeds on grass; whereas the tharlarion, apart from being a bit stupid, is a pure carnivore, so a difficult animal to feed when traveling! How do you manage to feed it its several kilos of meat at the evening rest stop? Did you carry it in your bags? Does he even like dried meat? Besides, all that weight of food to carry around is a waste of efficiency. The bosk, on the other hand, is just going to graze all evening, and there’s usually no shortage of grass.

That said, once again, I’m invoking Star Wars, the best-known world of fiction, which is full of inconsistencies, and that doesn’t stop us from enjoying it! Yes, there are absurdities in Gor, like the one I just mentioned. But there are absurdities in many fantasy and science-fiction stories, and they’re called paradigms, i.e. frameworks of internal coherence within the story, from which the coherence with reality is evacuated. So, we accept these inconsistencies, make do, and it’s no big deal. Gor’s fauna is bizarre, not necessarily coherent, but again, it’s no big deal.

And now that I’ve set the scene, and clarified the subject of life on Gor, I’m going to start doing the articles on life forms on Gor… and that’s going to be a lot of work!