On November 18th, 2010, I found this cover on the Internet. I haven't kept any record of where it came from, and stored it in my archive, hoping to find some more time to track its origin. A couple of weeks later, I couldn't find any trace of it anymore. The language on the front cover seems to be Japanese, but I know for sure, that the only official Japanese edition, published by Sogen between 1975 and 1988, consisted of only the first six books. Hence, I decided this was a bootleg, and I stored it accordingly. In March, 2011, the bootleg edition appeared on the Internet.
Congratulations on this most useful site and on your work at Chronicles of Gor before this. I may have a small piece about one of the foreign language editions artwork.
I noticed the bootleg Japanese edition of Kajira of Gor and recognized the artwork.
In the late 90s a Japanese digital illustrator started to illustrate Kajira of Gor and published the starting illustrations on his website. This website had numerous illustration series of many works. He abandoned the project fairly early on, but one of the illustrations ended up on the cover of the Japanese bootleg edition. Likely if the edition was bootleg the illustrator was likewise unpaid and uncredited. Later beginning in the early 2000s he took up the project again from the beginning, sometimes reworking the early series and sometimes making new illustrations. He encouraged people to download his work. He (I assume a he) published the work in sections, based on groups of chapters from the book, accompanied by large chunks of mechanically translated text (which was retranslated when English speakers went to the site, with results you can easily imagine). I did not download the text, due to copyright concerns as the amount seemed to go beyond fair use, and I possessed a copy of the book with the accurate text. I renumbered the illustrations chronologically as the illustrators organization was by section and number. When he republished the original series, I worked that into the chronology.
I have attached the throne room scene which was cropped for the book cover. Most of the illustrations are competent if not of great artistic merit but are only slightly less skillful than the new cover series (which thank you for publishing in full). The only true error seems to me the depiction of tarn flying which features standing riders in the manner of surfers.
Due to a computer problem about five years ago, I lost my bookmark for the site, so cannot direct you there and I have been unable to find it. I have about 140 of his illustrations for Kajira of Gor, plus the illustrator had other Gorean scenes and portraits, both of individuals and types. This may send you on another chase after information but these are all the pieces I have of this puzzle.
A couple of days later, I wrote back to JD and asked if he would be willing to share the entire artwork collection, and the next day, I received over 150 images together with the following remarks.
I am gratified by your interest in the artwork for Kajira of Gor. Aside from the Vision Entertainment project for Dancer, it is the most ambitious attempt of which I am aware to illustrate any of the Chronicles of Gor books.
Checking the properties of the various files, I find a date in 2011 which is when the files were transferred to their current drive, a modified date of August 30, 2009 accords with my recollection of when I put the file together and about the time I lost track of the artist's website.
I was first directed to the site by a passing comment on a Gorean message board, I believe on Usenet in 2006 or 2007, and saved the files as they were posted over the following months and years. This was the artists second attempt at illustrating this book, the first was started and abandoned earlier.
The numbering system is my own. The artist would take a group of chapters and then begin illustrating that section until there were between 10 and 20 individual scenes. Then the artist would work on other projects until tackling another section. The artist numbered each section separately starting from one in each section. Because I wished to have the art in one file I renumbered started from one and adding each one chronologically. A complication arose when the artist, in the midst of the publishing of the series, published as a curiosity, the file of the abortive first attempt. Instead of re-numbering, I tried to fit them in to chronological order with those of the second series, leading to numbers such as K006-01, K006-02. I regret now that I did not keep I second file, as I cannot with reliability say with certainty which come from the first edition of the illustrations and which from the second. The first series dealt almost exclusively with the acquisition of Tiffany Collins, so the confusion between first and second editions will lie there.
On his website the artist also had portraits of various characters from the books, Old Tarl, Talena and others, but those files have been lost.
I hope this will generate some interest and perhaps track down an artist who did a tremendous amount of work. All the best.
Initially, I had presumed that the cover I had found belonged to either a paperback or an ebook version of the story of Kajira of Gor, however, after seeing all the art, I realized, the cover could also have been used for artbook, a collection of new, digital artwork, which, in itself, is not a violation of John Norman's copyright. Anyone may use a Gor book to create a new, original work of art, be it a painting, a song, a statue, or even a dance; as long as John Norman is credited as the source of inspriration.
The only problem is that we still don't know who created all this artwork, and what has happened with it since its creation. I think the only way to solve this riddle is to put the artwork online, and ask our readers for help. Some of the images, however, are rather explicit in nature, and, as The Complete John Norman is a general, all-age website, I have decided to show only a part of the entire collection. Below, you'll find an overview of about fifty of these images. If anyone reading this knows who created this artwork, or where I could find more information, let me know.