There are an estimated 25,000 Goreans worldwide.

Cory Doctorow: British police have raided a domination "sex cult" in Darlington based on the long-running Gor science fiction novels from John Norman. The Kaotians (a splinter sect from the mainline domination Gor fandom, known as Goreans) are accused of holding a woman as an involuntary sex-slave -- women's sexual subservience features in the Gor novels.

Gor books still have a huge following, despite being out of print for some years. When I worked at a science fiction bookstore, we had lots of customers with standing orders for used copies of the missing numbers from the 26-book series. The books were a little stilted and wooden, but they were chock-full of BDSM sex stuff. One customer told me that he bought the books for the sex, and didn't really care much that the writing was clunky -- he said it was still miles better than the average porn novel.

The 29-year-old woman is said to have voluntarily attended the sect after finding out about it over the internet.

She later contacted a friend in United States, who then contacted the police, saying she wanted to leave but couldn't as she had burnt her passport and return ticket.

But a police spokesman said upon arriving at the premises they did not find any evidence of "criminal offences".

Link (Thanks, Mike!)