Male novelists appear to be a dying breed in the paperback-book section of your neighborhood supermarket.
Female authors, already the sole producers of romance and gothic tomes, appear to be taking over the mystery and general-fiction sections as well.
Male authors still dominate the sci-fi section and exclusively rule the western archives. For now.
Let’s face it. Female authors don’t have the life experiences or inclinations to write realistic novels about warfare, espionage, terrorism, mercenaries and other stuff guys dig as escape vehicles.
Instead, fiction shelves are now full of female fantasies about infidelity, hubris, corruption and other tame issues.
Local used-book outlets now are the only places where hundreds of fictional accounts of combatants and spies of The Greatest Generation still can be found in abundance.
What a pity. (25 FEBRUARY 2007)
