Some things you wonder how it got this crazy

“Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, has prepared an amendment repealing the policy that prevents women from serving in front-line combat units in the Army and Marine Corps.
…
“Sanchez’s amendment would implement a recommendation made earlier this year by the Military Leadership Diversity Committee, a group of current and retired officers, noncommissioned officers and civilians, which determined that combat exclusion laws hurt advancement opportunities for women**.”

http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=23529

** And that is, after all, the sole purpose of a military, to ensure everybody has a shot at advancement, and, by the way, you get promotion points if you pee sitting down.

Linked from jammirewearingfool.

I made the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ list

And it wasn’t like the Dean’s List.

An older man who sometimes wrote columns for the newspaper stopped by my desk one afternoon and placed a newsletter amid the clutter.

“I’m a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans,” he said. “You’re mentioned here, but you didn’t get the information from me.” And he walked away.

I didn’t? Well. And why should anybody care where I got the information?

I opened the newsletter and read a piece that did, indeed, mention my name, as well as misquote me. The mention had to do with a column I had written a week or two before. The column led with demonstrations in Southern California by Vietnamese boat people against another refugee, who had placed a picture of Ho Chi Minh in the window of his store. The demonstrators said the picture was a slap in the face to all who fought Communists in Vietnam, and especially to those whose family members died in the wars or were murdered by Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. On one day, 10,000 people were in the shopping center parking lot, demanding that the man remove the picture.

In my column I said you would think the Vietnamese would get over the war, since Saigon had fallen 24 years before. I then said that we had not yet gotten over the Civil War, and that one ended 134 years before. And, I wrote, “The South lost the Civil War because it was out-generaled and out-fought.” The idea of a “Lost Cause” was, I wrote, “dribble.”

I knew when I wrote the piece that some people would consider me worse than a scoundrel, of lesser social standing than one who fouls a swimming pool or punch bowl. But I have never had much truck with organizations whose membership is based on what an ancestor did more than a century ago. It’s quite simple: You ain’t him. Or her.

I have the same opinion of war re-enactors, especially Civil War re-enactors, who seem mostly to be middle-aged and overweight.

I was surprised but not angered at mention in the local chapter newsletter. I didn’t know the local chapter had a newsletter. What upset me more than a little, though, was the misquote. Whoever wrote the piece had my writing as “The South lost the Civil War because they …”

That is one of those things that gets my goat to a fare thee well, assignment of person to a non-living object. A country (imagined or real) is an “it.” A country is not a “they.”

So, as mad as the SCV was at me, I was twice as mad.

Oh, the SCV writer said it was opinions like mine that gave the organization a bad name.

Glad to be of help.

From The Sarsun War

Against Overwhelming Odds, Scout Flight Destroys Sarsun Cruiser

By Jasmine Folks
United Republics Navy Press


Marine Captain Jack Fletcher was more than surprised when his flight of four scouts burst from deep space and into the middle of a Sarsun fleet.
“Surprised would be an understatement,” Captain Fletcher laughed during an interview in the pilots’ lounge of the cruiser URS Saratoga.
“Scared out of my wits might be more appropriate,” the five-year veteran pilot said.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to think of Captain Fletcher as frightened by or of anything. As leader of Number One Flight, Fourth Scout Squadron, the trim Marine has faced more than his share of dangers while searching for and finding Sarsun ships.
Senior officers recognize Captain Fletcher’s abilities, as do the pilots he leads.
“Jack Fletcher is one of the best pilots and finest officers I have ever known,” said Lt. Col. Matt Mapes, commander of Fourth Scout Squadron.
“Not only can he fly anything that has wings, he also has a nose for where the Sarsun are hiding,” the lieutenant colonel added.
It was that sixth sense, perhaps, that led Captain Fletcher and Number One Flight into the Sarsun fleet of six cruiser transports, an even dozen escort ships, and several ancillary vessels last week.
Four scouts against eighteen warships. Not the kind of odds most pilots would want to face.
“It didn’t take too long to figure out we were a bit outnumbered,” Captain Fletcher said.
Outnumbered and outgunned. Stripped of almost all weapons in order to have space for scanners and additional fuel cells, each of Captain Fletcher’s SF3F Rattlers (SF for “Scout-Fighter”) carried a single automatic cannon, three short of the F3F’s usual armament.
And, in addition to the eighteen Sarsun warships, Captain Fletcher and his flight mates had to contend with two dozen Sarsun fighters, launched from the cruiser transports when Number One Flight dashed through the enemy fleet.
“The Jakes (Sarsun fighters) are larger than a Rattler, but just as fast,” Captain Fletcher said. “The Rattler is more maneuverable, though, and the maneuverability gave us an edge.”
In the hands of an experienced pilot, that edge often means the difference between winning and losing, between life and death.
On the day Number One Flight met the Sarsun fleet, though, one of Captain Fletcher’s pilots was on her first combat mission.
Junior Lieutenant Shala Felps was graduated third in her flight school, but that rating did not prepare her for the sudden appearance of an entire Sarsun fleet.
“You learn what to do, how to handle the Rattler,” Lieutenant Felps said of her training, “but when you streak through eighteen Sarsun warships, the surprise goes beyond anything you experienced before.”
She added, “When I saw the Sarsun ships, I knew we would either keep going, or Captain Fletcher would turn us around and attack the enemy. I was glad when we kicked our Rattlers around and went full bore at the nearest cruiser.”
Going at the largest Sarsun ship did not mean the Rattlers faced an easy kill. Not only were defensive guns active on the cruiser, but there were the Jakes to contend with.
Captain Fletcher considered the Jakes, of course.
“I figured if we went right at the cruiser, the Jakes wouldn’t follow too close,” he explained. “They might get caught by the cruiser’s antiaircraft systems.”
Captain Fletcher did not have his pilots line up for individual passes at the Sarsun cruiser.
“We went in on line,” said Senior Lieutenant Marcos Walls. “Our wingtips were no more than a meter apart. Captain Jack knew we had to concentrate our fire in as small an area as we could.”
Had the Rattlers been fully armed -- 16 cannon and not four -- pilots could have brought fire to various vulnerable parts of the Sarsun ship.
“As it was,” Lieutenant Felps said, “we concentrated all our shots at the bridge. If we could take out command and control...Well, good things would happen.”
Flying on Captain Fletcher’s wing that day, Lieutenant Felps lined up on the center of the Sarsun command bridge.
“The formation Captain Jack put us into worked out so that I had the middle,” Lieutenant Felps said,
Captain Fletcher was to Lieutenant Felp’s left, while Lieutenant Wells and Junior Lieutenant Salum Bordax were to her right.
The four Rattler pilots opened fire at maximum range and quickly closed with the cruiser.
“We got good hits all over the bridge,” Captain Fletcher said. “My guys did an excellent job.”
Winner of the gunnery trophy in flight school, Lieutenant Felps recognized the value of good training.
“In flight school, firing at drones was exciting,” she recounted. “But this ... Seeing my shots shatter the Sarsun command ... Nothing compares with that.”
Because of the number of Sarsun ships, Number One Flight made only one pass at the cruiser.
“I figured we could get our shots in, and then we better get out of the area,” Captain Fletcher said.
That one pass, though, was as good as it gets for high-speed pilots.
“Our on-board sensors and cameras showed the bridge on fire,” Captain Fletcher said.
Additionally, data analysts in the Saratoga’s intelligence section said the fire most likely was not brought under control for some time, if at all.
“I wish we could have remained in the area and watched the cruiser burn,” Lieutenant Bordax said. “That class of cruiser carries a crew of one thousand and a landing force of fifteen hundred. Nothing would have given me more satisfaction than witnessing the death of twenty-five hundred Sarsun.”

Transcript of Radio Calls During Fight Against Sarsun Fleet (with explanation of combat flight terms)

Captain Jack Fletcher -- Flight Leader
Junior Lieutenant Shala Felps -- Captain Fletcher’s Wing
Senior Lieutenant Marcos Walls -- Leader Second Section
Junior Lieutenant Salum Bordax -- Walls’ Wing

NOTE: Transcript begins with First Flight’s egress of jump and sighting of Sarsun fleet.

LT. FELPS: Holy shit!

CAPT. FLETCHER: Full vertical, full burn, now!

(Rattling and shaking noises as aircraft go to maximum military speed in a vertical climb.)

CAPT. FLETCHER (after four seconds of burn): Off burn, now! Everybody still in one piece?

(The other pilots answer “Affirmative.”)

LT. WALLS: Pucker factor of nine.

CAPT. FLETCHER: Understood. Let’s flip over and see what we’ve got.

(By turning 90 degrees, upside down, the pilots can see below, through the aircraft canopy.)

CAPT. FLETCHER: By eyeball count, it looks like six cruisers, twelve escorts and a bunch of little ships that don’t matter. Scanners agree.

LT. WALLS: We got Jakes coming up.

CAPT. FLETCHER: I got ‘em. Okay, folks. We’ll make one pass on the nearest cruiser’s bridge, then get out of the neighborhood. Attack angle, thirty degrees, increase angle as we near the cruiser. Set weapons for burst fire at maximum range. Go manual and hold the trigger down when we get hits. We go straight through the Jakes. They’ll open fire at max range, and when they do, we go full burn until we’re through their formation. Questions?

(No replies.)

CAPT. FLETCHER: Okay. Roll left, now. Good. Attack angle, now. Okay. Everybody’s looking good. Jakes should start firing … Full burn, now!

(Sounds of shaking noises, then loud ripping sound as cannon fire in half-second bursts.)

LT BORDAX: Sonofabitch! That Jake almost hit me!

CAPT. FLETCHER: A little short. Getting closer. Go to manual fire. Increase angle forty degrees. Fire, fire!

(Sustained ripping sounds for five seconds as each cannon fires 750 rounds.)

LT. FELPS: Hits, hits! We’ve got hits on the bridge! Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah!

CAPT. FLETCHER: Cease fire! Pull up. Level flight. Full burn, now! Okay. Jump in ten seconds.

LT BORDAX: Did you see that? Did you?

CAPT. FLETCHER: Jump in seven seconds.

LT. WALLS: Sonofabitch is on fire!

CAPT. FLETCHER: Five seconds. (Short laugh.) Well, Shala, not bad for a first mission, huh.

LT. FELPS: No, sir. Not bad at all. Can we do this every mission?

CAPT. FLETCHER: Probably not. Jump … Now.

When I Went to Vietnam

(In 1993 I took a class called "Vietnam and Its Influence on American Film, Literature and Music." One afternon before class, another student asked me, "What did you feel when you went to Vietnam?" Usually when someone asks a "How did you feel ..." question, I answer with not-good manners. The confusion of "think" with "feel" is a rather stupid thing. That day, though, I answered the qustion truthfully. I said, "I don't know." I went home that night and I wrote When I Went to Vietnam.)


What more fitting memorial for the fallen
Than that their children
Should fall for the same cause?
-- Osbert Sitwell, The Next War


When I went to Vietnam


Kim and I said good-bye in the parking lot across the street from my barracks. We were in Kim’s white Ford Falcon. The Falcon was six years old.

There were lights on tall metal poles in the parking lot, but the lights gave off only enough illumination to make the parking lot spooky at night when it was full of cars and you walked through it. In the parking lot the night I left there were only Kim’s Falcon and six or so other cars. The other cars belonged to wives or girlfriends who had driven from home and to Fort Meade to say good-bye to their men.

Soldiers walked from the barracks and into buses or got off the buses and stood around and smoked cigarettes. There were three buses and a three-quarter-ton truck parked beneath a street light near the barracks. The buses were dark green and shiny and had big white letters on the front and back and sides and reading “U.S. Army.” The buses would take us to Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., where we would get on a C-130 transport plane. Sixty of us would get on two of the buses. The third bus was loaded with duffel bags. The three-quarter-ton truck was painted a dull greenish brown; olive drab; OD the color was called. Some soldiers said OD meant Over Dirt. The truck carried rifle racks with our M-16 rifles, and boxes with M-60 machine guns and M-79 grenade launchers. The troop orderly room was packed on the truck, too -- OD three-drawer metal filing cabinets; wooden OD boxes with typewriters and typing paper; three field desks; several folding chairs and a Tent, General Purpose Small, that would be the orderly room when we arrived in Vietnam.

Kim and I had said good-bye the night before, but that good-bye was longer than this one would be. Now, we held hands and touched and made soft kisses in the dark. We said, “I’m going to miss you,” and “I’ll miss you too,” and “It won’t be the same,” and “No, it won’t.” Kim said, “I will write to you every day.” I should have said, “No, don’t tell me that, because you might not be able to, and then what would I think?” But I didn’t say that. I said, “Okay.”

Later on, I did not get a letter every day, but I didn’t worry. Kim wrote at least twice a week, sometimes three times, and the paper was scented. She wrote about things we had done and about her job and how she sometimes cried. She wrote about things we would do when I got back -- places we would go and restaurants where we would eat. Kim knew all the good restaurants around Laurel and in Baltimore. Kim didn’t mention the other things we would do. She was shy and would never talk of those.

Later on, I wrote when I could. I wrote that it was hot and dry or hot and wet. I wrote about the songs we had listened to and sometimes those songs were on Armed Forces Radio and I thought about her when I heard the songs. After a lot of later on, I stopped writing. I don’t know why. Kim wrote and asked why I didn’t write any more. After a time, she stopped asking. (We did get back together, but it was more than a year later. It wasn’t the same, though, and then we weren’t together.)

Kim had left and had been left before, but that did not mean she was accustomed to it. In the summer of 1950, Kim and her family left their village north of Seoul and ran from the North Korean army. Kim and her family ran south, through Seoul and farther south and stopped in Tageu, because they were tired and could run no farther. There wasn’t much food, and sometimes they went three or four days with nothing to eat. Grass, sure, but everybody who ran ate grass, and the grass was soon gone. Kim was eight years old the summer she and her family ran from the North Koreans, and she remembered eating grass. She remembered, too, a funny thing, that for more than a year she didn’t have any candy. I guess that’s something you remember when you are eight years old and then nine before you eat candy again.

I was 20 years old that autumn. Kim was 24. She was a lovely woman. Her face was shaped like a heart and her hair black and always fixed just so. Her teeth were white and even. She smiled every time she saw me, and her eyes crinkled. Kim’s manners were impeccable. She dressed modestly; red was her best color. She embarrassed easily.

One September day we were in a large department store in Laurel, in the lingerie section. I held up several things for Kim to look at, and the flimsiest and most transparent, I held against her. She blushed every time I did that, saying, “Bob! Someone might see!”

I found a thing that was not transparent; a lounging suit, one-piece and with long sleeves. It was burgundy colored and had a scoop neck and a zipper that went all the way down. The zipper had a big metal circle at the top that you could put your finger through and find easily in the dark. I took the suit from the rack and said, “This is pretty.”

“Yes, it is,” Kim said. She touched the materiel. “It is very pretty. Should I try it on? It is my size.”

“Yes,” I said. “I think you should try it on.”

Kim carried the suit to a dressing room, and I stood in the lingerie section, surrounded by things that were transparent and things that were not.

A saleswoman approached. “May I help you?”

I said, “Ah, . . I’m with my ... She’s trying something on.”

The saleswoman nodded and smiled, and then Kim said: “Bob?”

I turned. Kim was just outside the dressing room door. The suit was much more pretty on Kim than on a hanger in the rack. Kim stood with her arms at her sides and a look that asked very much for approval.

She said, “Do you like it?”

“Yes,” I said. “I like it very much.” The saleswoman smiled and looked away.

I don’t remember what Kim and I finally said to each other in the Falcon, other than “I love you” and “I love you too.” I know we kissed a final kiss and it was good. Then, I got out of the car and walked to the first bus. I got on the bus and sat next to Jim MacMillan. (Jim would call in the summer of 1992 from Shamrock in the Texas Panhandle. He said he did a second tour with the Regiment. I asked, although I didn’t want to, but it was something I had to ask, “Did you make it okay?” I closed my eyes and almost cried when I asked, because somehow I knew the answer. Jim said, “No, I didn’t. I got shot in the face.” I remember how I thought the conversation strange from the beginning, that when I asked a question, Jim paused longer than is normal before he answered.) I took the seat next to Jim and I sighed and lit a cigarette.

Kim didn’t leave, not right away. I looked out the bus window. The Falcon was still there. I could see the car, but not Kim. The parking lot was dark. I wished she would go.

Then the headlights came on and the Falcon backed up and left the parking lot. Kim drove north. Brake lights flashed when she stopped at an intersection at the top of the hill. Then, the car was gone.

Stories I would like to sell or finish

The Disappearance of Harvey Lee Jackson – 92,000 words. Done. A young man returns from war, meets a girl, falls in love, but the girl’s husband is nine months dead from Vietnam. Young man goes back to Vietnam, his best friend is killed and the young man wounded. As the man tells another woman 24 years later, “There was a girl. I loved her, but I lost her to the war.” G language; PG events.

When I Went to Vietnam – 86,000 words. Done. Short stories, essays, poems. Contains soldier language; not for the easily embarrassed or faint of heart.

All Our Yesteryears – 300,000 words. Done, but needs redoing. Circa 1964, a young man’s last few months in high school, the girl he loves, his enlisting in the Army, the girl’s death in a car accident. The young man goes to Korea, re-enlists, succumbs to temptations he never knew existed, returns Stateside, goes out with and falls in love with the first girl’s younger sister. Threats by the girl’s father. Young man goes to his duty station for eight months, then to Vietnam. Events there. Returns home for his last year in the Army. When discharged, sees second girl, knows he cannot stay, goes to Midwestern state, where his best friend from Vietnam lives. Meets friend’s older sister. Events. Two endings, haven’t chosen. Young man marries best friend’s sister, or he is contacted by the girl he ran away from and returns to her. Language as above.

Phu Bat – several unfinished chapters. Phu Bat is a town of 25,000 on the South China Sea, between Nha Trang and Cam Ranh. HQ for the 407th Truck Company, commanded by COL. Wade Martin. Colonels do not command truck companies, which means there is more than movement of materiel. Martin keeps the peace in and around Phu Bat through the oldest and most effective method – He pays for it. Local authorities, local Viet Cong leaders take Martin’s money. Except, of course, it is not his money. Every business pays a fee. Martin’s bought local authorities make sure the Saigon government gets nothing. Soldiers of the 407th and airmen at the small Air Force strip support local businesses. So,to, do local farmers, some of whom grow pineapples, tobacco and potatoes rather than rice. Local middle men sell the agricultural products to name brand companies, who in turn sell to the US government. Farmers pay a fee, as do the middlemen. Many Americans involved in Phu Bat, with every department of the US government involved in educating indigenous peoples on the proper ways of modern life – Departments of Justice, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Transportation, etc. and et al. Also in Phu Bat are American non-profit organizations and religious missionaries, to whom the American soldiers are an encumbrance. War stuff and personal interactions as well.

The Greatest Years of Rock and Roll – many unfinished chapters. Actually has nothing to do with rock and roll, except for the time span – 1963-72 – and use of song lyrics on each and every page; i.e., “the GTO really looking fine,” “Jack is running a 409 in the pickup, saved his pennies and his dimes,” “Last night there was the girl in Missouri, Doris, and ooh that girl looked nice,” “and a couple of songs Doris just stood in one spot and wiggled around,” “Jack finished chewing, swallowed, sipped coffee. ‘I was born in a small town.’” In the opening chapter, Jack stops for lunch at a diner in mid-eastern Kansas, eventually discovering the diner is a way station for the characters who journey in. Every picture tells a story, and so does every man and every woman.

The Sarsun Wars – many stories, a few actually finished. In a galaxy far away and far in the future, a race before unknown begins conquest and elimination of humans. Almost genetically identical to humans, the Sarsun take planet after planet, despite appalling losses. The idea of the book is a compilation of stories from published accounts by those who fought the Sarsun and survived or who were captured and survived.

One of Our Own – basic idea and layout. What do you do when a friend on a medical mission to Mexico is kidnapped by narco-terrorists and your government does nothing? If your friend is one of your soldiers and you are the only fulltime soldier at a National Guard detachment near the Rio Grande, you get with like-minded soldiers and plan and carry out a rescue. Over a drill weekend, of course. People have to be back at work on Monday.

And then there are the true events found while searching for something else, events that would make great stories; to wit: Rowland George Allanson Allanson-Winn, 5th Baron Headley (19 January 1855 – 22 June 1935), was offered the throne of Albania in 1925, along with $500,000 and $50,000 per year but refused it. That’s $10 million or $6.5 million in today’s money, depending upon which source you believe, plus the annual stipend. Albania wound up with King Zog, former president, who proclaimed himself king in 1928.

From Sgt. Bob's kitchen

Today’s breakfast menu called for “Charming cheese blintzes.”

“Charming?” The things I cook can be called many things – filling, quite good, excellent, and even occasionally so-so – but never have I prepared a meal termed “charming.”

I probably cooked “Charming cheese blintzes” before today. Cylla and I have used the menus off and on for around seven years. More off than on, sometimes. A 240-mile move spread over two years leads to an off and on life. Cylla got her job here in Arkansas in March 2005. I moved up here in June 2007. We sold our house in Sulphur Springs that November. Two-plus years of fixing a house – There were things that should have been done before, but as a friend said, “When my wife and I decided to sell our house, we had to fix ten years of ‘I’ll get to that tomorrow.’” Well, I had 23 years of tomorrows to take care of. But with the combined efforts of a bank, contractors, roofers and my often limited abilities, the job finally got done.

Cylla got the menu plan a time after I was fired from my last job. The newspaper went into a “Let’s fire all the older reporters and hire brand new graduates.” Out the door went an almost 60-year-old reporter, a 55-year-old (me) and a 40-year-old reporter. I applied for several jobs after the firing, but not with much gusto. I discovered I cannot take much stress. An Army psychologist wrote that in 1990 following two days of testing and evaluation – “decreased tolerance to stress.” Kind of funny; I’ve had two jobs since high school graduation – soldiering and newspapering, both with definite, sometimes almost overwhelming, but different, kinds of stress. There were other kinds of jobs – construction, taxi driving, nigh club bouncing – but those were interludes between soldiering and newspapering.

The psychological tests were interesting. An Army staff sergeant gave the tests. One question was, “Who wrote Faustus?” I answered, “Goethe.” The staff sergeant said, “I’ve been giving this test for 12 years, and you are the second person to answer that question.” Another question was one of those “If it takes (this many) people (this long) to do a job, how many people will it take to do the same job in (this amount of time)?” I said, “Ninety-six.” The staff sergeant said, “I have been giving this test for 12 years, and you are the only person who’s given the right answer.” Late that afternoon, I went back to my room at the visitor’s quarters at Fort Sam and got a pencil and piece of paper and wrote down numbers and went through the math to figure out how I got the answer.

The tests determined I have “superior IQ” and “very superior verbal IQ.” I wondered how one has a “very superior” anything. That sounds like the difference between “good” and “gooder.”

The decrease tolerance to stress was a result of a cerebral aneurysm in March 1986. Doctors cut a hole in my skull and moved aside parts of my brain and got to the aneurysm and put a spring-loaded stainless steel clip on the bulge. After that, though, there were physical and mental problems, which lead the Army to decide on a discharge based on “Organic mental disorder, characterized by depression, emotional lability and personality decompensation.” The Army medical people did not explain what the words meant. “You have this, here are the papers, there is the door.” The papers meant a check every month, but not as much as I wanted.

But we were talking about “Charming cheese blintzes.” You take an egg yolk, two egg whites, fat-free cottage cheese, some flavoring, flour, a little milk (I used 2%, even though the recipe called for skim), put it all together and cook about a third-cup at a time in a skillet sprayed with non-stick stuff. Like pancakes. I used a wrought iron skillet, one of the greatest inventions of man. (“Man” in the gender-neutral sense, lest the Gender Police or Thought Police be reading.) You can cook anything in a wrought iron skillet or a wrought iron Dutch oven, given something as a lid, of course. Cooking “Charming cheese blintzes” does not require a lid, but some things do.

Here’s what I learned from cooking “Charming cheese blintzes” – Each of the six stuck. Some more than others, but stuck none the less. Still, served with fat-free sour cream and strawberries cut up and sweetened “with your favorite sugar substitute,” as the recipe said, the blintzes tasted pretty good. But they stuck and I won’t do them again.

From Sgt. Bob’s kitchen.

What happened?

At the Barnes and Noble site, Nookbooks, under Historical Fiction, titles in the first two screens include: Water for Elephants; The Paris Wife; The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane; The Valley of the Horses (Earth’s Children #2); Prayers for Sale; The Shelters of Stone (Earth’s Children #5); Dragonfly in Amber … Those are not historical fiction. Those books are romance novels.

Historical novels are set in specific times and involve specific events, historical events, hence the name “historical novel.”

The first two screens contained two writers who are gendered male. The remainder are written by women – 15 books written by women; four by men, and three of those by Ken Follett. The other was written by Steve Berry.

The science fiction/fantasy category is even less diverse (to use an in-vogue word). Of 10 screens of titles, there is not one space opera or space exploration or humans war against alien thingees threatening extinction. Not one. There are dozens of books about vampires, zombies and fairies, though.

Maybe more women than men buy books. Or, maybe men have become so feminized that they are reading romance novels and vampire novels, and etc.