Anyone running a doctor's office or any other kind of establishment with a waiting room should consider providing reading material their clients will enjoy. So many of these waiting rooms are either empty or filled with women's reading material. Military fiction books and magazines are especially popular among men and boys. Perhaps the fellows are stealing war books from lobbies nationwide. If not, office managers would do well to order some war stories.
The genre has a few broad conventions, to be followed or tweaked depending upon the writer's nerve. Typically, characters will be uniformed soldiers, sometimes against a backdrop of war, but more often right in the thick of it. The tale might be told in first person narrative but there will usually be quite a large cast of characters, sometimes including anonymous masses in battle. Fans of this genre usually appreciate detail when it comes to weaponry and equipment together with creativity in imaging tactics.
Appropriately, the military genre seems to conduct frequent raids into its neighbors' territory. It has certainly swallowed up a great deal of science fiction and fantasy. The most widely published and successfully filmed science fiction sub-genre remains space opera, and everything that makes it unique is war related. Of all science fiction's sub-genres it is by far the likeliest to have characters who are in some uniformed armed force, as well as fleets of spaceships attaching each other, and gunfights using energy weapons.
Militarized space opera is so dominant that many in the broad public seem to assume all science fiction is space opera. Understandably, this is to the frustration of many science fiction enthusiasts. It does, however, attest to the universality of the war story. So do all the martial elements in fantasy, whether in the form of the classics of the field or yesterday's new video game.
The entire genre of espionage literature can be classified a sub-genre of war literature. This classification has espionage literature playing the same role with war literature that espionage agencies play among a nation's armed forces. Nearly any fictional intelligence agent of note has a background story of service in the combat arms, and were at some point identified from within that pool of fighting men. Most still hold rank.
Understandably, there will be discerning parents who balk before letting their children enjoy reading about Okinawa or Shiloh. It might comfort them to know that violent print material lacks the neurological impact of seeing the same violence in real-time on the screen. Today, though, any conscious parent might balk before striking what their child loves. There might not be too many opportunities to inspire a love of books.
It isn't unusual for children to become obsessive toward a single genre. Girls and boys both enjoy the fantasy genre. A dash of high tech and it turns into SF. Boys favoring more realistic reading material often favor war literature almost exclusively, at least for a period of time.
War stories have quickened the male pulse since the moment Troy stopped burning. It is easy to understand the positions of those who would object. However, their distribution might help teach more young men how to read, and inspire more old men to visit the doctor.
The genre has a few broad conventions, to be followed or tweaked depending upon the writer's nerve. Typically, characters will be uniformed soldiers, sometimes against a backdrop of war, but more often right in the thick of it. The tale might be told in first person narrative but there will usually be quite a large cast of characters, sometimes including anonymous masses in battle. Fans of this genre usually appreciate detail when it comes to weaponry and equipment together with creativity in imaging tactics.
Appropriately, the military genre seems to conduct frequent raids into its neighbors' territory. It has certainly swallowed up a great deal of science fiction and fantasy. The most widely published and successfully filmed science fiction sub-genre remains space opera, and everything that makes it unique is war related. Of all science fiction's sub-genres it is by far the likeliest to have characters who are in some uniformed armed force, as well as fleets of spaceships attaching each other, and gunfights using energy weapons.
Militarized space opera is so dominant that many in the broad public seem to assume all science fiction is space opera. Understandably, this is to the frustration of many science fiction enthusiasts. It does, however, attest to the universality of the war story. So do all the martial elements in fantasy, whether in the form of the classics of the field or yesterday's new video game.
The entire genre of espionage literature can be classified a sub-genre of war literature. This classification has espionage literature playing the same role with war literature that espionage agencies play among a nation's armed forces. Nearly any fictional intelligence agent of note has a background story of service in the combat arms, and were at some point identified from within that pool of fighting men. Most still hold rank.
Understandably, there will be discerning parents who balk before letting their children enjoy reading about Okinawa or Shiloh. It might comfort them to know that violent print material lacks the neurological impact of seeing the same violence in real-time on the screen. Today, though, any conscious parent might balk before striking what their child loves. There might not be too many opportunities to inspire a love of books.
It isn't unusual for children to become obsessive toward a single genre. Girls and boys both enjoy the fantasy genre. A dash of high tech and it turns into SF. Boys favoring more realistic reading material often favor war literature almost exclusively, at least for a period of time.
War stories have quickened the male pulse since the moment Troy stopped burning. It is easy to understand the positions of those who would object. However, their distribution might help teach more young men how to read, and inspire more old men to visit the doctor.
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