It’s an old cliche: Men prefer science fiction; women prefer fantasy. (Of course, that’s a half-truth at best: After all, many men enjoy fantasy, and many women, science fiction.)
Yet, if men are mostly from Mars and women are mostly from Venus, how is today’s publishing world appealing to both?
Not very well, Kristin McTiernan argues on her Fictional Influence website and blog.
When McTiernan posted a video about the absence of contemporary men’s fiction, it went viral.
“I struck a nerve that resonated far beyond my usual audience,” McTiernan wrote on her Fictional Influence website.
“The comment section flooded with responses from men who felt invisible in today’s publishing landscape – readers hungry for stories that spoke to their experiences (from their perspective) without apology.”
And Beau L’Amour, son of legendary Western author Louis L’Amour, strongly agrees – prompting McTiernan to post an eye-opening interview with him about the crucial importance of targeting male readers – especially the next generation of boys and teenagers.
Interestingly, in one question to L’Amour, McTiernan mentions that “indie” authors like Devon Eriksen and Matt Dinimann have carved out a space for male readers and “are steadily gaining traction (in sci-fi and fantasy) respectively.”
Eriksen’s Theft of Fire, the first novel in his protected Orbital Space tetralogy, was a 2024 Prometheus Best Novel finalist. (And Eriksen reportedly is making real headway in completing its sequel, Box of Trouble, which has a chance of being published in 2025.)
McTiernan asked L’Amour if there are any current authors or publishers who are carrying out his father’s legacy.
His lengthy answer begins by highlighting Taylor Sheridan, the screenwriter and director of the popular TV series Yellowstone.
More broadly, L’Amour reminds us that not too many decades ago, when he was growing up, adventure fiction was published far more widely, including within the SF genre.
“It was very male oriented, with lots of action, exploration and gadgets,” he said.
L’Amour mentions the special appeal to boys and young men by the writer Lester Dent (1904-1959), best remembered today for the Doc Savage series. (He wrote 159 Doc Savage novels under the house name Kenneth Robeson.)
BURROUGHS, HEINLEIN AND NIVEN
As examples of mass-appeal writers who also were favorites to read by boys and young men, L’Amour describes how he “devoured” Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert Heinlein and later, Larry Niven.
Edgar Rice Burroughs is best known for creating Tarzan, who appeared in 24 of his books, and John Carter, a recurring character in 11 of his books about a human transported to a Mars civilization.
Of course, Heinlein (1907-1988) is a huge Prometheus Awards favorite. He is the author most often honored and recognized, with a grand total of nine Prometheus awards.
Of those winners, two of the best (which also strongly appeal to boys and men) are The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, one of the first two works inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame in 1983, and Citizen of the Galaxy, perhaps the best of Heinlein’s “juveniles” (written for a young-adult audience) and inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2022.
Both works still resonate today with a broad audience, but also embody much of the types of fiction and narrative tropes that traditionally have appealed to especially to boys and men.
Larry Niven, a still-living master of science fiction and the author of a collection of novels and stories all set within his galactic-future Known Space series, won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel in 1992 for Fallen Angels, co-written with Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn.
To his credit, L’Amour also praises the great Ray Bradbury (1920-2012.)
“A lot of kids of my generation read Ray Bradbury, a real poet. He might be kind of under-appreciated these days … certainly he was under appreciated by us when we were youngsters,” L’Amour said.
Bradbury, a master of the short story, may be best remembered for his dystopian and civil libertarian novel Fahrenheit 451, an early inductee into the Prometheus Hall of Fame.
“All of this was hard hitting, fast moving and relatively short fiction. Great stuff! Today the material for kids and young people is too careful… or too transgressive! It’s too inward looking, too slow paced, and not technical enough to really activate a boy,” L’Amour said.
“Boys need to search maps, wonder how the gravity well of a neutron star could solve a murder, and imagine how the track of an outlaw decays after days of exposure to the weather. Boys need to read edgy, funny, dangerous feeling material,” he said.
L’Amour’s answer delightfully ends with a lengthy quote from Heinlein’s novel Glory Road that evokes what he and other boys most wanted to read while growing up.
Here’s an enticing excerpt from that Heinlein quote:
“I wanted to get up feeling brisk and go out and break some lances.. I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted… Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, ‘The game’s afoot!’ I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin… I wanted to sail with Ulysses… I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be — instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is.”
About Fictional Influence:
McTiernan’s website aims to bring her expertise in editing and ghostwriting to a platform offering tips on narrative development, editing guidance and broader insights into fiction and publishing.
For the full interview between McTiernan and L’Amour, titled “The Last Frontier: How Louis L’Amour’s Son Is Fighting Publishing’s ‘Men Don’t Read’ Myth,” visit and subscribe to McTiernan’s blog, Fictional Influence.
ABOUT THE LFS AND PROMETHEUS AWARDS
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, join the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
Libertarian futurists understand that culture matters. We believe that literature and the arts can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future.
In some ways, culture can be even more influential and powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other’s rights, human dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.
* Prometheus winners: For a full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including in the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website. This page includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of more than 100 past winners since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.
* Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies, Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,” an essay in the international magazine Quillette that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.
* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Facebook page for comments, updates and links to the latest Prometheus Blog posts.
When I was running convention programming, one of my panel topics was “Men Game, Women Costume.” And statistically there’s a lot of truth to that. On the other hand, half of the players in my current campaigns are women; and while statistically men tend to take more interest in the “wargame” side of the hobby, my one player who was most enthusiastic about combat scenes was a woman. . . .