Sexism Is Announced

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I visited two used book stores. The first was a small shop in a strip mall. A sign on the door thanked customers for voting them their favorite bookstore in a recent poll. Inside, the shop was packed with books. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases leant the shop a claustrophobic atmosphere, and divided the rental space into rooms. 

A kindly old gentleman greeted me at the door. He welcomed me, and asked if I was looking for anything in particular. When I said I was just browsing, he went on to explain how he had organized his store. Off to one side was Women's Literature. This included Romance and Mysteries. "Mysteries?" I asked.

"Only women read--and with a few exceptions, write--mysteries," he replied. Just as the bookshelves differentiated his shop into little rooms containing different genres, he went on to explain that Men didn't write mysteries, they wrote Suspense Thrillers. Again, he asked for a specific author so he could lead me to the section in which he had placed that author's books. When I deferred a second time, he left me to my own devices. 

Intriguingly, Nonfiction, History, and Classical Literature were all in the Men's half of the store.

I wasn't all that impressed with his selection, or the prices of his well-used paperbacks, so I was all-too-happy to leave after a quick tour of the shop.

The second shop was larger, and part of a chain. The selection was vast, and represented a large number of authors. Salespeople were available, but no one tried to lead me to a specific area. Like the first shop, the prices were a little higher than I prefer to pay for used books, but overall the quality of the books was better. My browsing eventually led me to the Clearance area, where I picked up several Science Fiction and Fantasy novels, as well as a Miss Marple novel by Agatha Christie.

At the register, the young counter assistant scanned the old comics and books I had selected. He commented on none of them until he saw the Miss Marple novel. "Ooh, Agatha Christie," he enthused. "She's my favorite author!" He claimed that the novel I had selected, A Murder is Announced was his personal favorite novel. He went on to tell me how Christie occasionally lost him, when she was inundating him with characters at the beginning of a story, but she always made up for it with the quality of her storytelling.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that he was reading Women's Literature. But then, so am I, apparently.

Dragon Dave

Clive Exton and H.G. Wells

"The Infinite Worlds of H. G. Wells" begins with a dark and stormy night. An aged H. G. Wells receives a journalist in his library. While he's not inclined to answer her questions, as a gentleman he cannot send her away with a storm raging outside. So he agrees to relate one story from his youth, and then she must leave. 

The esteemed author of such celebrated works as "The Time Machine" and War of the Worlds relates a mysterious event that took place in his youth. As a young man, hunting for ideas, he came across a strange series of events at a London university: an experiment gone wrong, a stack of empty food cans in a cupboard, and laboratory rats that escaped a locked and fastened cage. From these disparate clues, young Wells deduced that a professor has developed a chemical that allowed the user to slow down relative time. 

When Wells and a professor friend find the compound, they take a little of it themselves, and walk across the campus. Everyone else seems frozen. Even a cricket ball has stopped in mid-flight, and hovers over the pitch. These events inspired the author to write the short story "The New Accelerator."

Over the course of three nights, or if you prefer, three episodes, this patriarch of Science Fiction relates the facts that inspired five more of his early stories. His visitor, he soon realizes, is no mere journalist. In fact, she works for a secret government department, specially appointed by Winston Churchill. She takes him to laboratories beneath the streets of London, where he finds artifacts that inspired his early stories. And he tells her about his young love, Jane, who encouraged his writing, and also worked at the university.

These stories lack the production values of "Agatha Christie's Poirot." They venture into the realms of the fantastic, whereas Hercule Poirot only investigated the here and now. But the events of each story are presented as a mystery for a young H. G. Wells to solve.

The series was cowritten by Clive Exton, who adapted many Poirot stories for the screen. They aired in 2001, the same year Exton's final Poirot story, "Murder In Mesopotamia," was broadcast. Did Exton grow tired of Agatha Christie's famous detective, and wished to sink his teeth into another mystery series?  

Sadly, only three episodes of the series were produced. It would have been interesting to have seen how it developed, and if H.G. Wells had somehow helped Churchill defend his nation's shores. At least the series' end left Clive Exton free to write for "Rosemary & Thyme," another charming, light-hearted series about two gardeners who solve mysteries. Those stories aren't Poirot either, but like "The Infinite Worlds of H. G. Wells," they are infinitely fun.

Dragon Dave