The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 By Jake Saunders

On August 12, 1992, England's tiny nuclear arsenal fell on Ireland, South Africa and finally China. Instantly the planet went up in flames. In the first half of the War of '92, half of the Earth's population vanished. The United States was reduced to a vast underpopulated land - and, to make matters worse, Texas had seceded and taken it's precious oil reserves. But Israel, virtually untouched in a world ravaged by war, was painfully overpopulated.

So Sol Ingelstein and Myra Kalen had come to America looking for a place to settle. As mercenaries on the side of the Union in it's war with Texas, the Israelis had been promised land in exchange for their services. Leading their bedraggled troops into the hearthland of Texas, Sol and Myra head up Operation King. Misssion: Rescue the President of the United States! The Texas-Israeli War: 1999

I always like reading books written in the past that are set in a futuristic time-period. Especially if that futuristic date is now history itself. Of course they often get things wrong. Actually they get everything wrong. But what I like about them is how they show the reader (or viewer if it's a movie/television series) what the concerns and fears were at the time of the book's inception. Fascinating stuff.

The Texas-Israeli War:1999 takes place in a world which saw a limited nuclear exchange in 1992 along with heavier usage of chemical and biological weapons.Much of the world is severly depopulated with the exception of Israel and a few other nations. Amazingly many of the world's nations continue to exsist (albeit with broken backs) and war is still a going concern. Israel is over-populated and poor so it's men and women go across the globe as mercenaries (much like Switzerland in the 16th century and Ireland in the 17/18th centuries).

Published in 1974 there is much about this novel that is woefully out of date. The idea that nations would continue to function under such apocalyptic conditions is absurd. There are billions dead,uncontrolled geneticly engineered diseases are ripping through the surviving population, economies are shattered, vast areas are uninhabitable thanks to radiation and near apocaplytic famine is the order of the day. Yet the various nations continue to function and war against each other. Additionally, our understanding of how the world's economy (even in 1974), and the environment, flow across national boundaries also makes the idea of Israel and it's population emerging unscathed from a global war amusing.

And yet this is a very entertaining novel. It reminds me of the post-apocalytic/survivalist serial novels (See:Total War) that were so popular in the Eighties, though this book better written with stronger character development and a stronger plot. Somehow a pretty thrilling post-apocalyptic/dystopian military adventure story emerges. Long out of print it's one you'll have to find in a used bookstore or have sent to you by a Goodreads friend. Thanks again Raegan. Paperback For cover and synopsis absurdity, this gets three stars. The story itself generously gets one. To the lay person, these average out to two. So, two stars, sure. Whatever. Heck, I might keep just the cover for posterity since the art is hilarious.

I remember buying this and about 10-15 other used 3-5 dollar sci fi and fantasy paperbacks on a single Friday night two years ago when I was really depressed. Money well spent? Paperback SPOILERS

#1 - Laser Tanks = Cool
#2 - Misleading title (Israeli's are just mercs, Isreal is actually neutral) and the cover (no Indians attack the tanks)
#3 - Point of interest Chinese invasion of Alaska.. any significance? Barely mentioned.
#4 - Callsign Charlie Bagel
#5 - Texan mix of Confederacy and Nazi-ism with the gentlemanly General in the Crystal City base and the Sons of Alamo powder blue SA unit
#6 - Decline - a view of the panzer as king, but overall the world is declining into pre-industrial state
#7 - Ariel Sharon - real figure, in the novel he is spoken of in reverential tones as someone not willing to kill innocents, and then in real life after book published found responsible for not preventing a massacre of Palestinians
#8 - At the end they are all happy, drinking Israeli Coca Cola... 90% of the world pop is dead and the crops still are wiped out, yet it ends like a 80's GI-Joe cartoon.
Paperback As you can imagine from the title, this isn’t a great work of literature. I remember a friend reading this book in high school around 1983 and thinking, even when I was a non-discriminate reader, that here was one book that just didn’t look appetizing. So why did I pick this book up, and why did I read it–especially now?

For a time I engendered a habit of inscribing into the back of the front cover of every new book purchase my name and the date that the book was purchased, whether it was bought new or used, or received as a gift. After I finished a book, I would then inscribe the date of first doing so. (I still do this to some extent; although I don’t keep a log of when I buy a book, this newsletter, and the notebook were I originally write these ramblings, serve for the latter.) The used copy of The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 that I own was bought on March 15, 1988. At that time, I was living in Austin, where I was meeting, and making friends with, authors like Bruce Sterling, Lewis Shiner[, and, most importantly in regard to this book, [author:Howard Waldrop.

I think anyone who’s ever had the chance to sit and talk with Howard can understand the impression that he can have on an impressionable young reader like my past self. Here’s a guy that seems to have the best job that an inveterate reader can have. He spends most of the time just reading voraciously–everything from comics to French film magazines. And when the mix of information seems to hit him just right, out comes another story, that he then proceeds to sell to OMNI or Asimov’s. Of course, I know Howard better now. I know that all that reading has a purpose. I know those stories don’t just pop out, but are the result of sometimes years-long painstaking craftsmanship. I also know that he doesn’t finish those stories nearly quickly enough, and that Howard subsided for years on legumes and for years was without what some of us would consider basic necessities, like a telephone.

But, at the time, Howard was to be envied, as I still envy his skill in imagining stories and his writing ability. As I said, I was young and impressionable, and for the most part, all I wanted to do was enjoy life, which, for me, equaled having all that free time to spend reading. Since I happened to be in college at the time, I thought it was possible to get away with it. Did I say I was young, impressionable, and stupid? I should have. I discovered Howard, though, and the others. And I had made a decision that I, too, would become a writer. My first step towards that goal was to read what the writers whom I knew had written. Therefore, my purchase of The Texas-Israeli War: 1999.

Everyone has to start somewhere. That’s the first rule of writing. And the best thing to do is acknowledge the rule and try not to regret the fumbling beginnings too much. The important thing is what you are doing now. The second rule of writing is “Don’t give up the day job.” It’s the day job that allows you to have ethics, that allows you to write for your own muse rather than Paramount’s or Byron Preiss’. There comes a time when you forego the day job and try to make it on your wits and it backfires. As you stumble along, trying to reach out forward rather than backwards to the day job, you grab onto the quick buck. Was that the scenario for The Texas-Israeli War: 1999? Probably not, because, for its flaws, The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 is not calculated enough to make that quick buck. But neither is it inspired enough to contain the full muse that Howard followed at the time (and I refuse to blame the co-author for any perceived flaws; Waldrop must share what praise or blame there is equally).

The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 is an adventure novel. These days it would probably be published by Baen rather than Del Rey, because of its focus on military equipment and maneuvering. While the story stays within the Baen military style, it contains that inspired spark that I associate with Waldrop. The descriptions of military things reads true because Howard probably read about it in Jane’s Fighting something-or-other. The story fails, however, in its portrayal of certain “political” aspects. The intrigue surrounding the SS-like Sons of the Alamo; the President Pro-Tem, and his motivations, ring tinny. Paperback this is the kind of book you can't see in a used bookstore and not buy Paperback

Free read The Texas-Israeli War: 1999

Just an enjoyable book. Love it! Paperback Ein Buch wie ein Stück Treibholz. Paperback If you enjoy war stories this might be a good book to read. It is very short, it feels like most of the book is wasted on them driving over wastelands and talking. The characters spend more time talking about the events going on the in story then any actually story taking place. The only serious action, the battle to rescue the president is a measly 20 pages.

These negatives of poor storytelling aside it is an interesting view on what life was like in the 1970s. The depiction of devastation after chemical and biological warfarm is made very clear. It feels like it could be a very likely alternate reality that the world could have taken. None of the plot is outlandish, no magic technology that trumps everything else. A very honestly and realistically written book. Paperback A brief, pulpy military sci-fi page-turner, expanded from a short story. The title is misleading: the novel does take place in 1999, but Israel is not at war at Texas in the story. (The cover is also misleading- Native Americans never charge at Israeli tanks on horseback in the novel, and in fact they barely appear in the novel at all.) Explaining what the actual situation is is somewhat more complex. The world has undergone a catastrophic nuclear war (caused by IRA terrorists with LSD, and an unlikely alliance of Ireland, apartheid South Africa, and the People's Republic of China), several years prior to the novel, that somehow depopulated every developed country on earth except Israel. Countries all over the world are now left with vast stretches of unpeopled land and unsettled grudges against their geopolitical enemies. Israel has a bunch of military hardware it's not using, and an increasingly overpopulated landscape. The solution: Israeli citizens lease out their services (and their laser-tanks) as mercenaries to the highest bidder; they are often paid in open land, which Israel now has very little of, and other countries have too much of. Texas secedes from the Union again. The president of the USA is kidnapped by the Texans, and an Israeli mercenary corps is contracted to help retrieve him. This is about all you need to know about the plot. The story is not very deep; the characters are not very deeply developed; and it's very silly. But it's fun while it lasts.

The book came out in 1974, and the authors were clearly very impressed by the Israeli military's performance in the Six-Day and Yom Kippur wars, particularly Israel's use of tanks. Ariel Sharon gets namedropped as a merc commander working for Texas on the Sabine front. Ironically (from the point of view of the 21st century) he is commended for his humanitarianism and clemency towards the enemy. The original short story exists basically intact within the novel, as a number of the earlier chapters; it was fleshed out into a novel by interpolating chapters featuring a US Army soldier in between these, and then continuing the story beyond where the short story ends.

The chapters which were part of the original short story, in particular, contain several extremely silly episodes. The Israeli tank crew commander meets an old man in the scorched hellscape of Texas; this old man used to know a Jewish guy, and always greeted him by saying shalom. Hearing this touches the tank commander so deeply that he gives the old man a pack of cigarettes, which are hard to come by in postapocalyptic Texas. While waiting to ford a river, the Israeli tank crews get out and dance the hora on the riverbank, because why not. The Texans sail a battleship up a canal into the DALWORTHINGTON METROPLEX and use it as heavy artillery support. The good guys sink it, of course. It is very exciting. Paperback An imaginative story. More of a Texan war of secession in a post-apocalyptic world where Israelis work as mercenaries for both sides.

Good characters, backstory was given in short bursts when needed instead of long tedious explanations of how the world got to be the way it was.

Steady stream of action and few dull moments. Some over-the-top metaphors and extra-flowery prose scattered throughout that would drive some people I know crazy but I found to be entertaining and almost poetic. Also a quick read. Paperback