The Texas-Israeli War: 1999

by Jake Saunders, Howard Waldrop

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!

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Alternate History, Post Apocalyptic, Military Science Fiction, Adventure, Science Fiction Fantasy

209 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published September 13, 1974

About the author

Jake "Buddy" Saunders is an American author and businessman.

Saunders started out in the world of fanzines, operating his own mail order service starting in 1961. In the mid-1960s was a regular contributor (as an artist) to the seminal comic book fanzine Rocket's Blast Comicollector.

He co-authored A Voice and Bitter Weeping with Howard Waldrop, later expanded into the 1974 novel The Texas-Israeli War: 1999, as well as Time and Variance, with Waldrop and Steven Utley. His short story "Back to the Stone Age'" was nominated for a Nebula Award in 1976.

Saunders owned and operated Lone Star Comics, a chain of seven Texas comic book stores founded in 1977. With the sale of the Lone Star comic book store chain in 2013, Mr. Saunders and his family now operate the online Lone Star Comics, www.mycomicshop.com

Reviews

[Checkman · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Josh]

this is the kind of book you can't see in a used bookstore and not buy

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s 1999, seven years since they dropped the nuclear bombs and devastated the world with chemical and biological warfare. The human race has known nothing but warfare ever since. The world’s population is in decline, all except for the nation of Israel where it continues to grow beyond sustainable means. Israeli mercenaries hire themselves out to fight wars for the major countries. Some of those troops end up in the U.S.A. This is the situation in the misleadingly titled The Texas – Israeli War: 1999 by Jake Saunders and Howard Waldrop. It is a short novel with a provocative premise, but a shockingly ordinary plot.

Actually the premise is completely bonkers. It all starts when Ireland doses the British government with LSD, setting off a chain reaction. The U.K. then attacks China and South Africa with nuclear weapons, Russia and Canada step in to defend the British, and China launches chemical and biological attacks on both nations. The chemical agents used by China get carried by wind across the border into America and decimate all the vegetation, natural and agricultural. Meanwhile Texas secedes from the United States and kidnaps the American president while the dopey Vice President runs the country as a dictatorship. The CIA hire a team of Americans, Israeli mercenaries, and disgruntled Texan nationalists who want Texas to rejoin the Union. Their mission is to invade Texas and rescue the president from a prison fortress while America seizes Houston and the oil fields on the eastern coast with the aid of the Cuban navy attacking from the Gulf of Mexico the way America seized Normandy in World War II. I’m not sure how the Cubans got mixed up in all this. Certainly Fidel and Che wouldn’t be too happy about this, but that is the story as told by the two authors. In the real world, anyhow, by 1999 the Cuban military probably didn’t have enough force to attack anything bigger than a college campus. Rack this book up as another science-fiction prediction that never came true.

Aside from the post-apocalyptic premise and a few minor details like tanks that shoot lasers and cockroaches that grow to the size of small dogs, there isn’t much of anything that is otherwise science-fiction about this whole venture. The plot is an ordinary military combat operation story and would mostly be the same regardless of the setting and where it takes place.

But the characters are written with sufficient depth to humanize them and make them interesting and sympathetic. Sol is an aging military commander from Israel and he has made marriage and retirement plans with his hot military cohort Myra Kalan. Another commander named Brown is a war weary African – American segeant who wants all the combat to end so he can experience the peace that he has never known. The Texan Mistra accompanies the tank platoon because, being a former member of the fascistic militant group the Sons of the Alamo, he has an intimate knowledge of the fortress layout where they hold the president captive.

On a technical level, this book is quite good. Although the plot is pedestrian, the suspense and narrative tension are done effectively. The action scenes are fast-paced and exciting. The characters are realistic and easy to relate to. The pacing is good and in terms of descriptiveness, there is a lot of imagery and world-building that works quite well; it reminds me of the bleak and desolate landscapes of J.G. Ballard novels. The biggest problem is the overbearing arbitrariness of it all. Why are the Israelis cast as the mercenaries? Soldiers from just about any nation would have worked just as well. My guess is that one of the two authors is Jewish, but that wouldn’t account for much in terms of the story. The novel over all doesn’t appear to be commenting on anything specific. The troops are diverse and multi-ethnic which is good; there is even a strong female character in Myra Kalan. The catastrophic environmental destruction and hellacious nature of the war make sense for a novel written during the Cold War and the Vietnam War era, a time when environmentalism was taking root in American society. The oil companies are greedy and evil while the Texan nationalists are vicious and Nazi-like. The authors have a definite Liberal streak. But these are small details of the story, not the main point of it all. And the way that Cuba comes to fight on the side of the U.S. federation gets no explanation either. This novel just doesn’t have any definite meaning when it seems like some kind of statement should be there.

The Texas – Israeli War: 1999 is an interesting and well-written book, but it lacks something substantial to make it truly great. It is an interesting precursor to the post-apocalyptic movie and fiction trend of the 1980s; think of the Mad Max cycle of movies and all the imitations it spawned. If you want to read this for fun, than go for it. If you are looking for something meaningful, don’t bother.

And regarding the Israeli soldiers fighting in Texas, that leaves only one question in my mind: what would Kinky Friedman think of all this?

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

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."

[Grant Dominguez · Rating 2 out of 5]

You know what, why not?

Reads like an insane blend of Red Dawn and Where Eagles Dare, with a bit of Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! mixed into it. Some solid action scenes but the ridiculous premise requires just a little too much suspension of disbelief. There's also a lot of sex. A lot.

Cheesy, corny, hokey, but just a little too shit to love. I'd recommend this just for the shock value of the cover alone. Leave this one out on your table when a date comes over to your shitty flat for the first time. Talk about the politics of this to your TSA as he nervously eyeballs you. There's all kinds of fun to be had!

[Ian Hamilton · Rating 2 out of 5]

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?

[Glen Engel-Cox · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was interesting, but didn't age well. For instance, one of the apparent real-world characters was portrayed in a flattering way, in terms of military morality, but apparently wasn't really so squeaky clean in real life.
Also, the cover and title are both misleading, in the way that a lot of book covers and titles were, back in the 1970s. Yes, there are Israeli citizens in the story, involved in a war in Texas, but...same with the Indians...there's no there there.
Still, if you're interested in military SF, there are some cool bits in this, like tanks with gatling lasers. Oddly, I was distracted by the WWII tanks that were able to travel several times the distance that their real engines and fuel tanks would have permitted, with no explanation. I wish there had been some reason given for this, because it mattered to the plot. The tanks with the lasers had small nuclear reactors powering them, but there was no evidence of retrofitting the old tanks.

[David H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a post-apocalyptic military science fiction story (set 25 years into the the authors' future) where a ravaged United States is dealing with Texas secessionists. With the help of Israeli mercenaries and Texas renegades, we see first a mission centered around taking Dalworthington (Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington), and then a more serious, secret rescue mission.

In many ways the setup is ridiculous, and the plot really doesn't match the title (Texas and Israel at not actually at war with each other), but it has a certain kind of charm to it. I know that both authors are still young in the careers and Waldrop at least will get better as a writer.

As with many war stories, there's some nice camaraderie between the soldiers, and some nice lines or thoughts as the "horrors of war" are considered. I was quite amused that two dyed-in-the-wool Texan writers painted the picture of Texas that they did--there's some harping on oil industry billionaires controlling the state, as well as a Gestapo-like group in the Sons of the Alamo.

[David Bradley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yeah, it says "Science Fiction" on the spine, but puh-leaze...any sci-fi related to the story happened before the mess that Saunders/Waldrop strung together. It's more like a rejected script for an old Sgt. Rock comic book than the "Science Fiction in the Grand Tradition" the cover claims it to be. Kinda dull. DNF

[Robert Furlong · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not the worst book I've ever read by a long shot, but all of the different small factors combined made me unable to give it even two stars.

First off, both the title and cover are intentionally misleading to get you to buy the book. The most jarring mislead as that in this universe Texas and Israel are not at war, it's an American succession war and the Israelis are mercenaries who have different bands fighting for both sides. Also, although calling the author's section "as reported by" on the cover is admittedly eye-catching, it gives the impression that the book will be written in a sort of faux-journalistic style. It isn't, it's just a straight novel. Finally, the cover depicts a battle between charging natives on horses and an Israeli tank, but this never happens in the book. In the actual book - and slight spoiler here - the scene is contained to a page or two where they notice Natives on a horizon, mention that they used to be mercenaries too, bring up a bizarre piece of worldbuilding where some of the Cheyenne now worship Volkswagon for some reason (which brings up a whole list of other issues), and then they go away. That's it.

Second, the book is extremely cheesy. That's not necessarily a bad thing, after all the reason I buy these pulp novels in bulk is because I enjoy a certain amount of cheese. However, the cheese I enjoy is normally of the "follows traditional tropes and have the antagonists act like '80s action movie villains" variety. What we get instead is the Israeli mercenaries dancing the hora in a river in the first chapter because they have to make sure you know they're Jewish, as if the cover and several references to Israel weren't enough to tell you that fact. Similarly one of the other lead characters is a black man, and it's great that they were including diversity and even bringing up discrimination even back in the '70s when this was written. However, like with the Israelis they represent this by bringing up his skin color every single time he does anything, including dropping the 'hard r' on multiple occasions and at one point calling him "the black" completely out of the blue. Again, it felt like they didn't trust the reader to understand the first character trait they established for him, even though they literally named him after his skin color.

Otherwise, the book was just kind of boring. The worldbuilding was fairly interesting, but there's only so far that can go when the rest of the plot is generally boring. The "we have to rescue the president" trope is extremely overdone and wraps up bizarrely quickly. One of the main side characters is a woman and I believe that she's supposed to be perceived as a badass, which is good, but in reality we get one scene early on of her doing something cool and everything after that is her either sleeping with the main character or being abducted and becoming the damsel in distress. Even the "action scene" she gets in the second half of the book consists of her sitting there and waiting for other people to come and save her. The only character I was really interested in was the turncoat Texan because he actually had complex motivations beyond the surface level, but unfortunately he's the only one. It's not necessarily that the characters are unlikable or anything, they're just uninteresting.

[Miguel Covas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Acabo de releer, casi después de cuarenta años, el librito este. Es un divertimento muy de la época (¡¡¡Los años 70!!!). Lo comprabas en el aeropuerto y te lo leías entre el vuelo de ida y el de vuelta...
Le habría puesto dos estrellas, pero al releerlo me he fijado en la horripilante traducción. Es increíble que, incluso entonces, este libro hubiera pasado el filtro de los correctores. El libro en sí, está pobremente compuesto. Algunas páginas se han permutado: la página 224 lleva el contenido de la 249 y viceversa. Algunos párrafos son un galimatías...
Pero lo peor es la traducción: llena de "false friends" (tantos que no sabría cual mencionar), llena de siglas sin una llamada a nota al pie, el traductor mezcla nombres propios y comunes (algunos personajes se desplazan por la Highway en lugar de la autopista, aunque supongo que no pasa nada si llegan a la Highway 23, siempre que luego sigan por la autopista). También se mencionan los "huracanes del Gulf Coast" que ya que no pueden ser "huracanes de la Costa del Golfo" al menos podrían ser "huracanes de la Gulf Coast". Algunos personajes se quedan mirando el Big Dipper (de nuevo sin nota a pie de página). El Big Dipper es La Osa Mayor (en Estados Unidos y Canadá)...
Lo peor, con todo, son las faltas de ortografía: un personaje "cabiló" por "caviló" y otro "andó" en lugar de "anduvo" (esto varias veces).

La historia juzgará severamente al traductor (J. Rodríguez Durán), a la editorial EDAF y a los anónimos correctores y linotipistas despistados...

[Chuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just an enjoyable book. Love it!

[Alle Bücher müssen gelesen werden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ein Buch wie ein Stück Treibholz.

[Count Boxer · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books. Israelis and Texans and tanks and lasers. Good stuff

[Alex Maslow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good 1970s pulp

[Joaquin · Rating 2 out of 5]

strange

[Mickey Bits · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting alternate history.

[Dash · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not bad, but neither good enough for me to appreciate nor bad enough to be truly funny. but parts of it were funny.

[Wil Whalen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Big swing on the setup leads into an otherwise boring military adventure. Made it 40 or so pages before I gave up

[Googoogjoob · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Don Kyo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bad. But an interesting blip in the narrative constructed around Israel and the American people's perception of it. Needless to say, any patriotic notions the Israeli mercenaries showcase is chilling. One of protagonists implies Israel captured Cairo and Alexandria during the apocalypse. And that the Palestinians are a threat that exists in the past. Absolutely terrifying.

There is a scene where the Israeli mercs win a decisive battle in a Texan city, and once secured, they raid the place for cowboy boots and ten-gallon hats. They parade around the streets, giddy wearing these pieces iconic Americana. It's such a surreal moment of staggered imperialism that I am sure was unintentional.

But yeah without the strange implications in the modern political climate its a bland pulp sci fi book.

[Kestrel · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Sean Sherman · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this when it first appeared and liked it immensely. I still love the cover, with hostile-looking Native Americans riding on horseback towards a tank that has a Star of David painted on the turret, all underneath a tagline banner that proclaims "SCIENCE FICTION IN THE GRAND TRADITION". I've skimmed through it several times in the intervening years and still get a kick... this was a good one.

[Todd Lang · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this sci-fi, military future novel back in 8th grade and I loved it. I'd probably hate it now, but the whole idea of Israeli mercenaries helping Texas militias fight for freedom is good, clean fun.

[Zachary Krug · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title says it all.

[Edgar · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an engaging piece of pulp and how beautifully written. Even though I found the action bits hard to follow, the concept and the alternate history (future) chronicles were brilliant.

[Jeff]

I think it was well done but just not my thing.

[Stephen Boiko · Rating 5 out of 5]

good alt history/sci-fi.