From archive (archive)


		     THE AYES OF TEXAS by Daniel da Cruz
			    Del Rey, 1982, $2.95.
		       A book review by Mark R. Leeper

     I though the stereotyped Texan was a myth.  You know, the guy who
thinks the United States is composed of Texas and some insignificant
periphery lands.  The guy who thinks that Texans are ten feet tall and that
heads eight feet or less off the ground needlessly complicate world
politics. The guy who breaks world history into the piece before the Alamo
and the piece after.  Well, the guy seems to really exist and he is writing
science fiction.  The book is The Ayes of Texas by Daniel da Cruz.
(Curiously enough, it is published by Del Rey and not Baen.)

     In the late 1990's the deceitful Russians are about the execute the
coup they have been planning for decades.  By exploiting the American's
fuzzy-thinking wish for peace they are going to turn us into an agricultural
country ruled over by them.  They have a plot so insidious and fiendish that
only the President or a Texan can see through it.  The President cannot
oppose the takeover; that leaves the Texan.

     So a Texan, Gwillam Forte, a three-way amputee, takes up the task of
fixing up the rusty old U.S.S. Texas so it will look all right for a Texas
celebration and instead secretly turns it into the super-scientific front
line of the Free World's naval defenses.

     da Cruz's credentials include having been an American embassy press
attache' in Baghdad, a foreign correspondent, the author of a history
textbook, and thinking that the Soviets are called "the Russians."  His book
somehow lacks an air of authenticity for us Lilliputian non-Texans.  Early
on, da Cruz sets us straight about the complaints of certain Mexican-
Americans, but just to prove how liberal he is toward minorities, he has
positive minority images like the one with the slightly transparent name
Modeljewski.  That makes Charles Dickens's character naming subtle by
comparison.  Some statement should be made about the technology in THE AYES
OF TEXAS since it is a major part of the book.  It probably is the best
aspect and rings marginally truer than the rest of the book, but I cannot
claim to be enough of a physicist to evaluate it.

     There is no better way to sum up the feel of this rather strange book
than to give you the following extended quote (from pages 162 and 163):

	"It is for us, your representatives, to propose.  It is
     for you, the people of Texas, to decide.  At this moment, in
     geosynchronous orbit 38,000 kilometers above Texas, the
     lenses of TexComSat 23-LBJ are focused on us.  In exactly
     five minutes"--he consulted his watch--"at 9:25 P.M., all
     power-generating equipment in the State of Texas, except for
     emergency facilities, will be cut.  The state will be in
     total darkness.

	"Those who favor Texas remaining in a union that submits
     to the Russian yoke--if any such there be--will step outside
     into the night and show a light.  A match's flare, a
     flashlight, even the glow of a cigarette, will be picked up
     and registered by TexComSat 23-LBJ and relayed to Earth for
     instant tabulation.  I say again: anyone who wishes to remain
     a citizen of a craven, misguided, gutless United States will
     step outside, and in his loneliness shows his feeble beam."

	He paused.

	"At 9:35 P.M.," he resumed, "just fourteen minutes
     hence, all those in favor of a proud, independent Republic of
     Texas, ready to fight anybody and everybody who denies us the
     honor we will die to preserve, will step proudly out into the
     velvety blackness of the Texas night and light the lamp of
     freedom..."

	At nine-twenty-five, there were brief, isolated flashes
     of light from one end of Texas to the other.  More often than
     not, they were followed by even briefer flashes as indignant
     Texans, their firearms at the ready for such expressions of
     disloyalty, zeroed in on the dissidents and let fly.  As a
     test of loyalty toward the United States, it was a candle
     snuffed out in a high wind.

	At nine-thirty-five, firehouse sirens wailed in every
     city in the state, and people poured out of houses and
     apartment buildings.  From the Rio Grande to the Oklahoma
     Panhandle, from the borders of Louisiana to the sands of New
     Mexico fifteen hundred kilometers away, the state was ablaze
     with the light of impending battle in twenty million defiant
     ayes of Texas.


					Mark R. Leeper
					...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper

From archive (archive)


		     THE AYES OF TEXAS by Daniel da Cruz
			    Del Rey, 1982, $2.95.
		       A book review by Mark R. Leeper

     I though the stereotyped Texan was a myth.  You know, the guy who
thinks the United States is composed of Texas and some insignificant
periphery lands.  The guy who thinks that Texans are ten feet tall and that
heads eight feet or less off the ground needlessly complicate world
politics. The guy who breaks world history into the piece before the Alamo
and the piece after.  Well, the guy seems to really exist and he is writing
science fiction.  The book is The Ayes of Texas by Daniel da Cruz.
(Curiously enough, it is published by Del Rey and not Baen.)

     In the late 1990's the deceitful Russians are about the execute the
coup they have been planning for decades.  By exploiting the American's
fuzzy-thinking wish for peace they are going to turn us into an agricultural
country ruled over by them.  They have a plot so insidious and fiendish that
only the President or a Texan can see through it.  The President cannot
oppose the takeover; that leaves the Texan.

     So a Texan, Gwillam Forte, a three-way amputee, takes up the task of
fixing up the rusty old U.S.S. Texas so it will look all right for a Texas
celebration and instead secretly turns it into the super-scientific front
line of the Free World's naval defenses.

     da Cruz's credentials include having been an American embassy press
attache' in Baghdad, a foreign correspondent, the author of a history
textbook, and thinking that the Soviets are called "the Russians."  His book
somehow lacks an air of authenticity for us Lilliputian non-Texans.  Early
on, da Cruz sets us straight about the complaints of certain Mexican-
Americans, but just to prove how liberal he is toward minorities, he has
positive minority images like the one with the slightly transparent name
Modeljewski.  That makes Charles Dickens's character naming subtle by
comparison.  Some statement should be made about the technology in THE AYES
OF TEXAS since it is a major part of the book.  It probably is the best
aspect and rings marginally truer than the rest of the book, but I cannot
claim to be enough of a physicist to evaluate it.

     There is no better way to sum up the feel of this rather strange book
than to give you the following extended quote (from pages 162 and 163):

	"It is for us, your representatives, to propose.  It is
     for you, the people of Texas, to decide.  At this moment, in
     geosynchronous orbit 38,000 kilometers above Texas, the
     lenses of TexComSat 23-LBJ are focused on us.  In exactly
     five minutes"--he consulted his watch--"at 9:25 P.M., all
     power-generating equipment in the State of Texas, except for
     emergency facilities, will be cut.  The state will be in
     total darkness.

	"Those who favor Texas remaining in a union that submits
     to the Russian yoke--if any such there be--will step outside
     into the night and show a light.  A match's flare, a
     flashlight, even the glow of a cigarette, will be picked up
     and registered by TexComSat 23-LBJ and relayed to Earth for
     instant tabulation.  I say again: anyone who wishes to remain
     a citizen of a craven, misguided, gutless United States will
     step outside, and in his loneliness shows his feeble beam."

	He paused.

	"At 9:35 P.M.," he resumed, "just fourteen minutes
     hence, all those in favor of a proud, independent Republic of
     Texas, ready to fight anybody and everybody who denies us the
     honor we will die to preserve, will step proudly out into the
     velvety blackness of the Texas night and light the lamp of
     freedom..."

	At nine-twenty-five, there were brief, isolated flashes
     of light from one end of Texas to the other.  More often than
     not, they were followed by even briefer flashes as indignant
     Texans, their firearms at the ready for such expressions of
     disloyalty, zeroed in on the dissidents and let fly.  As a
     test of loyalty toward the United States, it was a candle
     snuffed out in a high wind.

	At nine-thirty-five, firehouse sirens wailed in every
     city in the state, and people poured out of houses and
     apartment buildings.  From the Rio Grande to the Oklahoma
     Panhandle, from the borders of Louisiana to the sands of New
     Mexico fifteen hundred kilometers away, the state was ablaze
     with the light of impending battle in twenty million defiant
     ayes of Texas.


					Mark R. Leeper
					...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper