I would define the genre as "grass-smoking-fiction"...

[arpad]

amazon.com ; via

The authors built an alternate history in which 1992 a limited nuclear exchange and widespread use of biological and chemical weapons has killed nine out of every ten people in the world. The two coalitions were a Chinese-Irish-Afrikaaner versus a Russo-British coalition that eventually allies with the United States. Europe waffles and is mostly destroyed in the crossfire. The Israelis stood neutral and their sworn Arab enemies attacked Israel, but with little result. Egyptians bombers managed to hit Tel Aviv, but after that brief attack, the Arab world was all but destroyed by Israeli military might. As neutrals, Israel managed to avoid all but the lingering effects of the WMD (weapons of mass destruction) exchange and stands as one of the last prospering enclaves of humanity. In fact, Israel is so prosperous that they have an overpopulation problem. Enter story plot element one, Israel now hires out its excess population as mercenary soldiers to the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, in the shattered remnants of the USA, Texas declares independence and a second US civil war develops, with a Second Lone Star Republic arising driven by oil interests and the SA, Sons of the Alamo, a white supremacy Gestapo-like group holding the power behind the throne. Israeli mercenaries have been hired out to both sides of the war and the book's protagonists are a mixed unit of Israeli tankists and reinforcements from the federal government. Their mission is to penetrate the heart of Texas and rescue the kidnapped president of the USA.

However, the World War has not only destroyed the world's population, but along with that population went the many technicians who maintained the technology that not only drove high-tech societies, but their military machines as well. Any weapon surviving is thrust onto the field including W.W.II museum pieces, M-4 Shermans, M-3 Grants, and even a Stuart tank

No - I don't like Mad Max (which is ten times better) and I don't like this either. But sometimes I wonder what happens in the brain of a person that can write/read such books...

Comments

[knirirr.livejournal.com]

I never thought that I'd hear of a book to beat this for total oddness.

[arpad.livejournal.com]

I bet Lost Regiment series owe their plotline to Tartledove's Misplaced Legion.

[dwarkin.livejournal.com]

у тебя soft-copy этого дела есть ?

[arpad.livejournal.com]

У меня и харда нет. Я примерно представляю себе что это такое впрочем - оно того не стоит.

[elbom.livejournal.com]

I'm definitely going to buy this. The cover alone is worth it!

[aburachil.livejournal.com]

Ну теперь понятно, зачем в Латруне танковый музей...

[vorona.livejournal.com]

I dunno, Texas scares me, personally. Something about the oil industry + "pie in the sky when you die" religion + a certain kind of social conservatism + anti-intellectualism... it's a bad combination. This book may be poorly organized, but the fear it targets is something that really exists, especially since the rise of Bush and the triumphalist Christian Right in the US. It may sound like a joke, but several people I know keep a short list of who would help us if we found ourselves targeted by an anti-intellectual, anti-progressive, anti-Jewish fascist state. People are nervous. I am not making this up.

Huh, it was published in 1974. I can see the post-Yom Kippur War connection. The Texas part is what's weird, given current American nervousness about the Bush Administration. Probably not something I'd read, though, because it's too pulpy, and because I'm an optimist.

[arpad.livejournal.com]

Heh, you have a point - Texas is definitely a myth-ridden territory too.

And yes - I am quite sure that the cover is the best thing in the entire book :)

[ygam.livejournal.com]

grassweed

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

The odd thing about that book is who wrote it. Jake Saunders I don't know much about (except that it wasn't the Jake Saunders wikipedia tries to claim it was) but Howard Waldrop is a respected SF author who almost never writes novels (This one and THEM BONES are it) and who doesn't do war stuff. He's more the guy you turn to for an alternate history about the effect on musicians of a Technocratic victory in the 1930s or this:

http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/waldrop/waldrop1.html

THE TEXAS-ISRAELI WAR is completely atypical for him.

[jonathansg.livejournal.com]

балинн, где такая трава растет...