A Planet for Texans

 

H. Beam Piper & John J. McGuire A Planet for Texans (1958)
I picked this one up out of curiosity for the same reason I picked up Fritz Leiber's A Spectre is Haunting Texas - because that's where I live. Also, it was the only science-fiction novel in the bookshop of the Texas State History Museum in Austin and I vaguely remember enjoying Piper's Little Fuzzy. A Planet for Texans was originally published as half of an Ace Double and later won a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, whatever that is.

The premise is something about Texans being so ornery that the entire state secedes from planet Earth, and I gather the novel strives to examine some political point along vaguely libertarian lines, something inspired by H.L. Mencken proposing a political system incorporating the occasional assassination of candidates as a legitimate part of the governmental process. At least this is what it says on Wikipedia.

Considering that I was half expecting something ghastly about a planet of rootin' tootin' racist fatties, it could have been worse; but it also could have been better. Texas here is invoked by desert, cows, barbecue, and the sort of Texans it's fairly easy to avoid, even in Texas - namely ranch dwelling shitheads with too much money; so there wasn't much I recognised from my daily existence and I've been here for a whole decade. The only problem with Little Fuzzy, so far as I recall, is that about half the book was spent in a court room. Unfortunately this time it feels like it's almost the whole thing, although maybe something different happened during the pages where I was asleep. Unless I've read it wrong, it seems to be a conversation about libertarian stuff for 126 pages, with a few mentions of cows and barbecue thrown in here and there for the sake of local colour.

A Spectre is Haunting Texas isn't without its problems, from what I remember, but it was at least a lot more fun than this.