'For Texas and Zed' (189 pp.) was published by Popular Library in May, 1976. The artist who provided the cover illustration is not credited.
Zach Hughes was the pseudonym of the U.S. writer Hugh Zachary (1926 - 2016) who had success from the late 1960s to the 1980s in publishing short stories and novels in the genres of sci-fi and horror. My review of his 1980 novel 'Killbird' is here.
'Texas and Zed' is set in the year 2589. The thousands of inhabited planets in the galaxy are divided between the Empire and the Cassiopeian Alliance. These polities are engaged in a centuries-old Cold War, a war continuously on the precipice of turning into a galaxywide conflict of unprecedented destruction.
The planet Texas, which orbits the star Zed, is the lone independent planet, siding neither with the Empire, nor the Alliance. The inhabitants (referred to as 'Texicans') of Texas carefully shield their world from detection by the Empire, for Texas is one of the most bountiful and pleasant worlds in the known galaxy. So much so, that if the Emperor learned of its whereabouts he would seek to capture it, and add it to his collection.
As the novel opens, a Texas official, Murchison Burns, and his son Lex Burns, are negotiating with Empire bureaucrats for a trade deal involving the exchange of Texas beef for Empire metals. Being only 17 and headstrong, Lex enjoys the favors of the fetching Empire representative Lady Gwyn Ingles. Lex makes the fateful act of abducting the Lady Gwyn, intending to make her his bride, when the Burns delegation leaves Empire space to return home.
The Empire will not tolerate such a transgression and as punishment, Lex is obliged to spend two years in service aboard an Empire battle cruiser. What he learns on that duty leads him to an audacious plan: defy the Empire, and make Texas a military and economic power.
Defying the Empire is seeming folly, for it has a million ships, and tens of millions of men to man them. But even as a confrontation with the Empire looms, Lex believes that Texas can win. The Emperor, for all his military resources, is about to learn a truism: you don't mess with Texas.
'Texas and Zed' basically is a homage to the space operas of the pulp era. It has a stripped-down prose style and breathless pacing; space battles involving thousands of ships are related in the span of a page or two. Major plot points are disposed of in a few paragraphs. Lex Burns is so indomitable and self-confident a hero that there never really is any tension or suspense generated in the narrative. The frenetic action sequences are periodically interrupted by more retrospective passages, but these seem perfunctory.
Author Hughes imbues the novel with his personal philosophy, which centers on rugged individualism and a conservative political stance. This stance is of course intrinsic to Texas (at least, outside Houston and Austin) and is both quaint and novel when contrasted with the Woke ideology that predominates in today's sci-fi publications.
Readers looking for a short and sweet space opera will likely enjoy 'For Texas and Zed,' but those interested in a more deliberate treatment of this sub-genre probably will want to look elsewhere.
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