everything from voting to human trafficking , would be nullified . There would be no currency , so a new one would have to be made , backed by whatever we could find to make it fiat . Federal agreements with outside nations , including treaties on war and territorial integrity , would no longer include Texas , so our fledgling government would have to create fresh ones to manage basically every facet of our engagement with the outside world .
Difficulties aside , none of it works if the United States moves to reclaim Texas by force – which it absolutely would . That means there needs to be a standing Texas army comprising men and women who are 100 percent OK with taking on the most powerful military in the world . We ’ re a heavily armed lot , it ’ s true , but having a few Glock 19s in your gun safe won ’ t make a lick of difference when the U . S . Navy blockades the port of Houston . And then there ’ s Mexico , that “ foreign ” place that ’ s closer and more familiar to many of us Trans-Pecosites than the rest of the state . Would Mexico City ally with its northern neighbor , or would it try to reclaim the land it lost 200 years ago ?
Either way , secession portends a period of intense and bloody infighting as various factions vie for power . It would be a nightmare , and I suspect Texas Nationalists have no more interest in living it than I do .
I thought about this a lot as I read Robert Evans ’ “ After the Revolution ,” a compelling piece of speculative science fiction set some 20 years after America succumbs to its second civil war . Wisely , the author doesn ’ t dwell too much on the origins of the conflict itself ; he ’ s more concerned with U . S . political geography after the fact . And the map looks something like this : a Republic of California , a kingdom in New Mexico , a Pacific Northwest state , the American Federation ( comprising much of old New England ), the Christian States of America ( located in former flyover country ), and , predictably , the Republic of Texas , where nearly all action of the story takes place . Texas , though , is hardly unified . Austin is an independent republic , but tons of militias – regional anarchists , religious zealots , secular state forces backed by Canada , and countless others – clash intermittently in the lawless stretches of the state .
The story is told through three characters : Manny , a cynical opportunist whose business guiding news stringers , he hopes , will pay for his trip out of North America for good ; Sasha , a 17-year-old radical Christian who leaves the comfort of her home in the AmFed to join an ultraconservative militia in Texas called the Heavenly Kingdom ; and Roland , an enhanced super-soldier who has given up killing for a life of drug abuse and solitude in the Southwest .
The plot is set in motion when , after years of relative dormancy , the Heavenly Kingdom opens up a new front near Dallas while Manny is escorting a reporter assigned to investigate a series of curious new attacks . Sasha is on her way to join the fray , and Roland is recruited by a former comrade-turned-mercenary to sabotage a weapons depot manned by the Heavenly Kingdom , which may or may not have new , secret backing .
I confess that except for the radicalization of Sasha , who ’ s in for some disillusionment of biblical proportions , I ’ m less interested in the characters than I am in the political and geopolitical machinations of the world they live in . Evans tackles head-on the questions I pose to advocates of Texas secession . A former journalist himself , he understands the ways in which these kinds of situations tend to devolve , but you don ’ t have to be a wartime correspondent to know how the story goes . You can simply look to modern-day Iraq , Libya , Syria or Ukraine , or basically anywhere during the Cold War , to understand how interminable these things tend to be , how distorted the battle lines and ideological divisions can get among the various belligerents , how complicit outside patrons are in otherwise civil strife .
But make no mistake : This is a work of science fiction , not a meditation on current affairs . Set circa 2070 , genetic enhancements are , in Evans ’ world , as common as iPhones . Most everyone has full internet access in their heads . Civilians can elect for modifications to stunt the aging process or to accentuate or deemphasize certain physical traits . Some of their martial counterparts are essentially cybernetic , able to grow extra musculature , analyze petabytes of data in milliseconds , dull pain , regrow tissue , calculate the make and model of the vehicle used in an IED 10 miles away , you name it . In fact , it ’ s better to think of them as post-human than semi-human . As fighters , they have no equal , and if they wanted to , they could probably take over what ’ s left of the country . The fate of Evans ’ Texas hangs in the balance of their ambivalence .
There ’ s no reason to believe we ’ re on the cusp of another civil war . And yet “ After the Revolution ” is compelling because there ’ s plausibility , if not probability , in the way it depicts what happens after the unthinkable . The remnants of the United States are not dystopic , they ’ re just broken , and the rest of the world spins on largely as it did before . Regionalism , insurrection and counterrevolution are the natural byproducts of prolonged warfare . There ’ s no reason Texas would be any different .
I purchased my copy of “ After the Revolution ” at Alpine ’ s very own Front Street Books , located at 121 E . Holland Ave . �
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