Da Cruz, Daniel
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1921-1991) US author, formerly known for numerous men's action-adventure tales, who began publishing sf with The Grotto of the Formigans (1980), a novel about African grotto Monsters, and who came to more general notice with his Ayes of Texas sequence: The Ayes of Texas (1982), Texas on the Rocks (1986) and Texas Triumphant (1987). The political premises underlying the series – in the late 1990s the USSR, having hoodwinked the supinely liberal US media, has come to dominate the world – have dated, though the American assumption that its media are liberal is still conventional wisdom; the exuberance of the tales themselves remains winning. The protagonist, a triple-amputee World War Two veteran from the newly free Republic of Texas, arms an old battleship (itself called Texas), and sails off to fight the Russians. Much blood is spilt, and a good time is had by all; by the close of the third volume, however, a genuinely sophisticated dubiousness about the nature of the USSR/USA Cold War conflict complicates what might have seemed an unduly simplified picture: the sequence merits revisiting. F-Cubed (1989) is a slightly less entrancing Technothriller about a new secret chemical agent that makes Sex impossible to consummate; but Mixed Doubles (1989) enjoyably depicts the attempts of a contemporary failed composer who travels back in time to steal Music from those more talented than himself. [JC]
Daniel Da Cruz Jr
born Oxford, Ohio: 17 November 1921
died Falls Church, Virginia: 5 January 1991
works
series
Ayes of Texas
- The Ayes of Texas (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1982) [Ayes of Texas: pb/Ralph Brillhart]
- Texas on the Rocks (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1986) [Ayes of Texas: pb/Barclay Shaw]
- Texas Triumphant (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1987) [Ayes of Texas: pb/Barclay Shaw]
individual titles
- The Grotto of the Formigans (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1980) [pb/H R van Dongen]
- F-Cubed (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1987) [pb/Barclay Shaw]
- Mixed Doubles (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1989) [pb/Barclay Shaw]
links
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