FICTION

THE WAR IN 2020 by Ralph Peters (Pocket Books: $19.91; 418 pp.). How many half-finished war novels were quietly fed into fireplaces by their authors when the Persian Gulf crisis exploded--victims of art either imitating, or being shot down by, life? Novelist Ralph Peters (whose earlier work, “Red Army,” was a best-seller) lucked out, however. His latest, “The War in 2020,” features a different locale and different role models, but touches just closely enough to the political realities of the 1990s to tie the Gulf situation into it very neatly. Get this: The Soviet Union, teetering on the brink of civil war, is attacked by a coalition of Islamic troops sponsored by the Japanese. Facing inevitable destruction, the Soviets appeal to the United States for salvation. Although still smarting from its own, earlier brush with the Japanese, the United States responds with its most technically sophisticated cavalry regiment, peopled by those colorful, three-dimensional, military men whom Peters crafts so well. This is an exciting, shoot-em-up war story, and with some pretty serious Japanese-bashing along the way.