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Goulart, Ron

Entry updated 13 January 2025. Tagged: Author.

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(1933-2022) US author, born in California, where he lived until the late 1960s and which he made the effective template (whatever the venue or planet might be called) for much of his sf, including the large loose Barnum System sequence. After graduation he worked in an advertising agency, later putting on record the influence of this experience on the forming of his concise, polished style. He began to publish work of genre interest with "Letters to the Editor" in an amateur magazine, Pelican, for October 1950, and later in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for April 1952, publishing about thirty-five stories before the appearance of his first sf novel, The Sword Swallower (1968), which features the Chameleon Corps of Shapeshifting agents. The book – like much of his ensuing work – is set in a vast Space-Opera arena known as Barnum System universe; urbanized, helter-skelter, crazed and balkanized, the planets of this system, where the Corps originates and operates, are populated in large part by traditional comic stereotypes or humours, deftly drawn. Again like many of its successors, this pattern-setting tale features a gangly detective on the trail of a complex crime (see Crime and Punishment); his need to search out clues and suspects takes him (conveniently) through a wide spectrum of scenes and characters. Similarities of plot and setting (and numerous cross-references) dog any anatomizer of series in the Goulart universe, but other books specifically set within the Barnum System – which Goulart added to throughout the most active years of his sf career – are numerous and enjoyable, from The Fire-Eater (1970) through to Everybody Comes to Cosmo's (1988). Other subseries [see Checklist] include the Jack Conger books; the Star Hawk sequence, Empire 99 (1980) and The Cyborg King (1981), based on the Comic strip illustrated by Gil Kane; and the late Exchameleon set, ending with Everybody Comes to Cosmo's (1988)

A second loose sequence, the Fragmented America series – beginning with the remarkable picaresque After Things Fell Apart (1970), and ending with Brinkman (1981) – intriguingly examines, in terms of light-handed Satire often focused through glimpses of "wacky" Technology in action against a Media Landscape backdrop (see also Advertising): a smiling anatomy of western civilization in terms of the moral and cultural disintegration of exemplary cultures again modelled upon California; but as usual the aperçus sometimes tend to be sharper than the stories they punctuate.

Much of Goulart's other work is, in fact, journeyman, though even in the most casually executed tale his smooth dialogue-driven style is always recognizable. In the mid-1970s and 1980s he wrote under various pseudonyms, including the House Names Kenneth Robeson and Con Steffanson, as well as personal pseudonyms like Chad Calhoun, R T Edwards, Ian R Jamieson, Josephine Kains, Jillian Kearny, Howard Lee, Zeke Masters, Frank S Shawn and Joseph Silva; the extent of his involvement in the Teklords sequence with William Shatner, which begins with TekWar (1989), has never been designated, but may be assumed to be considerable. Interspersed amongst this work are a substantial array of novelizations and other routine work [see Checklist for relevant titles]. As Goulart, the Wild Talents sequence, beginning with A Talent for the Invisible (1973), focused on character with Psi Powers. The Vampirella series, beginning with Bloodstalk (1975) and ending with Snakegod (1976), featured a sexy Vampire character derived from stories published in Vampirella, a Warren Publishing Comic book which ran from 1969 to 1983; his versions are thinly humorous. The Odd Jobs sequence – beginning with Odd Job #101 and Other Future Crimes and Intrigues (coll 1974) and ending with Brainz, Inc. (1985) – is decreasingly gripping as stories segue into novels; the tales of the Gypsy sequence about an Identity-quest, beginning with Quest of the Gypsy (1976), similarly lacked their author's full attention.

In series which occupied him, and in the various singletons which sometimes read as pretexts to string joke-fueled comic vignettes together, a darker, sharper, more attentive aspect of the Goulart vision of California-as-Barnum surfaces in novels – Wildsmith (1972), among others – which focus on the highly humanized, eccentric, wilful Robots which are perhaps his most enduring creation. It is certainly the case that – whether or not Goulart actually wrote every word of them – the Tek sequence signed by William Shatner very precisely revisits this thematic stamping ground. Quite remarkably comic in their deadpan obsessiveness and pernickety sang-froid, Goulart's robots (they are often detectives, perhaps spoofing Isaac Asimov's far more ponderous Olivaw) serve also as genuinely effective icons of a time – the Near Future – and a place – either the Western Rim itself or the world which it portends – caught in the throes of convulsive change.

The casualness of Goulart's plotting does at times make his satirical intent difficult to perceive; an underlying saliency can be detected more clearly, perhaps, in the shorter work assembled in What's Become of Screwloose? and Other Inquiries (coll 1971), Broke Down Engine and Other Troubles with Machines (coll 1971), Nutzenbolts and More Troubles with Machines (coll 1975) and Skyrocket Steele Conquers the Universe and Other Media Tales (coll 1990) – the last being connected with the novel Skyrocket Steele (1980).

After about 1990, he focused his energies on fairly extravagant but essentially non-fantastic crime novels, of which the series starring Groucho Marx is perhaps the most enjoyable; this series is listed below. Though he was prolific for decades – until his production in the fields of the fantastic began to taper off in the 1990s – and always acute, it can still be said of Goulart that his dark wit and frequently adroit handling of plot and theme were never directed to a project of a scope sufficient to give those talents full play. He was perhaps too generous and too kindly to limn in harsh enough colours the new realities his tales hinted at; on the other hand, they can still be read with delight, decades after they first reproved, mildly, the ways of the coming world . [JC]

see also: Humour; Robert Hale Limited; Time Travel.

Ronald Joseph Goulart

born Berkeley, California: 13 January 1933

died Ridgefield, Connecticut: 14 January 2022

works (selected)

series

Barnum System

Fragmented America

  • After Things Fell Apart (New York: Ace Books, 1970) [Fragmented America: in the publisher's first Science Fiction Special series: pb/Diane and Leo Dillon]
  • Gadget Man (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1971) [Fragmented America: hb/Peter Rauch]
  • Hawkshaw (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1972) [Fragmented America: hb/Emanuel Schongut]
  • Crackpot (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1977) [Fragmented America: hb/David Wilhelmsen]
  • Brinkman (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1981) [Fragmented America: hb/Bruce Schluter]

Wild Talents

Odd Jobs

Vampirella

Weird Heroes: Gypsy

Skyrocket Steele

Harry Challenge

Battlestar Galactica

Groucho Marx

individual titles

collections and stories

nonfiction (selected)

pseudonymous works (by name)

as by Howard Lee

as by Frank S Shawn

The Phantom

Others including The Phantom's creator Lee Falk contributed to this series. The normal cover credit was "Lee Falk's Original Story"; actual authors or their pseudonyms were usually though not always credit ed on the title page.

as by Kenneth Robeson

This is a House Name.

as by Con Steffanson

This is a House Name.

as by Josephine Kains

as by Joseph Silva

This pseudonym plays on the name of one of Goulart's detective heroes, Jose Silvera.

as by William Shatner (attributed)

links

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