Ron Goulart has passed.
Recently, I decided that I needed some light reading, preferably of the comedy/farce variety, to relax my tensions a bit. I quickly thought of Ron Goulart's SF stories, of which I had read a number, and which brimmed over with slapstick, farce, and general silliness. OK, occasionally, some genuine satire. But mostly just quick, fun reads, some of which was not very PC when it was published, and even more which would not be today (one of his recurring characters was a "lovable rake", a type which would trigger heaps of criticism today). No hard science, stock aliens, and a breakneck race from one bit of lunacy to the next, but plotted well enough to maintain suspense. As I said, fun reads. He even wrote a comic strip, Star Hawks, drawn by Gil Kane.
So. Several days ago, I searched ThriftBooks for any and all RG books, and was surprised at the sheer number he had written, of which I had read a relatively small portion. (I was totally unaware of his many nonfiction works related to comics and comic artists, as well as his fiction in other genres, including a number of serializations.) I turned to Wikipedia to find other books not carried by ThriftBooks, and came up with a list of volumes to acquire in the near future. Just today, I checked back with Wikipedia to add some more details and was saddened to see that his friends are reporting that Ron passed away on 14 January, the day after his 89th birthday. A sad, unexpected revelation. I am excerpting an obit column by his friend, Mark Evanier, below. For myself, I can only add: RIP to the "Mack Sennett of Science Fiction".
Published Friday, January 14, 2022 at 9:45 AM
More bad/sad news: My buddy Ron Goulart — author of more books than most people have read — died this morning, the day after his 89th birthday. I don't know how many books Ron wrote and I wonder if even he did. A lot of them had other folks' names on them as author, sometimes even William Shatner's.
Of the many I could have stuck in the above graphic, I picked After Things Fell Apart because I liked it a lot and the title seems sadly apropos today. His Wikipedia page has a partial (partial!) list of books that came from his typewriter and his glorious imagination…and as you'll see if you take a peek, other names were on a lot of them.
He was a great lover of comic books and a fine historian of the form. He dabbled now and then in writing for comics and at one point, collaborated with artist Gil Kane on an ahead-of-its-time newspaper strip called Star Hawks. The last time Ron and I were together — which I now sadly realize was too long ago — we had a long talk about how he wished he fit in better with the comic book field but kept finding more comfort in prose writing.
He was awfully good at it. He was awfully good at everything he did.
https://www.newsfromme.com/2022/01/14/ron-goulart-r-i-p/