 Mixology:
Introduction
William Campbell Gault—born on March 9, 1910 in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin to John and Ella Hovde Gault—is one of the most critically
acclaimed post-WW2 writers of genre fiction. He is best known as a mystery
and juvenile sports writer for boys, but he successfully published in a
variety of genres and in his early career wrote more than 300 stories for the
pulps. The novelist Ed Gorman wrote, “[Gault] was a compelling short story
writer who looked at the world honestly if sardonically and found a good deal
of it to be depressingly hilarious.” Gault had the knack, as the Salem
Press Biographical Encyclopedia says, of combining “various motifs from
the different pulp magazine genres—sports, mystery, science fiction—and blend
them into a distinctive style of his own.” Another trait separating Gault’s
fiction from that of his peers—it is about something. It is filled with ethical
dilemmas, racial tensions, bigotry, and political tolerance. Gault’s writing career began in 1936 when
he won a $50 prize in a short story competition sponsored by the Milwaukee
Journal. His first professional sales were to the sex magazines of the
1930s, including Paris Nights and Scarlet Adventuress
“where”—according to a 1979 interview with Bill Crider—“the dirtiest word we
used was ‘curvaceous’.” Gault published those stories with the pseudonym Roney
Scott, which he dusted off for his early crime novel, Shakedown (1953),
published with Howard Fast’s The Darkness Within as an Ace Double. Shakedown
introduced Gault’s popular series character, Joe Puma, but the Joe Puma
of Shakedown is a different man from what he is in the later novels
and most knowledgeable readers exclude Shakedown from the official
Puma literary canon. In the late-1930s Gault began writing for
the sports pulps and quickly moved into the mystery pulps “because the sports
magazines came out so erratically, ten one month, four the next” that he
needed a larger market to earn a living. Gault’s stories appeared in many of
the better pulps, including Argosy, Black Mask, Adventure,
Dime Detective, and Short Stories. As the popularity of the pulps
waned in the late-1940s—which forced Gault to take outside work with
McDonnell Douglas and then the U.S. Post Office—he cracked the hardcover and
paperback original markets. With Don’t Cry for Me (Dutton, 1952),
Gault won an Edgar Award for best first novel. Like most of Gault’s mysteries,
Don’t Cry for Me is set in Southern California—Kirkus called it
“California complicated”—and its mid-century timeframe is still vibrant with
readers more than 70 years after its first publication. Gault wrote a string of standalone crime
novels before introducing his first series character, Beverly Hills private
eye Brock “The Rock” Callahan, in the 1956 novel, Ring Around Rosa (Dutton).
Callahan is a former WW2 OSS operator and he played guard for the Los Angeles
Rams. He is an ethical cuss and there is no doubt he will do the right thing
every time out. In 1958, Gault’s other private eye, Joe Puma, hit the page in
End of a Call Girl (Fawcett Crest). While Callahan is upright, Puma is
a little shifty and, as the critic Jon L. Breen wrote, “Joe threatens to spin
out of control.” While both the Callahan and Puma books have become cult
favorites, Gault claimed he never made much money with any of them. His
biggest commercial successes were his juvenile sports novels for boys. The
first of these, Thunder Road (Dutton, 1952), remained in print for
close to 30 years and was reprinted by two different paperback houses, which,
according to his 1979 interview, “helped keep me in used golf balls through
my dotage.” So in 1966, Gault quit writing mystery—and everything else—to
focus on the more lucrative juvenile market. He wouldn’t return to mysteries again
until the late-1970s. But our interest is with William Campbell
Gault’s science fiction. A genre that represents only a tiny fraction of his total
output, but he served the genre well with several high-quality and thoughtful
stories that are as much about morality—and not the easy kind you find in the
Bible—as they are about entertainment. Gault’s speculative stories are fine
examples of his genre-mixing style. He combines the tension and precise
plotting of the mystery with, at times, sports and sporting events, and the
audacity of idea-driven science fiction. They are damn entertaining, too. Mixology: Science Fiction
Stories, brings together three of Gault’s best speculative
tales—two novelettes and one short—published in the 1950s. “Title Fight” (Fantastic
Universe, 1956), which showcases Gault’s bona fides as sports story
writer with its vivid setting in the boxing ring, is a marvelous story about
freedom and equality. As a bonus, the main player is a robot. “I’ll See You
in My Dreams” (Imagination, 1951) is a sardonic tale about marriage,
longing, and disappointment. It is played out using the machinations of an
unknown alien civilization, a squirrel, and Venus. The final story, “Made to
Measure” (Galaxy, 1957), would have made a brilliant episode for the
original The Twilight Zone television series. At its center is a theme
of appreciating what you have without looking too closely at its faults. William Campbell Gault died on December
27, 1995, in Santa Barbara, California. He had been married twice and had two
children—a son and a daughter. During WW2, Gault served with the 166th
Infantry in Hawaii from 1943 until the end of the war. He was awarded The Private
Eye Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He received a Shamus for
his 1980 novel, The Cana Diversion—after returning to writing
mysteries—and another Lifetime Achievement Award, this one from the
Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, in 1991. |
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