A William Campbell Gault Intro

A little something I wrote for the William Campbell Gault collection…  Mixology: Science Fiction Stories 3 Play, 2024     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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