Today, January 13, is the birthday of both Ron Goulart (1933-2022) and Roger Elwood (1943-2007). It’s also Clark Ashton Smith’s birthday, but I’ll devote a separate post to him.

Ron Goulart is, in my mind, underapprecitaed as a writer. He is best remembered as a science fiction writer. He had his own unique voice  I read the opening  of one of his stories once (“What’s Become of Screwloose?”) in which a detective enters a house built on a cliff overlooking the sea. The dishwasher attacks him, then jumps into the ocean and swims away. The image I had in my mind of a square appliance doing the backstroke has stuck with me ever since.

Goulart wrote both novels and short fiction. He was prolific at all lengths. And he didn’t confine h imself to science fiction, either. He also wrote mysteries and nonfiction. Check out his book on pulp detectives.

I posted a few days ago about nonthemed anthologiy series. Roger Elwood was an editor who edited one of the most unusual nonthemed anthology series, Continuum. At least I’m going to consider it a nonthemed series. There were four volumes, three publishedin 1974 and the final volume published in 1975.

I had seen a few of these around but I had never read one. i’m not sure if I even  have a copy of any of them. If I do, I got it when I raided a second hand bookshop and walked otu with a stack. I’m going to keep my eye out for them.

It seems like the gimmick on th is series is that an author submits a story in a new series in the first volume and contiinues the series with additional stories in subsequent volumes. At least that’s what it looks like from the listing of the tables of contents in the ISFDB.

Whether that’s a theme or not, I’ll leave it up toy ou to decide.