Goulart’s "After Things Fell Apart" is the only science-fiction novel to ever win an Edgar Award.The ghost writer for William Shatner’s popular TekWar novels, Goulart has also written several comic mystery series, including six books starring Groucho Marx.Note: This is not a library copy.

I don’t write reviews. And I don’t understand why so many people didn’t enjoy this book. I mean you’re not gonna get a straight-laced science fiction story out of Goulart. He’s the guy who wrote the Tekwar series and the Groucho Marx mysteries. You will get silly situations, fun dialogue right out of old time radio, snarky computers on the edge of sentience and breakdown, stereotypical characters who never listen to reason, homages to the great writers of the last century and a dystopia which ha...

After Things Fell Apart is one of Goulart's first novels. It's a science fiction satire that was published in 1970, and was somehow, strangely, nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel by the Mystery Writers Association. It has some of the sexist/racist attitudes that one would expect from a novel from fifty years ago, but I'd say they're rather mild. It's something of a travelogue of future-California through the eyes of a private detective who encounters such curiosities as the Nixo...

The book contains a Science Fiction Book Club mail-in offer and two cigarette ads ((view spoiler)[Newport: 18 mg 'tar', 1.2 mg nicotine / True: 5 mg 'tar', 0.4 mg nicotine (hide spoiler)]), which feels right because the whole thing really is the product of another generation. I don't know much about the San Francisco Bay Area of the 1970's, and kept wondering if the satirical elements would be more meaningful with that kernel of understanding. Does this represent the countercultural elements run...

This is another Ron Goulart novel that I read maybe 30 years ago and decided to re-read, and it’s one of his more acclaimed novels. The setting is a fragmented future America which, following a failed invasion by China, has devolved into packs of subcultures fighting for dominance – at least in California where the story takes place. This being Goulart, though, all of that is just a comic backdrop for a detective story in which Private Inquiry Office agent Jack Haley searches for Lady Day, a mil...

I bought this in a second hand bookshop because I thought it looked hilariously terrible. I was half right - it's funny and bad. Intentionally funny, and not as bad as I thought if would be (but still bad).If you can overlook the racist, sexist, and homophobic language (I struggled), what you've got is a pulp-fiction detective novel set in a well-realised crumbling dystopian 'future'. The plot isn't much to write home about, but the action pops from every page (I lost track of how many times Jim...

A satire about America just before 2000--the USA has dissolved and fragmented with warring groups battling each other....some humorous moments here by Ron Goulart, born in Berkeley in 1933. It was written in 1970 and I first read it in the 70s. Then I thought it was far-fetched. I don't think so anymore.

Funny funny book. It is certainly written in it's time. There are a lot of words from the time, that are not very correct to use any more, however, the characters are just as open-minded as they should be, even today. Or tomorrow.

Some good books were written in the 70s. This isn't one of them. Some good does come from reading a lump of poo as poor as this; it makes you appreciate all the good books you have read previously - just that much more. I shall ceremoniously place this paperback in our council recycle bin, where, after a while, it will be transformed into something much more entertaining. A cardboard box maybe?Abandoned at 35%.

This book was not what I was expecting. I was hoping for a post-apocalyptic wasteland tale of strange bands of survivors. This book is not post-apocalyptic. The future is a little run-down and strange, but it is hardly post-apoc. Also, it was terribly written. Normally I'm not one for description and exposition, but I could barely tell what was going on, because there was no real explanation of anything! The book was only 180 pages; would it have killed the author to bump that to maybe 250 and a...

A wacky, satirical view of a splintered post-dissolution post-United States made up of sparring cultural and political enclaves, wrapped around a slim, pulpy-noiry detective story. Written in 1970 and set a few years before the turn of 2000, it is still heavily stamped with the slang of its time (Goulart sometimes lampshades this as characters faddishly reviving 'ancient' lingo), the plot is weak and the satire is too scattered to have much bite, but there are a good number of amusing moments -

What is now the recent past in an alternate world, seen from 1971, with a satirical spin, in other words, typical Goulart of the period. And speaking of the period, there are several racial epithets uttered in the writing, all by jerks to show they are jerks, that fall into the forbidden to use category these days, so be warned, it is a book with 70s sensibilities, having been writing in the 70s.It is a fun romp through an alternate world Northern California after the US has broken up into a var...

Ron Goulart writes absurdist satire and lampoons everything from detective stories to spy novels to science fiction and romance novels. You read his books when you want some mind-candy to laugh at because you're burned out from much more serious reading.He's always good for a laugh and taking things beyond their logical conclusion. One of the best!In this book the one thing I got the most laughs out of were the former rock stars in The Nixon Institute who reminisce about the days "when they had

No idea how this ended up on my reading list but I'm not feeling it at all.

What a fun book to read! Right out of the seventies and their not to distant future, this reads just like exactly what it is. A detective/agent/adventure romp through a plausibly, implausible North American future where "things have fallen apart" after invasion and disaster. The author has manufactured colorful language and paints interesting scenarios with the words. With something a little different in each chapter, I totally enjoyed this book!

This was a decent read, but too much satire for me. I liked some of the vignettes from dystopoian California, but the story had too much satire for me, and not enough meat on the bone dystopia. A quick read, too.

Ron Goulart is a prolific pulp writer. The 28 books that I've read by him so far can be described in similar terms. See my review of "Wildsmith".

I'd read 'Gadget Man' and raved over it, enjoying the zany, post-collapse world and all its nuts cultural movements and parodies, the (at the time) technologically imaginative dystopias and nostalgia for a time not so ancient and not so good, etc. This novel felt weaker, somehow. The climax is very unsatisfying, very... meh. It falls flat, kind of like it remembered its central conflict and wanted to resolve it in about 5 pages. The world is just as weird and full of equally weird people (comple...

Disappointing, to say the least. Goulart uses a McGuffin in the form of a terrorist organisation to lead the protagonist on a chase through numerous communities each of which is populated by a blatant stereotype of a different type of "alternative lifestyle". Presumably intended primarily as a satire of the cosmopolitan and diverse cultures of Southern California at the beginning of the 1970s, it comes across as heavy handed and too thin a device to hang a novel on. Add to that the dubious sexua...