Search Results for: Wollheim

Vintage Treasures: World’s Best Science Fiction 1965 – 1970, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr

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If you’ve been paying attention over the past two months, you’re probably aware that we’re deep into the Year’s Best Science Fiction season. So far this year Solaris, Night Shade, and Prime Books have all released Best of the Year anthologies (edited by Jonathan Strahan, Neil Clarke and Rich Horton, respectively), and in the next few months we can expect additional volumes by Gardner Dozois, John Joseph Adams, Ellen Datlow, Paula Guran, Stephan Jones, and others. Now I know what you’re thinking….

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The Editor As Author: Donald A. Wollheim’s The Secret of the Ninth Planet

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As a publisher and editor, Donald A. Wollheim (1914-1990) is arguably the most important single figure in the 20th-century SF and Fantasy community. SF in paperback? SF anthologies? He started them – including The Pocket Book of Science Fiction, the first book with the words “science fiction” in the title. Aside: for those who don’t already know, what we now call a “paperback,” used to be called a “pocket book.” As the editor at Avon (1947-1951), he was responsible for…

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Vintage Treasures: Sentinels of Space by Eric Frank Russell / The Ultimate Invader edited by Donald Wollheim

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We’re back  with our journey through the Ace Double line, this time with one of the earliest volumes in the series: Eric Frank Russell’s SF novel Sentinels of Space, coupled with a Donald Wollheim anthology The Ultimate Invader. It was published in paperback in 1954. Eric Frank Russell is one of those writers I’m not nearly as well-versed in as I should be. I read his brilliant short story “Dear Devil” in Terry Carr’s YA anthology Creatures From Beyond in the mid-seventies,…

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Kirkus Looks at Donald A. Wollheim and the Ace Double

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Back in June, I wrote a short blog entry about one of my favorite Ace Doubles, Tales of Outer Space and Adventures in the Far Future. I took the excuse to talk about one of the field’s true renaissance men, Donald A. Wollheim, who edited both books and launched several of the most enduring SF and fantasy publishing imprints in history. Wollheim doesn’t get much credit for his amazing accomplishments these days. Which is why I was pleased to see Andrew…

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Vintage Treasures: Tales of Outer Space, edited by Donald A. Wollheim

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Sometimes I think I owe Donald A. Wollheim for a big chunk of my childhood. Today we’re looking at Tales of Outer Space, a collection of interplanetary adventure tales edited by Wollheim in 1954, a decade after he invented the mass-market SF anthology with The Pocket Book of Science Fiction in 1943 (the first book with the words “Science Fiction” in the title), and not long after he produced  the first original SF anthology, The Girl With the Hungry Eyes,…

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Adventure in the Magellanic Cloud: The Mote in Time’s Eye by Gérard Klein

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The Mote in Time’s Eye (DAW, January 1975). Cover by Josh Kirby This is the latest in a series of posts I’m doing covering relatively obscure SF novels of the ‘70s and ‘80s. This novel was first published in French in 1965, but as it didn’t appear in English until 1975, I figure it fits this series. One of the things on the good side of the Donald A. Wollheim ledger is his willingness to publish SF in translation. This…

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Vintage Treasures: Night’s Black Agents by Fritz Leiber

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Nights Black Agents (Berkley Books, May 1980). Cover by Wayne Barlowe Nights Black Agents was Fritz Leiber’s first first collection — and in fact his first book. It was originally published in hardcover by Arkham House in 1947, when Leiber was 37 years old. It collects six stories published in Weird Tales and Unknown Worlds, plus one tale from a fanzine, and three new stories — including the long Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser novella “Adept’s Gambit.” Needless to say,…

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The Horrors of Sam Moskowitz

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Horrors in Hiding, Horrors Unseen, and Horrors Unknown (Berkley Medallion, February 1973, June 1974, and February 1976). Covers: Vincent Di Fate (x2), uncredited A few years back I wrote a trio of Vintage Treasures pieces about a series of Berkley Medallion paperback horror anthologies from the mid-70s, all edited by Sam Moskowitz (with an assist from Alden H. Norton). Horrors in Hiding (February 1973) Horrors Unseen (June 1974) Horrors Unknown (February 1976) The last two were the final anthologies Moskowitz…

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Make Room For Harry Harrison: Anthony Aycock on a Forgotten SF Master

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Make Room! Make Room! (Berkley Medallion, July 1967). Cover by Richard Powers Harry Harrison was a true believer. Like Isaac Asimov, Terry Carr, Donald Wollheim, Gardner Dozois, Lin Carter, Damon Knight and a handful of others, he dedicated his life to science fiction, and in a multitude of roles, as writer, editor, critic, and scholar. His fiction, however, has been largely — and unjustly — forgotten, and in the dozen years since his death in August 2012, all his books…

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No More Stories — The Capstone to Joanna Russ’s Alyx Sequence: “The Second Inquisition”

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Orbit 6, edited by Damon Knight (Berkley Medallion, June 1970). Cover by Paul Lehr “No more stories.” So ends Joanna Russ’s great novelette “The Second Inquisition.” But in many ways the story is about stories — about how we use them to define ourselves, protect ourselves, understand ourselves. It’s also, in a curious way, about Joanna Russ’s stories, particularly those about Alyx, a woman rescued from drowning in classical times by the future Trans-Temporal Authority. “The Second Inquisition” first appeared…

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