Ace Books

• 1. Introduction

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  Ace Books, a New York City publisher founded in 1952 by Aaron A. Wyn, sold paperbacks with two front covers. Turn one over, and a second novel began, upside down, from the other end. Some rare copies in mint condition now command more than $1,000. Yet the company started out with mysteries and westerns, and science fiction arrived as an afterthought. How did a house of cheap double books become a place where major writers got their start? Why did an editor land his job because of a mistaken reference check? What happened when Ace printed J. R. R. Tolkien without his blessing? And how did a publisher that shaped a genre end up unable to pay its own authors? The answers run from one editor's restless job hunt to a long chain of corporate takeovers.

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• 2. A Mistaken Reference Check

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  Donald A. Wollheim was an editor at Avon Books, and he disliked the work. While searching for something better, he tried to talk A. A. Wyn into launching a new paperback company.

  Wyn was no newcomer. He already ran a well-established operation publishing books and pulp magazines under the name A. A. Wyn's Magazine Publishers. His titles included Ace Mystery and Ace Sports, and the new company probably borrowed its name from those.

  Wyn liked the idea but let it sit for several months. Wollheim, meanwhile, kept applying elsewhere, including for an assistant editor job at Pyramid Books.

  Pyramid then made a blunder. Believing Wollheim had once worked for Wyn's wife, Rose, the company telephoned her for a reference. Rose told her husband that Wollheim was looking to leave. That settled it, and Wyn hired him as an editor on the spot.

  Their first release would not be a single novel at all.

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• 3. Two Novels, One Spine

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  The first Ace book paired two mysteries: Keith Vining's Too Hot for Hell and Samuel W. Taylor's The Grinning Gismo. It cost 35 cents and carried the serial number D-01. The two texts were bound upside down relative to each other and met in the middle, a style known as tête-bêche.

  Many people credit Ace with inventing that arrangement. It did not, but over the next twenty-one years it issued hundreds of titles this way. Books by established authors were often paired with those of lesser-known writers.

  The bibliographer James Corrick called Ace "notorious for cutting text." Even some books labeled "Complete and Unabridged" were trimmed. Isaac Asimov's The Stars Like Dust came out under the new title The Rebellious Stars, with cuts he never approved. John Brunner went further and repudiated the text of his novel Castaway's World because of unauthorized cuts.

  Still, the early D-series list held real finds. Number D-15 was William S. Burroughs's first novel, Junkie, published under the pseudonym "William Lee." The series also carried many books by Philip K. Dick, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison and Harry Whittington. Louis L'Amour appeared too, including titles written as "Jim Mayo."

  Collectors have to decode the serial numbers. Until the late 1980s, Ace used letter series such as D-31 and H-77, plus purely numeric ones. The letter signaled the price. The D series ran from 1952 to 1962 at 35 cents, while the H series cost 60 cents between 1966 and 1968. The N series, at 95 cents, lasted only in 1968.

  The original run of the D series ended at D-599, Patricia Libby's Winged Victory for Nurse Kerry. A D did not mean a double, since some D-series books were not upside-down pairs. Later series each kept their own numbering, and Ace also added singles and an Ace Star line for larger, pricier books, especially nonfiction.

  The last double of the original run was John T. Phillifent's Life with Lancelot, backed with William Barton's Hunting on Kunderer, issued in August 1973 under serial number 48245. Ace revived the Ace Double name in 1974, but those later books were arranged conventionally.

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• 4. From Westerns to Science Fiction

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  Ace's second title was a western: William Colt MacDonald's Bad Man's Return, bound with J. Edward Leithead's Bloody Hoofs. Mysteries and westerns traded places regularly across the first thirty titles. A rare exception paired two P. G. Wodehouse novels, Quick Service and The Code of the Woosters.

  Science fiction entered in 1953 with A. E. van Vogt's The World of Null-A, bound with his own The Universe Maker. Earlier that year, Ace had released Theodore S. Drachman's Cry Plague!, whose plot could pass for science fiction. But its partner, Leslie Edgley's The Judas Goat, was a mystery, so the van Vogt double counts as the true first. A second science fiction double followed before the year was out.

  The new genre took off quickly. By 1955, Ace put out more science fiction titles each year than books in either of its other two main genres. From 1961 onward, science fiction outnumbered mysteries and westerns put together.

  Not everything on the list was fantasy or space. Ace also published lurid juvenile delinquent novels during the 1950s, such as Edward De Roo's The Young Wolves, numbered D-343, and Wilene Shaw's Out for Kicks, numbered D-378. Both are now highly collectible.

  For the 1950s and 1960s, Ace and Ballantine Books were the dominant American science fiction paperback publishers. Rivals followed their lead as the audience grew, but none matched either company's influence. Ace printed early work by Gordon R. Dickson, Samuel R. Delany, Ursula K. Le Guin and Roger Zelazny.

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• 5. Tolkien Without Permission

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  In 1965, Ace published a paperback edition of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings without asking him. The company believed the American copyright had lapsed. That belief turned out to be a costly gamble.

  Tolkien had not wanted a paperback edition at all. The unauthorized version changed his mind, and an authorized American paperback soon appeared from Ballantine Books. Its back cover carried a message urging readers not to buy the Ace edition.

  Ace chose to settle. It agreed to pay Tolkien royalties and let its still-popular edition go out of print.

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• 6. Specials and Unpaid Bills

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  Terry Carr, himself a science fiction author, joined Ace in 1964. Three years later he started the Ace Science Fiction Specials, a line of original novels that drew critical acclaim. Its authors included R. A. Lafferty, Joanna Russ and Ursula K. Le Guin.

  Carr and Wollheim also teamed up to edit an annual Year's Best Science Fiction anthology. Carr separately edited Universe, a well-received series of original stories. It began at Ace but moved to another publisher once Carr left.

  Behind the creative success, the money was running out. Wyn died in 1967, and the company soon became financially overextended. It paid its authors unreliably.

  Wollheim felt the strain directly. With no cash for the signing bonus, he refused to mail signed contracts to writers. On at least one occasion a book went to the printer without a valid contract. Wollheim later learned that the author, owed $3,000 by Ace, was picking fruit to make a living.

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• 7. A Chain of Owners

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  Two years before Wollheim and Carr walked out, Charter Communications in New York City bought Ace. Both editors left in 1971. Wollheim had plans for a separate paperback house, and working with New American Library, he built DAW Books.

  Carr went freelance. He and Wollheim each went on to edit a rival Year's Best Science Fiction series, competing against their old collaboration.

  The corporate handoffs kept coming. In 1977, Grosset & Dunlap acquired Charter Communications. In 1982, G. P. Putnam's Sons in turn acquired Grosset & Dunlap.

  By then, Ace was reputedly the only profitable part of the Grosset & Dunlap empire. It soon became the science fiction imprint of its parent company.

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• 8. The Modern Imprint

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  Terry Carr returned to Ace as a freelance editor in 1984, with a fresh Ace Specials series devoted entirely to first novels. It outdid the original. In that single year it brought out William Gibson's Neuromancer, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Wild Shore, Lucius Shepard's Green Eyes and Michael Swanwick's In the Drift. All four authors are now regarded as major figures in the genre.

  Ace's editorial halls produced publishers as well. Tom Doherty, who ran Ace as publisher, left to found Tor Books. Jim Baen started in the complaints department, later edited gothics and then science fiction, and moved on to Tor. He eventually founded Baen Books. Frederik Pohl served briefly as executive editor, and Ellen Kushner also worked there.

  Some editors stayed far longer. Susan Allison was editor-in-chief from 1982 to 2006. Ginjer Buchanan, who joined as an editor in 1984, took the top editorial job in 2006 and held it until 2014.

  In 1996, Penguin Group (USA) acquired the Putnam Berkley Group and kept Ace as its science fiction imprint. As of December 2012, recent authors included Joe Haldeman, Charles Stross, Laurell K. Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds and Jack McDevitt.

  Penguin merged with Random House in 2013 to form Penguin Random House, which still owns Berkley. Ace's editors now also run Roc Books, though the two imprints keep separate identities.

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