Donald A. Wollheim

• 1. Introduction

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  Donald A. Wollheim, the American science fiction editor, publisher, writer and fan, picked up a telephone in 1964 and called Professor J. R. R. Tolkien. According to Wollheim's daughter Betsy, Tolkien answered that he would never allow his great works to appear in so "degenerate a form" as a paperback book.

  Wollheim took the remark personally. He did not forget it, and what he did next is still argued over. Some people call it piracy. Others call it the spark that created a whole genre.

  Wollheim was born on the 1st of October 1914 and died on the 2nd of November 1990. In between, he was expelled from a club, sued a publisher, founded a fan organization, and invented a way of binding two novels into one book. He also started a publishing house named for his own initials.

  So how did a teenage fan from New York end up deciding what science fiction readers could find on the shelf? And why does a man this central to the field remain such a divisive figure?

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• 2. Trouble With Gernsback

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  Donald Wollheim was nineteen when his first story, "The Man from Ariel", appeared in the January 1934 issue of Wonder Stories. He was never paid for it. Soon he learned that other authors had gone unpaid as well, and he said so in the Bulletin of the Terrestrial Fantascience Guild.

  The publisher was Hugo Gernsback. Wollheim gathered a group of fellow authors and pressed the claim, and it worked. Gernsback eventually settled with Wollheim and the others out of court for $75.

  Gernsback also ran a chain of clubs meant to promote the genre, and Wollheim belonged to the New York branch of the Science Fiction League. The league expelled him as "a disruptive influence", though he was later reinstated. The September 1935 issue of Wonder Stories carried the public notice. It began with the words "It grieves us to announce that we have found the first disloyalty in our organization."

  The notice said the expulsions took place on the 12th of June. It named three members: Wollheim, John B. Michel and William S. Sykora. In Gernsback's telling, these were active fans who had wandered onto the wrong road.

  That very same issue carried a second Wollheim story, "The Space Lens", which he had submitted under the pseudonym Millard Verne Gordon. Once again he was cheated of payment. His third known story ran in the Fall 1936 issue of Fanciful Tales of Time and Space, a fanzine he edited himself.

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• 3. Founding Fandom

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  The first edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, published in 1979, called Wollheim "one of the first and most vociferous SF fans." In 1936 he also published and edited a short-lived fanzine called Phantagraph. Two books later chronicled his role in early fandom: The Immortal Storm by Sam Moskowitz in 1974, and The Futurians by Damon Knight in 1977.

  On the 22nd of October 1936, a group of fans from New York traveled to meet a group from Philadelphia. Wollheim organized the gathering, and it is now regarded as the first American science fiction convention. The modern Philcon claims descent from it. Plans for regional and national meetings came out of that day, including the first-ever Worldcon.

  In 1937 Wollheim founded the Fantasy Amateur Press Association. Its first mailing, in July 1937, carried his explanation of why it existed. Many fans wanted a voice but feared the worry and time that subscriptions and advertising demanded. The association, he wrote, was for "the fan who admits it is his hobby and not his business."

  The following year, with several friends, he formed the Futurians, arguably the best-known of all science fiction clubs. Its members at one time or another included Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, Cyril Kornbluth, James Blish, Judith Merril, Damon Knight and Virginia Kidd. Robert A. W. Lowndes, Richard Wilson and Larry T. Shaw belonged as well, along with John Michel.

  After 1940 the Futurians turned less toward fan activity and more toward professional work. Their conferences and workshops concentrated on writing, editing and publishing. In 1943 Wollheim married a fellow Futurian, Elsie Balter, and the marriage became a lasting publishing partnership.

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• 4. Editor of Firsts

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  Robert Silverberg once called Wollheim one of the most significant figures in twentieth century American science fiction publishing. He argued that Wollheim deserved much of the credit for the science fiction paperback, the science fiction anthology, and the boom in fantasy that followed Tolkien.

  The path began on a newsstand in late 1940. Wollheim spotted a new magazine called Stirring Detective and Western Stories and wrote to its publisher, Albing Publications, asking whether they wanted a science fiction title. They invited him to meet, but they had no capital. They promised a salary only if the magazines succeeded.

  So Wollheim asked his Futurian friends for stories without payment. Some appeared under pseudonyms, to protect their authors' reputations with paying editors. The result was Cosmic Stories and Stirring Science Stories, two of the earliest periodicals devoted to science fiction, starting in February 1941.

  Both magazines were cancelled later that year. Wollheim found a new publisher, Manhattan Fiction Publications, and a fourth issue of Stirring appeared with a March 1942 date. Wartime constraints then ended both titles.

  In 1943 he edited The Pocket Book of Science Fiction, the first mass-marketed science fiction anthology. It was also the first book to carry the words "science fiction" in its title. The contents included Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, T. S. Stribling, Stephen Vincent Benet, Ambrose Bierce and H. G. Wells.

  Two more firsts followed. In 1945 came The Viking Portable Novels of Science, the first hardcover anthology from a major publisher and the first omnibus. In 1947 came The Girl With the Hungry Eyes, the first anthology of original science fiction. There is evidence that it was first planned as the opening issue of a magazine.

  From 1947 to 1951 Wollheim worked at the pioneering paperback publisher Avon Books. He issued cheap editions of A. Merritt, H. P. Lovecraft and C. S. Lewis's Silent Planet space trilogy, authors who had been little known until then. He also edited eighteen issues of the Avon Fantasy Reader and three of the Avon Science Fiction Reader, filled mostly with reprints and a few original stories.

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• 5. The Ace Doubles

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  Ursula K. Le Guin remembered him as "the tough, reliable editor of Ace Books, in the Late Pulpalignean Era, 1966 and '67." Those were the years Wollheim published her first two novels, each in an Ace Double.

  He had arrived at the Ace Magazine Company in 1952, leaving Avon to work for A. A. Wyn. There he spearheaded a new paperback line, Ace Books. Science fiction joined the lineup in 1953. For twenty years Wollheim served as editor-in-chief, responsible for a list that spanned many genres. The science fiction list mattered most to him.

  The Ace Double was his own invention. Two books, usually by different authors, were bound back-to-back, each with its own front cover. Because the pair had to fit a fixed page total, one or both were often abridged, and Wollheim made other editorial changes too. Poul Anderson's Ace novel War of the Wing-Men differs noticeably from its definitive revised edition, The Man Who Counts.

  Many writers made their paperback debuts in Ace Doubles, among them Philip K. Dick, Samuel R. Delany, Leigh Brackett and John Brunner. William S. Burroughs's first book, Junkie, was published as a Double. Wollheim also helped develop Marion Zimmer Bradley, Robert Silverberg, Avram Davidson, Fritz Leiber, Andre Norton, Thomas Burnett Swann, Jack Vance and Roger Zelazny.

  With co-editor Terry Carr, he began an annual anthology called The World's Best Science Fiction. It was the first collection of what the editors judged the best short stories of the previous year, drawn from magazines, hardcovers, paperback collections and other anthologies.

  In the early 1960s Ace brought back Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose work had long been out of print. In 1965 it bought the paperback rights to Dune. Wollheim worried about Frank Herbert's title, fearing readers would mistake it for a western. Ace and Ballantine together dominated science fiction in the 1960s, and Ballantine would soon be tied to Wollheim's most controversial decision.

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• 6. The Tolkien Gamble

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  Houghton Mifflin, Tolkien's American hardcover publisher, had neglected to protect The Lord of the Rings in the United States, according to Betsy Wollheim. Her father did some research and found what he took to be a copyright loophole. Before the 1960s, no large American paperback publisher would touch fantasy, because it was believed that no public demand existed. Wollheim, who did not consider himself a fantasy fan, published an unauthorized three-volume paperback of the epic. It was the first mass-market paperback edition.

  Betsy Wollheim described the act as the Big Bang that founded the modern fantasy field. She said her father did pay Tolkien, and that the book made both Tolkien and Ballantine Books extremely wealthy.

  Tolkien disputed the whole account. He claimed that he had never received any communication from Ace before its edition came out. He had already authorized paperback editions of The Hobbit and Tree and Leaf. The authorized Ballantine paperback of The Lord of the Rings followed in November 1965. Ace then agreed to stop selling its edition and to pay Tolkien for its sales, after a grassroots campaign by his fans in the United States.

  A court ruled in 1993 that the loophole was invalid and that the Ace edition had violated copyright. At the time, the United States had not yet joined the International Copyright Convention. Houghton Mifflin had technically broken the law by exceeding its import limits and failing to renew an interim copyright.

  The Locus obituary for Wollheim told a fuller story. Houghton Mifflin had imported sheets rather than printing its own edition, and did not want to sell paperback rights. Ace printed the first paperback and caused such a furor that Tolkien rewrote the books enough to earn a new copyright, then sold them to Ballantine. Locus added that Ace and Wollheim had become the villains of the Tolkien story, yet the boom probably would not have happened without them.

  His daughter believed the resentment left a mark. Wollheim was bitter that his rivals profited so richly, and she suggested this is probably why he never won the Hugo he wanted.

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• 7. DAW Books

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  When A. A. Wyn died in 1968, Ace was sold to a consortium headed by a bank. Frederik Pohl later recalled that few of the new owners had any publishing experience, and it showed. Bills went unpaid, advances and royalties arrived late, and budgets shrank. Wollheim spent most of his time soothing authors and agents who had every right to be angry. He left Ace in 1971.

  With his wife, Elsie Balter Wollheim, he founded DAW Books, named for his initials. DAW can claim to be the first mass-market publishing house devoted to science fiction and fantasy. Its first four titles appeared in April 1972.

  Most of the writers he had developed at Ace came along. They included Marion Zimmer Bradley, Andre Norton, Philip K. Dick, John Brunner, A. Bertram Chandler, Kenneth Bulmer, Gordon R. Dickson, A. E. van Vogt and Jack Vance.

  In 1974 his distributor, New American Library, threatened to withhold Thomas Burnett Swann's Biblical historical fantasy How Are the Mighty Fallen because of its homosexual content. Wollheim fought the decision vigorously, and the distributor relented.

  His later discoveries included Tanith Lee, Jennifer Roberson, Michael Shea, Tad Williams and Celia S. Friedman. C. J. Cherryh's Downbelow Station, published in 1982, became the first DAW book to win the Hugo Award for best novel. He gave British writers such as E. C. Tubb, Brian Stableford, Barrington Bayley and Michael Coney a new American audience. He also published translations of international science fiction, along with the anthologies Best From the Rest of the World.

  With help from Arthur W. Saha, Wollheim edited and published the popular Annual World's Best Science Fiction anthology, beginning in 1971. The series continued until he died.

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• 8. Pen Names and Praise

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  His daughter Betsy offered a blunt verdict on his fiction: "In true editorial fashion, he was honest about the quality of his own writing. He felt it was fair to middling at best. He always knew that his great talent was as an editor."

  Wollheim still wrote steadily. His stories appeared regularly from 1940, and in the 1950s and 1960s he mostly wrote novels. For grown-up readers he usually used pseudonyms, among them David Grinnell, Martin Pearson and Darrell G. Raynor. For children he used his own name. His eight Mike Mars books explored different sides of the NASA space program. The Secret of Saturn's Rings appeared in 1954, Secret of the Martian Moons in 1955, and The Secret of the Ninth Planet in 1959.

  As Martin Pearson he wrote the Ajax Calkins series, which became the basis for his novel Destiny's Orbit. A sequel, Destination: Saturn, came out in 1967 with Lin Carter. In 1971 he published The Universe Makers, a discussion of the themes and philosophy of science fiction. His short story "Mimic" became a 1997 film of the same name, directed and co-written by Guillermo del Toro.

  Under the name Darrell G. Raynor he published A Year Among the Girls in 1966. It concerned his experiences of cross-dressing and Casa Susanna. Wollheim practiced cross-dressing as a woman throughout his life, and he regularly attended events at Casa Susanna in the Catskills of upstate New York.

  In 1966 Algis Budrys gave him a Galaxy Bookshelf award "for doing his job." Robert Jordan credited him with launching a career. Wollheim made an offer for Jordan's first novel, Warrior of the Ataii, then withdrew it when Jordan asked for minor contract changes. Jordan said that Wollheim's first, laudatory letter convinced him he could write, so he chose to remember that letter and forget the second. The novel stayed unpublished in his lifetime, and he went on to write The Wheel of Time for Tor Books.

  Marion Zimmer Bradley called Wollheim "a second father", and Pohl called him "a founder." Silverberg considered him "seriously underrated." In 1977 the scholar Robert Scholes named him one of the most important editors and publishers of science fiction.

  Special awards began in 1975, including one at the World SF Convention. At that year's World Fantasy Convention he was runner-up to Ian and Betty Ballantine, the very publishers who had issued Tolkien's authorized edition. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in 2002, in its seventh class. He was only the third person honored mainly as an editor or publisher, after Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell, who had entered in 1996. In 2009 the SFWA gave him a Solstice Award.

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