Donald A. Wollheim

Science fiction writer (under pseudonyms, including David Grinnell), editor and publisher.

A member of the Futurians, he was one of the leading influences on the development science fiction and science fiction fandom in the 20th century.

He began editing Ace Books[?]' science fiction line in the late 1950s and initiated the Ace Doubles series which consisted of pairs of books, ususally by different authors, bound back-to-back, with two "front" covers. Because these paired books had to fit a fixed total page-length, one or both were usually heavily abridged to fit, and Wollheim often made many other editorial alterations and title changes - as witness the many differences between Poul Anderson's Ace novel War of the Wing-Men and its definitive revised edition, The Man Who Counts. He seems to have made a number of changes solely to suit his own conservative politics.

It was Wollheim who, in 1965, exploited a loophole in international copyright law to publish an unauthorized Ace edition of The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. Wollheim was probably aware that Ace would face legal action over the issue but gambled that sales of the "pirate" edition would make sufficient profit to offset any legal losses. In any case, the débacle brought Ace into the limelight.

He also founded DAW Books[?] in 1971, which can claim to be the first specialist science fiction and fantasy fiction publishing house. In later years his conservatism seems to have mellowed; when his distributors, New American Library[?], threatened to withhold distribution of Thomas Burnett Swann[?]'s Biblical fantasy How are the Mighty Fallen (1974) because of its homosexual content, Wollheim fought vigorously against their decision.

External links:

• ISFDB Bibliography: Donald A. Wollheim (http://isfdb.tamu.edu/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Donald_A._Wollheim)
• http://www.dawbooks.com/