Among the multitude of ideas for a Science Fiction and Fantasy book collection is the theme of acquiring all the books in a particular series. One of the most famous of the all the publisher series in the genre is the Ace Science Fiction Specials. Ace Books was established by Aaron Wyn in 1953 and began by publishing westerns and mysteries. Shortly after its founding Wyn added SF titles to it catalog.

Ace published its science fiction books as a pair in what is called a dos-à-dos. Dos-à-dos, French for “back to back”, refers to the practice of publishing two books bound in pairs, back-to-back. Ace altered this somewhat by printing the two books inverted to one another so that so that the last page of one book faced the upside down end of the other. Though not actually invented by Ace, the company published so many books in this format that the two became practically synonymous.

By the 1960s Ace began publishing single books finally abandoning the dos-à-dos completely in 1973 with the last of the Ace Doubles, Mack Reynolds’ The Rival Rigelians bound with his Planetary Agent X (Ace # 66995). Occasional double novel books continued to appear until 1978 but these subsequent books were printed conventionally rather than in the dos-à-dos format.

The Ace Science Fiction Special series was initiated by author Terr Carr who came to the company as an editor in 1964. Under the colophon Carr published critically acclaimed works by authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Alexei Panshin, and Roger Zelazny.

The initial series consists of over 35 books published between 1968 and 1971. A second series was begun in 1975 without Carr as editor but was not nearly as successful and was abandoned after less than a dozen tiles. In 1984, Ace hired Terry Carr back, this time as a freelance editor, to begin a new series of Ace Science Fiction Specials. Carr died before all the proposed titles were released and the series was completed under the editorship of Damon Knight.

Collecting Ace SF Specials, though popular, is relatively easy and is a good theme for a beginning collector. The books are regularly available from a number of used bookshops and online sources generally priced at around $10.00 or less for Fine to Near-Fine copies. An added attraction to collecting these books is that a number of volumes are the true First Editions, often called “paperback original” or “pbo”, of individual works. Here are a few famous examples:

• Brunner, John. The Traveler in Black (Ace 1971) Ace #82210
• Le Guin, Ursula. The Left Hand of Darkness (Ace 1969) Ace #47900
• Moorcock, Michael. The Warlord of the Air (Ace 1971) Ace #87060
• Russ, Joanna. Picnic on Paradise (Ace 1968) Ace #H-72
• Tucker, Wilson. The Year of the Quiet Sun (Ace 1970) Ace #99420
• Zelazny, Roger. Isle of the Dead (Ace 1969) Ace #37465)

There were several books published about the series that are now unfortunately out of print and difficult to find, however I have a list of the Science Fiction Special series on the Resources page.