Donald Metcalf Grant died August 19, 2009 in North Port, Florida. He was 82 years old.

Don founded DONALD M. GRANT, PUBLISHER in 1964. For many years he operated it from his home in West Kingston, Rhode Island. I became his partner in 1981.

In 1945, when Don was 18, he published his first book: RHODE ISLAND ON LOVECRAFT, edited by Donald M. Grant and Thomas G. Hadley and published under the Grant-Hadley Enterprises imprint. Over the years other publishing companies he was part of included The Buffalo Book Company, The Hadley Publishing Company, Grandon and Centaur Press. In 1964 he went out on his own and the rest is history.

Donald Grant was instrumental in the creation of THE WORLD FANTASY CONVENTION in 1975. He received three World Fantasy Awards in the special professional category (1976, 1980, and 1983), one special convention World Fantasy Award (1984), and a World Fantasy Life Achievement Award (2003). He published one Hugo Award winning book: TIME AND CHANCE by L. Sprague de Camp.

In the mid-1990’s Don moved to North Port, Florida. He is survived by his wife Shirley, daughter Nancy Mahoney, granddaughter Ellen Mahoney, son Douglas and sister Meg Moreau.

The late 1940s and early 1050s saw the rapid decline of the old pulp magazines. Formerly the largest outlet by far for short fiction, these cheaply produced magazines suffered from the paper shortages of the Second World War era becoming increasingly more expensive to produce. Many publishers began either to close their doors outright or started phasing out the pulp publications in favor of the mass market paperback or “pocketbook”.

Toward the end of the pulp era a few new publications were produced that straddled the line between the two forms. One favorite of these is the Avon Fantasy Reader. Published between 1947 and 1952 the Avon Fantasy Reader was created by Donald A. Wollheim (who later founded DAW Books) and consisted mostly of reprinted work although Wollheim did include new pieces on occasion.

Like the pulp magazines of the time the Avon Fantasy Readers were produced using cheap newsprint, thin wrappers, stapled bindings and were formatted in the smaller “digest” size that was adopted by the pulp publications to cut costs. Unlike the pulp magazines they had no interior illustrations and the text was laid out in the traditional one-column book format rather than the two column format of the magazines. Though modern collectors now consider these publications pulp magazines rather than books they are widely prized by many who would not normally consider themselves magazine collectors, probably as much for their wonderfully shameless pulp cover illustrations as for their content.

The original Avon Fantasy Reader series ran eighteen issues ostensibly published monthly but in actuality it came out irregularly. In 1952 Wollheim began a companion publication, the Avon Science Fiction Reader which focused on sf reprints. It ran only three issues before Wollheim left Avon for Ace Books and both series were abandoned by Avon. The following year Avon attempted to revive the Reader series combining the two previous series under the title Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader.

The resurrected series was under the editorship of Sol Cohen who focused the content on original work rather than reprints. Only two issues were produced before the project was abandoned.

The series continues to be in demand with prices for individual editions ranging from $20 to $30 and up. For those interested in acquiring these series I have provided a checklist of all three titles complete with contents lists on the Collectingsf.com web site. Cover illustrations will follow.

As you might expect the set is extremely collectible and very pricey. Currently Barry R. Levin has volume 6, Children of the Lens available priced at $995.00 for the single volume and Fathead Books has volume 5, Second Stage Lensman listed at $500.00. The Fine Books Company is listing all the books together but state that two of the six volumes are signed trade editions while the other four are the subscribers editions with the limited bookplates. They list the set at $2343.32. (Now where did they get that number?)

Fred also pointed me to a web page with an excellent picture of the six books of the set (the above is a thumbnail); however the web site appears to have a severe bandwidth limit and is not always available. Or perhaps I was just unlucky in my timing. You can try your luck here.

Now if I only had a spare $2,400.00 lying around!

Fantasy Press

Many of the Fantasy Press titles are readily available with prices for F/F copies generally running in the $200-$300 range as of this writing. A number of titles were also issued as a special signed limited first edition.

Fantasy Press also published three titles in a trade paperback format. Each book featured gold wrappers with an illustration by Edd Cartier:

• Smith, E. E. “Doc”. Galactic Patrol ($1.00, 1950, 273pp, cvr illustration: Edd Cartier, 500 copies so issued.)
• Campbell, John W. John W. The Moon is Hell! ($1.00, 1957, cvr illustration: Edd Cartier, 500 copies so issued.)
• Leinster, Murray. Operation: Outer Space ($1.00, 1954, 208pp, cvr illustration: Edd Cartier, 500 copies so issued.)

I have not found a complete checklist of the Fantasy Press titles so have begun to compile my own on the Collecting SF Books site. I believe the list to be incomplete and would appreciate any information on titles I may be missing. You can find the list on the Resources page under “Series Title Checklists” or go directly to the Fantasy Press Checklist page.

Capitalizing on the success of the first set of books and seeing a growing desire for fantasy literature, Ian and Betty Ballantine enlisted author/editor Lin Carter to produce a series of paperback fantasy books. Carter produced a seminal series of fantasy including many works that had been out of print and unavailable for some time.

The series is identifiable by a distinctive “Unicorn Head” colophon in the upper right hand corner and/or the phrase “A Ballantine Adult Fantasy” in the upper left hand corner of the cover. The colophon was redesigned in December of 1969 and appears first on that month’s publication, Hannes Bok’s The Sorcerer’s Ship. Each publication also featured an introduction by Carter.

Most collectors of the BAF series include the sixteen books published by Ballantine prior to the series inception, beginning with Tolkien’s The Hobbit, as precursors to the official series. Also usually included are two non-fiction books by Lin Carter himself concerning the works of J.R.R Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft.

Additionally, two other books are commonly considered part of the BAF series though published after the series colophon was dropped. The first, published in June of 1974 is H. Warner Munn’s Merlin’s Ring which includes the Carter introduction and the second, Evangeline Walton’s Prince of Annwn, which lacks the logo and Carter introduction but completes the Mabinogi cycle started by Walton’s three books issued under the Unicorn Head colophon.

Due to being a paperback series, having a well defined checklist, a finite number of books and the generally inexpensive cost of most of the BAF titles, collecting the series is both easy and satisfying. Copies of many of the books frequently show up in yard sales and used bookstores. Dealers at conventions usually have a number of titles available and much of the series is available online. It is an excellent series for the beginning collector.

A complete list of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series appears on the Collecting SF web site.

Subterranean Press

Subterranean is a small press publisher in the horror, suspense, and dark mystery genres, and has published Peter Straub, David Morrell, Dan Simmons, Poppy Z. Brite, Robert Bloch, and others.

Currently available titles include a limited chapbook by James Blaylock titled Thirteen Phantasms illustrated by J.K. Potter, a signed and limited edition of Tim Powers’ A Soul in a Bottle, preorders of The Jack Vance Treasury, a limited edition of Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn: the Lost Version with a duct jacket illustration by Michael Wm Kaluta along with many other titles.

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 my Collecting Science Fiction Books website.

The site is new and is being populated as I get the time. You may find some interesting resources there as well as the occasional SF Bookworm article archived. Suggestions and comments are always welcome.