This is a book, if indeed it is a book (the fact that it's loose sheets might argue against that), that few of you will ever have seen or even heard of.
Here's the description of it from a seller on Abebooks: Book Description: [New York: Richard A. Lupoff, 1963. Large octavo, pp. [1-2] [1-2] 3 [4: blank] 5-11 [12: blank] [1-2] 13-38 [1- 4] 39-84, folding chart of Barsoom, 2 plates, one an illustration by Roy G. Krenkel, the other an illustration by Al Williamson, loose sheets as issued. First edition. 500 copies printed, this issue being one of 200 copies with limitation statement on verso of title leaf numbered and signed by David G. Van Arnam. Contains an introduction by Donald A. Wollheim, a preface, afterword and essay by Lupoff, two essays by van Arnam, and one by Larry Ivie.
My copy is #20 of the 200 signed and numbered ones, but it's sadly lacking the folding chart of Barsoom, but it does have the plates by Krenkel and Williamson. I suppose it's more of a curiosity now than anything else, but it's the kind of fan scholarship that I enjoy, so naturally I like having things like this around the house.
I've been a fan of the Ace Doubles ever since I saw one for the first time. In those days the cover price was 35 cents, and you got two novels back-to-back. How could you go wrong? You couldn't. Well, I couldn't. I know that there are those who hold some of the books in this series in disdain, but I'm not one of them. I enjoyed every one I read back in the old days, and I'd probably enjoy them again if I read them now. Over the years I picked them up when I saw them, and when the Internet made just about everything available with the click of a mouse, I decided I wanted all of the D-series, if not all the Doubles, and that explains why there are check marks by a lot of the titles in this little (86 pp) book.
Not that the list of all the titles in the series is all you get. There's a short buy very good introduction by Donald A. Wollheim, the series editor, which is followed by James A. Corrick's 8-page history. Even if you know most of it already, it's always fun to read about it again. I was looking through the book the other day, and I ran across a couple of the later titles that I decided I need to order. That's the danger of a book like this. And the fun of it, too.
For a while in the middle 1960s, I was unfaithful to SF. I was reading crime fiction almost exclusively when I wasn't reading the zillions of books required in my grad school classes. I was sharing an office with three other grad students, all women, and the boyfriend of one of them was an SF reader. He left a copy of this book in the office one day, and I picked it up. I immediately recognized every name of the cover, so I opened it up and checked out the table of contents, which I've put down below. I recognized even more names, but a few of them were unfamiliar.
The boy friend wasn't around, and neither was anyone else at the moment. So I took the book home with me and started reading the stories. It didn't take me long to realize that I'd been missing some entertaining stuff, so when I took the book back, I asked the guy if he had any others in the series. He had two, the 1965 and 1967 volumes, which he brought to the office for me. I found some more unfamiliar names, and by this time I was hitting the used bookstores picking up novels by both the familiar and unfamiliar folks. Since then, while I've read mostly crime fiction, I've never turned my back on SF again.
The biggest surprise in the book was the Ellison story. I started reading his work with the appearance of his first story in, I believe, Infinity, and I really liked it. This one, however, wasn't like anything of his I'd read before. Something had changed, and it wasn't just Ellison, though I didn't know that until later.
I picked up all the rest of the Year's Best in this series as they appeared, and others, as well. I'm sure that no anthology manages to be filled with only the best, and there are a couple of clunkers in this one, but I owe it a big debt since it got me back into SF in a big way.
ToC:
"Introduction" (Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr)
"Sunjammer" (Arthur C. Clarke)
"Calling Dr. Clockwork" (Ron Goulart)
"Becalmed in Hell" (Larry Niven)
"Apartness" (Vernor Vinge)
"Over the River and Through the Woods" (Clifford D. Simak)
"Planet of Forgetting" (James H. Schmitz)
"'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" (Harlan Ellison)
"The Decision Makers" (Joseph L. Green)
"Traveler's Rest" (David I. Masson)
"Uncollected Works" (Lin Carter)
"Vanishing Point" (Jonathan Brand)
"In Our Block" (R. A. Lafferty)
"Masque of the Red Shift" (Fred Saberhagen)
"The Captive Djinn" (Christopher Anvil)
"The Good New Days" (Fritz Leiber)
