Ace Books's Worlds of ... series

The first volume, published in 1966

The Worlds of ... is a series of speculative fiction collections originally published in paperback by Ace Books from 1966 to 1983.

History

The series consists of a succession of similarly-titled single-author short story collections, each gathering together representative samples of the short works of a particular author then prominent in the field. According to John ONeill, Ace editor Donald A. Wollheim "more or less pioneered the idea" of such a series, first for Ace Books with this occasional series called "The Worlds of [author's name]" (continued sporadically by other editors after he left Ace), and then for DAW Books with his "The Book of [author's name]" sequence. The concept was later taken up and taken further by Ballantine/Del Rey and Pocket Books with their respective "Best of" series, both of them more ambitious than either of Wollheim's.

Content

The volumes occasionally included an or introduction by the author, editor, or other commentator. Some of the early volumes also had a frontispiece by artist Jack Gaughan, a frequent contributor of cover and interior art to other books edited or published by Donald A. Wollheim, both for Ace and DAW. Some early volumes also had a British edition issued by New English Library (in the case of the Frank Herbert volume, the NEL edition might have come first).

The series

Author and publication date follow each title.

• The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein (Robert A. Heinlein) (1966)
• The Worlds of Frank Herbert (Frank Herbert) (1971)
• The Worlds of Theodore Sturgeon (Theodore Sturgeon) (1972)
• The Worlds of Jack Vance (Jack Vance) (Dec. 1973)
• The Worlds of A. E. van Vogt (A. E. van Vogt) (Jan. 1974)
• The Worlds of Poul Anderson (Poul Anderson) (Jan. 1974)
• The Worlds of Fritz Leiber (Fritz Leiber) (Nov. 1976)
• The Worlds of H. Beam Piper (H. Beam Piper) (Feb. 1983)

Comparable series

Of the similar sequences of single author series issued by other publishers, DAW Books's The Book of [author's name] series ran from 1972-1976, Ballantine/Del Rey)'s Best of [author's name] series ran from 1974 to 1988, and Pocket Books's Best of [author's name] series ran from 1976 to 1982.