Donald A. Wollheim

(1 October 1914 – 2 November 1990)

Don Wollheim (aka DAW and The W) was one of the founders of fandom, a BNF, editor, publisher, and writer.

Fan

He was a founding member of the Futurians, and was a major influence on the early development of fandom. He found sf in 1927 through Amazing. He became active in the International Stf Guild in the Spring of 1934 and locally in the New York City branch of the ISA.

While the Futurians were by far the most influential, he was also involved in many other clubs. He was VP and editor of the TFG, treasurer and last president of the ISA, and chairman of the CPASF.

Wollheim published and edited many fanzines including Fanciful Tales of Time and Space, Fanciful Tales (with Wilson Shepherd), and Bolide.

His deep importance to early fandom is described in The Immortal Storm by Sam Moskowitz and in The Futurians by Damon Knight. He helped organize the first science fiction convention in 1936 in Philadelphia.

In 1937, he helped found the Fantasy Amateur Press Association and in 1938, he helped found the Futurians. In 1943, Wollheim married fellow Futurian Elsie Balter.

Throughout this period, he was right in the center of fannish controversy as one of the Quadrumvirs and leader of the Wollheimists. He read the infamous Michel speech "Mutation or Death!" at the Third Eastern Science Fiction Convention and was one of the fans excluded from the First Worldcon. He invented Dawnish.

He was one of the founders of FAPA and served as both president and OE.

Pro

Wollheim's first story, "The Man from Ariel," was published in the January 1934 issue of Wonder Stories. He was not paid for the story, and he learned that other authors hadn't been paid either and said so in the Bulletin of the Terrestrial Fantascience Guild and finally sued Gernsback, who expelled him from the New York Science Fiction League for being a "disruptive influence".

During the 1940s and ’50s he became a moderately successful, though minor, SF writer, but his real professional influence was as an editor and publisher. Robert Silverberg said that Wollheim was "one of the most significant figures in 20th century American science fiction publishing.... A plausible case could be made that he was the most significant figure — responsible in large measure for the development of the science fiction paperback, the science fiction anthology, and the whole post-Tolkien boom in fantasy fiction."

Before World War II, he edited two prozines, Stirring Science Stories and Cosmic Stories, and in 1943 he edited the first science fiction anthology to be mass-market published, The Pocket Book of Science Fiction. In 1945, he edited the first hardcover anthology from a major publisher and the first sf omnibus, The Viking Portable Novels of Science as well as, in 1947, the first anthology of original sf, The Girl With the Hungry Eyes.

From 1947 to 1951, he was the editor at the pioneering paperback publisher Avon Books. He edited Out of This World Adventures, a pulp magazine, for two issues, in July and December 1950. OOTWA included a comic book insert along with its science fiction stories. In 1952, he left Avon for Ace Books, where he edited for the new paperback publisher, which remains a major publisher of SF to this day.

He may have singlehandedly created the modern fantasy market by bringing out the unauthorized United States paperback edition of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which triggered enormous controversy and probably caused the fantastically successful Houghton Mifflin paperback LotRs to be published.

In 1971, he left Ace to found DAW Books (an initialism for Donald A. Wollheim) with his wife Elsie Wollheim. Their daughter, Betsy Wollheim took over later. He also edited and published the popular "Annual World's Best Science Fiction" anthology from 1971 until his death in 1990.

As a pro, he was GoH at Nolacon II.

More reading:

• He was the subject of a Founding Member article by Jon D. Swartz in December, 2015 issue National Fantasy Fan.
• Jack Speer's Up To Now can be read as a biography of Wollheim
• For an early short biography, see Who's Who in Fandom 1940, page 15
• Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

Fanzines and Apazines:

• Aaanthor Argus (with Cyril Kornbluth and Richard Wilson)
• Adulux Beskan
• And So -- Forward
• Bolide
• Fanciful Tales (with Wilson Shepherd)
• Fanciful Tales of Time and Space
• FAPA Fan
• Flabbergasting Stories
• Futurian Amateur
• Futurian Fan
• The International Observer of Science and Science Fiction
• Ktaogmm
• La Vie Arisienne
• Mentator
• The Phantagraph
• Ray
• Science Fiction Bard
• Science Fiction Progress
• Vertigo

Awards, Honors and GoHships:

• 1968 -- Lunacon 11
• 1969 -- Bubonicon 1
• 1970 -- Bubonicon 2, Knight of St. Fantony
• 1971 -- SfanCon 2
• 1974 -- Kubla Khan Too
• 1975 -- First Fandom Hall of Fame Award
• 1976 -- Kubla Khwandry
• 1977 -- Philcon 1976 (really)
• 1981 -- WisCon 5
• 1982 -- Boskone 19, MysteryKon 7
• 1983 -- Lunacon 26, Darkover Grand Council 6
• 1984 -- British Fantasy Awards Special Award
• 1986 -- LepreCon 12
• 1987 -- Forry Award, Raymond Z. Gallun Award
• 1988 -- Nolacon II
• 2010 -- Solstice Award

From Fancyclopedia 1, ca. 1944

DAW Nickname for Donald A. Wollheim.

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Person

1914—1990

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