Legendary publisher Donald A. Wollheim died on this date 30 years ago. We asked author and journalist Cliff Biggers, who knew Wollheim personally, to share his memories of the man behind DAW Books. Cliff’s bio can be found here.

My late wife Susan and I were very active in science fiction fandom in the late 1960s, the 1970s, and the early 1980s. We were both avid SF readers, so we were already quite familiar with Don Wollheim through his work as an editor at Ace Books. When Don left Ace to launch DAW Books (his imprint distributed through Signet/NAL at the time), we knew that Wollheim was an editor who delivered quality mainstream SF and fantasy, so we began picking up his four new releases every month from the time that line launched in the spring of 1972.

I also knew that Don was very active in fandom, which intrigued me. In the late 1960s, I discovered that many of the authors and editors I admired had also been fans. Wollheim, being so prominent in the SF field, fascinated me, since he remained involved to a degree with the fan field throughout his life.

I first met Wollheim in person at the 1974 Kubla Khan in Nashville, TN. Ken Moore, the driving force behind that convention, was also an avid fan of Wollheim's work, and he brought Don and Elsie to the convention, where they had a great time talking to fans. Susan and I had a lengthy conversation with Don about his publishing strategies with DAW Books, the authors he most enjoyed working with, his pivotal role in rekindling an interest in the fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and--very briefly--the very complex JRR Tolkien Lord of the Rings publishing controversy. At that time, I told him that Susan and I were preparing our own SF review fanzine, and he told me to be sure to send him and Elsie a copy personally once we published the first issue.

Later in 1974, when Susan and I launched our review fanzine Future Retrospective, we sent a copy to Don and Elsie Wollheim. Don was one of the first people in the field to respond with enthusiastic words of encouragement, and he was also the first editor to put us on the review comp list for all DAW Books. Since Susan and I were buying every DAW release like clockwork, we were grateful to get comp copies--and we were doubly grateful when Don sent a note stressing that comp copies of the book didn't mean that he expected positive reviews. He wanted us to be fair and honest as reviewers, and in at least one case told us that our reviews had pointed out problems with a book that led him to demand substantial rewrites on the author's next novel--and he said it made it a better book. That's pretty high praise coming from an editor like Don Wollheim.

Don and/or Elsie sent a written response to every single issue of Future Retrospective that we published, and he went on to quote from many of our reviews on the back covers of various DAW releases. "We may not always agree, but you show a real understanding of what I'm trying to do with DAW," he said.

Over the next couple of years, we exchanged several letters with Don Wollheim. (I wish I had all of those letters, but they were turned into soggy pulp when a tornado damaged our roof, soaking several boxes of fanzines and personal correspondence.) When Ken Moore invited Don and Elsie back to Nashville in 1976 (where Don was to be guest of honor at Kubla Khan--and that struck me as odd in itself, since Ken had said that his plan was to make Don and Elsie guests of honor, but it soon became just Don), Don asked if we planned to attend. I told him we did, and he set up plans for a dinner where we could talk some more. He had hoped that Thomas Burnett Swann, a frequent Nashville convention attendee, would also be able to join us for that dinner, but Swann was struggling with cancer at the time and would pass away shortly before Kubla Khan. Don was quite sad by that, since he said that he considered Thomas Burnett Swann one of the finest fantasists he had ever discovered during his years at Ace Books.

During my conversations with Don, I was struck by his passion--but I also became aware of his volatility. Don was a man of strong opinions, and he could become irritable at times when discussing some of the issues that most bothered him during his career. I saw that irritability at its worst when he talked about the Tolkien situation and when he discussed Frank Frazetta's work for Ace--particularly on the ERB Ace F-Edition paperbacks. He wasn't irritated with me, but at the situation he was discussing; it was obvious that there were still some concerns.

I was also struck by what an astute businessman he was, and how well he understood his audience and the collector's mindset. Don was actually surprised that more publishers had not noted what he had done with DAW Books (numbering each of the four monthly releases consecutively), since he said that sales figures made it clear that lesser known authors were benefiting tremendously by being published as part of a numerical series. Don put a great deal of time into thinking about that line, the numbering system, and the books he released each month, often scheduling works by new or lower-selling authors to reach bookstores the same time as a book by one of his better-selling authors, because it gave a measurable boost to the sales of those new books. He was aware that Roger Elwood and Laser Books had tried to follow the format--and had also enlisted Frank Kelly Freas, whom Wollheim considered to be one of "his artists" because he had done so much work for Wollheim at Ace and DAW--to supply the covers. "The only thing they didn't copy from me was that they didn't make the books any good," Wollheim said.