Ace Double Novels

Ace Books was founded in 1953 by A. A. Wyn and is the oldest continuously operating science fiction publisher in the United States. Under the editorialship of Donald A. Wollheim, it published some of the most outstanding writers of the 1950s and 1960s, including Sameul R. Delany, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Robert Silverberg.

Ace was known for creative marketing innovations such as the Ace Double, a paperback book that contained two short novels bound back-to-back. This dos-à-dos format has the two titles bound upside-down with respect to each other, so that there are two front covers and the two texts meet in the middle of the book. Between 1952 and 1973, Ace published about 600 of these dos-à-dos books, covering science fiction as well as other genres.

Ace Double novels that pertain to Mars include:

• The Sword of Rhiannon, by Leigh Brackett (Series D, #36, 1953, cover art by Robert Schulz). Bound with Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Conqueror. Reviewed by Richard Horton.

• The Mars Monopoly, by Jerry Sohl (Series D, #162, 1956, cover art by Ed Valigursky). Bound with R. De Witt Miller and Anna Hunger’s The Man Who Lived Forever.

• The Martian Missile, by David Grinnell (Series D, #465, 1960, cover art by Ed Valigursky), pictured above. Bound with John Brunner’s The Atlantic Abomination. Reviewed by Richard Horton.

• The Secret Martians, by Jack Sharkey (Series D, #471, 1960, cover art by Ed Valigursky). Bound with John Brunner’s Sanctuary in the Sky.

• Rebels of the Red Planet, by Charles L. Fontenay (Series F, #113, 1961, cover art by Ed Emshwiller). Bound with J. T. McIntosh’s 200 Years to Christmas. Reviewed by Richard Horton.

• The Nemesis from Terra, by Leigh Brackett (Series F, #123, 1961, cover art by Ed Emshwiller). Bound with Robert Silverberg’s The Collision Course. Reviewed by Richard Horton.

• People of the Talisman, by Leigh Brackett (Series M, #101, 1964, cover art by Ed Emshwiller). Bound with Brackett’s The Secret of Sinharat. Reviewed by Richard Horton.

• The Secret of Sinhart, by Leigh Brackett (Series M, #101, 1964, cover art by Ed Emshwiller). Bound with Brackett’s People of the Talisman. Reviewed by Richard Horton.

• The Alternate Martians, by A. Bertram Chandler (Series M, #129, 1965, cover art by Jerome Podwil). Bound with Chandler’s Empress of Outer Space. Reviewed by Richard Horton.

• The Caves of Mars, by Emil Petaja (Series M, #133, 1965, cover art by Alex Schomburg). Bound with A. Bertram Chandler’s Space Mercenaries.

• C.O.D. Mars, by E. C. Tubb (Series H, #40, 1968, cover art by Jack Gaughan). Bound with John Rackham’s Alien Sea.