ace books mmpb first printing, first edition
half a classic "ace double" format mmpb, two front covers, contents tête-beché to each other
cover art and b+w interior illustration by jack gaughan (credited; may be signed "jg")
cover price 60¢
½ 256pp. including 2 x titles, indicia etc, advertising pp. in-between the double's halves
novella doubled with the novel, "world of the sleeper" by tony russell wayman, q.v.
berkley publishing group berkley books imprint mmpb first printing, not first mmpb edition
cover art by r. courtney (signed, uncredited)
cover price $2.75
116pp. including titles, indicia etc, end pp. advertising
save for imprint, logo, isbn and end pp. advertising, identical with berkley publishing group ace books imprint mmpb that precedes it (this comment is from another edition of this book)
berkley publishing group ace books mmpb second or third solo ace books printing
misidentified in indicia publishing history as first mmpb printing
cover art by r. courtney (signed)
cover price $1.95
ace sf series
116pp. (check) including titles, indicia etc, end pp. advertising
indicia publishing history printing number line 2468097531 is wrong, incorrect, but what's printed
next - near-identical - printing i've seen is from the same publisher, but imprint is now berkley books (this comment is from another edition of this book)
grosset & dunlap charter communications ace books imprint mmpb, second(?) solo mmpb printing
previously published as half an ''ace double'' twice, paired with different sf novellas, so fourth(?) ace mmpb printing over-all
cover art by rucker (signed, uncredited; artist not so far further identified)
cover price $1.50
112pp. including titles, indicia etc, end pp. advertising
indicia publishing history does not give printing or publication date: this taken from end pp. advertising
according to the ace books five-digit catalogue numbering system, this printing was preceded by two,
one with cat# 47071; this is near-identical, but for cover price 95¢ and bears no publication or printing date,
and this should have been preceded by one cat# 47070; but i've not held, nor seen record of, one with this cat#.
the ace books five-digit cat# system started in january 1969, and as there is an ace double including ''the last castle'' (in 1972, reprinted in 1973), this may have been taken as ''counting as'' 47070 even though it bears cat# 16640 (when reprinted this duly rose to cat# 16641); the much earlier number in the five-digit system was assigned for the ''d'' of ''the dragon masters'' in the double; it's in the block of numbers covers titles beginning with the letters ''c'' & ''d'' (ignoring the opening ''the'').
under a later owner - grosset & dunlap bought charter communications, inc., a bit later and put in time, work, cash and effort and turned it round and eventually were bought by the berkley publishing group - in/from january 1994 the ace five-digit cat# allocating system collapsed, presumably because the new new manglement had only the haziest of ideas of how it'd been designed to work, and the faintest idea of the system's design. hitherto unassigned numbers were now allotted to new titles and new editions from the first number block (from 00000 - 09999) irrespective of these new titles' first significant letters.
(mistakes were made from time-to-time before this collapse, but really quite amazingly few for so obscure, non-transparent and ''unintuitive'' a system.) (this comment is from another edition of this book)
One of the 'better' Vance cover illustrations (IMO), depicting the castle, the siege, the Teks, and the birds; presumably the artist could not show the high cliffs ... unfortunately my copy is marred by a crease. (this comment is from another edition of this book)