In October of 1988, Tor Books released the first Tor Double, a volume that reprinted Arthur C. Clarke’s 1971 novella Meeting with Medusa with Kim Stanley Robinson’s novella Green Mars. Over the next thirty-five months, they would publish a total of thirty-six books in the series.

In general, there was little to link the two short stories that were published in each volume, although in 1990, Tor experimented with the publication of four Tor Doubles that included a classic story, by authors including C.L. Moore, L. Sprague de Camp, Leigh Brackett, and Roger Zelazny, with original stories that were set in the same world. The following year would see addition original stories published in the series.

Similarly, most of the volumes contained stories by two different authors, however four of the books published in 1991 were single author collections, with two stories each by Gordon R. Dickson, Mike Resnick, Damon Knight, and Fritz Leiber.

Modeled after the Ace Doubles series, the books were initially published in a dos-a-dos format, with each story getting its own cover and bound upside down in relation to the other book, so neither story was first (although the presence of an ISBN code on one side had a tendency to make it feel like the “back” of the book). The four volumes that included sequels were published with a single cover and beginning with volume 27, which included Orson Scott Card’s Eye for Eye and Lloyd Biggle, Jr.’s The Tunesmith, all the volumes were published in the more traditional format.

The Clarke/Robinson volume was not, actually the first Tor Double, although it states “Tor Double #1” on the cover for the Clarke story. In 1981, Tor published Keith Laumer’s novel The House in November with a “special bonus: complete short novel” The Other Sky as part of their “Jim Baen Presents” series When the book was reprinted in 1985, the two stories were printed in the dos-a-dos format with the words “Tor Double” appearing on both sides.

Although the final volume in the series, a collection of Fritz Leiber’s novels Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness was published in August of 1991, there was at least one more volume scheduled to see print, although it was never published. Instead, Esther M. Friesner’s Yesterday, We Saw Mermaids was published as a stand-alone novel by Tor in 1992 and Lawrence Watt-Evans’ The Final Folly of Captain Dancy was first published by Tor at the back of their printing of his novel The Rebirth of Wonder (along with an excerpt for Watt-Evans and Friesner’s collaboration Split Heirs) and was later included in his collection Crosstime Traffic.

The series includes works by 51 authors (including two collaborations). Sixteen authors are represented by multiple stories, with eight appearing twice (half of those in single author volumes), six appearing three times, Fritz Leiber having four stories in the series (once in a single author volume), and Robert Silverberg having five stories.

Although there were only a handful of original stories published in the Tor Doubles series, many of the works selected to be reprinted were award nominees and winners. The series included 33 Hugo nominated works and 17 winners and 27 Nebula nominated stories and 16 winners. Robinson’s A Short Sharp Shock was nominated for a Hugo Award for the year it appeared in the series, although it had previously been published by Mark V. Zeising and Asimov’s.

Over the next thirty-nine weeks, I intend to look at the books published (or not published, as the case may be) as part of this series.

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.