Identification points are listed only where two independent sources agree. Last reviewed 20 Oct 2026.
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Serialised in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from April to June 1976 and first published in book form by Random House, New York, in August 1976, so the true first is American. It won the Nebula Award for Best Novel. The first UK edition is the Gollancz hardback of 1976 (ISBN 0 575 02206 X), iv plus 215 pages, in dust jacket. A Readers Union / Science Fiction Book Club (UK) hardback followed in 1977; check for the Gollancz imprint rather than Readers Union. The 1987 Gollancz Classic SF paperback with a Peter Goodfellow cover is a later reissue.
An older Gollancz first edition is identified by what is missing: later impressions are recorded on the back of the title page, so a copy with no impression line under its first-publication date is the first.
Allen and Patricia Ahearn's publisher list for ILAB says Gollancz made no first edition statement but noted subsequent printings, in the form "First published (year)" followed by "Second impression (year)". Dealers' listings show the same pattern. Two separate sellers of the 1948 reprint of Dilwyn Rees's The Cambridge Murders quote "Second impression (first cheap edition) January 1948" on the verso, one adding that "First published October 1945" is also stated, while the 1945 printing is offered simply as the first edition.
Read the full guide to Gollancz first editions, decade by decade, and check your copy's copyright page against it. Our number line decoder reads the printing from the row of numbers.
We have not yet confirmed the issue points that tell this first impression from later ones. Until we do, compare your copy's title page and copyright page with the publisher, place and year above: any later printing or edition statement means it is not this one.
Know the points? Tell us. We publish them, with credit, once a second source agrees.
Gollancz, London, in 1976, in hardback.
Points of issue are listed only where at least two independent sources agree. Last reviewed 20 October 2026. Reviewed by Harriet Ellis; read how we check facts.
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