2 A. E. van Vogt first editions are documented on this shelf, from Slan (1946) to The World of Null-A (1948) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that A. E. van Vogt title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.

Identification only, per the house rule: no prices and no appraisals here. Checking a A. E. van Vogt copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.

Slan — 1946 · Arkham HouseArkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin, 1946, in a single printing of 4,051 copies — the figure given both in August Derleth's own Arkham House: The First 20 Years, 1939-1959 and in L.W. Currey's cataloguing. No statement of edition or printing appears in the book (Currey: "No statement of printing appears in this book"), so identification rests on the Arkham House imprint and 1946 date, 216 pp., black cloth with…. Arkham House 1946 is the true first book edition and van Vogt's first book, from the Astounding Science-Fiction serial (Sept-Dec 1940) — census confirmed on publisher and year. The census note's claim that this is "one of only two SF novels Arkham House ever issued" is NOT supported: Derleth's own Arkham bibliography calls Slan "the first Arkham House science-fiction novel," and The Torch by Jack Bechdolt (1948),…. No book-club issue and no second printing of the Arkham House edition are documented in the sources consulted; the Arkham text had one printing only. The reprint tells that matter are downstream: the 1951 Simon & Schuster revised text and the later paperback lines, all of which carry their own publishers' imprints on the title page rather than Arkham's.
The World of Null-A — 1948 · Simon & SchusterFirst book edition: Simon & Schuster, New York, 1948, issued under the title "The World of Ā" — the title page carries the Ā symbol, not the spelled-out "Null-A", which is itself a first-issue tell (the "Null-A" spelling belongs to the later Ace paperbacks). Simon & Schuster used no first-edition statement in this period: per Quill & Brush, "Until 1952, no statement on first editions, but subsequent printings…. The Simon & Schuster 1948 US edition is the true first book edition worldwide and the census claim is correct. It was preceded only by the magazine serial in Astounding Science Fiction (August–October 1945), which the book text revises. There is no competing early UK edition: the first British hardcover is Dennis Dobson, London, 1969 — more than two decades later — so US precedence is not in dispute. First-thus…. Grosset & Dunlap issued a 1950 hardcover reprint, also titled "The World of Ā" and carrying a Groff Conklin introduction; the G&D imprint on the spine and title page is the reprint tell, and copies are commonly mistaken for the S&S first because the S&S first has no edition statement to contrast against. Later Ace paperbacks retitled the book "The World of Null-A". No separate book-club issue is documented in the….

More Literary Fiction (US) & Award Winners shelves: Adam Johnson, Adrienne Rich, Aimee Bender, Alan Garner, Alan Sillitoe, Alastair Reynolds.

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