# Is "Final Blackout" by L. Ron Hubbard a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Final Blackout by L. Ron Hubbard (The Hadley Publishing Co., Providence, Rhode Island, 1948) is identified by: First book edition, issued in a single run of 1,000 copies. Census claim confirmed.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First book edition, issued in a single run of 1,000 copies
- Bound in black cloth with the spine lettered in gilt; dust jacket and interior illustrations by Betty Wells Halladay
- The copyright page carries no printing statement and no later-printing notice — Hadley issued only this one printing, so there is no number line or edition statement to hunt for; identification rests on the Hadley imprint itself together with the correct binding, the Halladay jacket, and the presence of the new preface Hubbard wrote for the book (absent from the 1940 magazine serial)
- Cited at Currey p
- Dealer collations and ISFDB give roman-numeral preliminaries followed by 154 pages of text; one catalogue entry citing Reginald reports a materially different pagination, so treat pagination as a secondary check rather than a decisive point
- Priced jacket: the price should be present at the flap and unclipped
- Publisher imprint reads The Hadley Publishing Co., Providence, Rhode Island

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | L. Ron Hubbard |
| Publisher | The Hadley Publishing Co., Providence, Rhode Island |
| Year | 1948 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | First book edition, issued in a single run of 1,000 copies |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First book edition, issued in a single run of 1,000 copies. Bound in black cloth with the spine lettered in gilt; dust jacket and interior illustrations by Betty Wells Halladay. The copyright page carries no printing statement and no later-printing notice — Hadley issued only this one printing, so there is no number line or edition statement to hunt for; identification rests on the Hadley imprint itself together with the correct binding, the Halladay jacket, and the presence of the new preface Hubbard wrote for the book (absent from the 1940 magazine serial). Cited at Currey p. 256. Dealer collations and ISFDB give roman-numeral preliminaries followed by 154 pages of text; one catalogue entry citing Reginald reports a materially different pagination, so treat pagination as a secondary check rather than a decisive point. Priced jacket: the price should be present at the flap and unclipped.

## Is this the true first?
Census claim confirmed. The Hadley Publishing Co. edition (Providence, RI, 1948) is the true first book edition worldwide; no UK or other English-language edition precedes it, and there is no foreign-language original. Only the US edition is collected — there is no competing UK first to name. The text's true first appearance is the three-part serial in Astounding Science-Fiction (1940), but that is a magazine appearance, not a book edition, and the Hadley adds new prefatory matter by Hubbard.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition of the Hadley is documented, and none is possible from these sheets: the printing was a single run of 1,000 copies. Any copy bearing an imprint other than The Hadley Publishing Co. — including later hardcover reprints and modern reissues under other imprints — is a later edition, not the first. Watch for 'first thus' catalogue language attached to those reprints.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Final Blackout* by L. Ron Hubbard a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/final-blackout
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.