# Is "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" by James Tiptree Jr. (Alice B. Sheldon) a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree Jr. (Alice B. Sheldon) (Arkham House Publishers, Inc., Sauk City, Wisconsin, 1990) is identified by: The first printing states "First edition" on the copyright page; Arkham House printed a single impression of 4,108 copies (Joshi, Eighty Years of Arkham House, #175), so there is no number line and no later trade printing to confuse it with. US original, published only by Arkham House in 1990; no UK or prior foreign-language edition precedes it, so the Sauk City printing is the unambiguous true first.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- The first printing states "First edition" on the copyright page
- Arkham House printed a single impression of 4,108 copies (Joshi, Eighty Years of Arkham House, #175), so there is no number line and no later trade printing to confuse it with
- Octavo, cloth, approximately xv + 520 pages, with an introduction by John Clute, interior illustrations by Andrew Smith, and jacket art after Gustav Klimt
- Issued in a priced jacket; the price is present at the flap on unclipped copies
- Note that dealer descriptions disagree on the story count for this edition (seventeen vs. eighteen), so the contents count should not be relied on as an identification point — the stated edition line and the Arkham House imprint are the operative tells
- Publisher imprint reads Arkham House Publishers, Inc., Sauk City, Wisconsin
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | James Tiptree Jr. (Alice B. Sheldon) |
| Publisher | Arkham House Publishers, Inc., Sauk City, Wisconsin |
| Year | 1990 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | The first printing states "First edition" on the copyright page |
| Book-club edition exists? | Yes |

## Points of issue
The first printing states "First edition" on the copyright page; Arkham House printed a single impression of 4,108 copies (Joshi, Eighty Years of Arkham House, #175), so there is no number line and no later trade printing to confuse it with. Octavo, cloth, approximately xv + 520 pages, with an introduction by John Clute, interior illustrations by Andrew Smith, and jacket art after Gustav Klimt. Issued in a priced jacket; the price is present at the flap on unclipped copies. Note that dealer descriptions disagree on the story count for this edition (seventeen vs. eighteen), so the contents count should not be relied on as an identification point — the stated edition line and the Arkham House imprint are the operative tells.

## Is this the true first?
US original, published only by Arkham House in 1990; no UK or prior foreign-language edition precedes it, so the Sauk City printing is the unambiguous true first. The census claim is correct. The 2004 Tachyon Publications paperback is a "first thus" trap rather than a first edition: per the publisher, its text was corrected/revised from Tiptree's own notes and its contents differ from the Arkham House volume, making it a distinct later text.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
Arkham House ran a single impression and issued no book-club printing of its own, so any book-club copy of this title is a later, separately published issue — a Science Fiction Book Club hardcover exists in the SFBC 50th Anniversary Collection series (ISBN 9780739455128) and is not the Arkham House first. Standard club tells apply to it: absence of the Arkham House imprint and copyright-page edition statement, and no price at the jacket flap.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Her Smoke Rose Up Forever* by James Tiptree Jr. (Alice B. Sheldon) a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/her-smoke-rose-up-forever
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.