Necroscope

The census claim is confirmed: Grafton Books, London, 1986 (June/July 1986) is the true first, and the US Tor edition of 1988 is a mass-market paperback (Bob Eggleton cover) that follows it — collected as the first American edition, not the first. The "first thus" trap is explicit and common: the first appearance of Necroscope in hardback is a Tor issue of 1994, which dealers list verbatim as "First Edition in Hardback." That phrase describes a first hardcover state of an eight-year-old text, not a first edition, and a hardback Necroscope can never be the true first.