Ice Station Zebra

UK precedes US and is the true first: Collins, London, 1963. The US first is Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY, 1963, and is collected in its own right as the American first. MacLean was British and Collins was his home publisher throughout — the pattern is established from his debut, HMS Ulysses (Collins 1955, Doubleday 1956) — and the trade uniformly treats the Collins issue as the true first. "First thus" traps: the Fontana paperbacks (1964 onward) and the 1968 film tie-in issues are later and are not firsts of anything.