Red Planet: A Colonial Boy on Mars

US original; Scribner's New York 1949 is the true first — the census claim is confirmed. The first British edition is Gollancz (London) 1963, 211 pages, red cloth lettered in gilt on the spine, jacket art by Alan Breese; this is confirmed as the first UK edition by James Cummins Bookseller and Fantastic Literature, and is a later, secondary edition. Both are collected; the Scribner carries precedence. FIRST-THUS TRAP: Scribner's editor Alice Dalgleish required substantial cuts before publication — chiefly to gun ownership and licensing, slang and mild expletives, references to clothing and bodily functions, the protagonist's characterization, and passages critical of authority. Del Rey published the restored, uncut text in January 1990. That 1990 Del Rey is the first appearance of Heinlein's original text but is emphatically not the first edition of the book; catalogues that call it a "first" are describing a first thus.