A Handful of Darkness

UK original; Rich & Cowan (London) 1955 is the true first of this collection — there is no competing period US edition, and America did not see one until Gregg Press in 1978. The census is right that the Ace collection The Variable Man (1957) is a different book with different contents. REFUTES the census claim that this is "PKD's first book anywhere": Solar Lottery (Ace Books D-103, a paperback original, May 1955) preceded it by roughly three months and is Dick's first book. A Handful of Darkness is correctly described as Dick's SECOND book, his first short-story collection, and his first hardcover — the formulation used by the standard PKD bibliographic sources. Note a related snare: the Rich & Cowan hardcover of the novel — World of Chance, the retitled and revised UK Solar Lottery — is 1956, so it postdates this collection despite Solar Lottery preceding it in the US; some sources garble this into a claim that Rich & Cowan published Dick before A Handful of Darkness, which they did not.