The Hour of the Oxrun Dead

The census claim stands: Doubleday, Garden City, 1977 (October) is the true first. No UK or original-language edition precedes it. The important precedence trap is format, not country — Popular Library issued a mass-market paperback that is dated 1979 in the bibliographic record consulted (some marketplace listings misdate it to 1977, but no source places it ahead of the Doubleday hardcover), and Tor reprinted it in paperback in 1987. Both are reprints, not the first. A modern reissue also exists under ISBN 978-1-63789-003-5 and is "first thus" only.