Shatterday (1980)

by Harlan Ellison

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Fiction. Short Stories. HTML: "One of the great . . . American short-story writers" exposes the darkness of the human heart in these speculative tales of terror and tragedy (George R. R. Martin). A five-year-old boy never ages, living as an immortal in a past that no longer exists while the world encroaches upon his innocence, in the Hugo and Nebula Award�winning "Jeffty Is Five." An alien attack leaves Earth on the brink of Armageddon, as humans find themselves unable to resist the sexual allure of their invaders in "How's the Night Life on Cissalda?" In the Nebula Award�nominated "Shatterday" (subsequently adapted into the pilot episode of the second Twilight Zone series), a man fights for his life against a relentless enemy who knows his darkest secrets�his own doppelganger. In these and other thought-provoking stories, legendary author Harlan Ellison dissects the primal fears and inherent frailties common to all people and gives voice to the thoughts and feelings human beings bury deep within their souls. Unflinching and unapologetic, Ellison depicts men and women in all their ugliness and beauty, and humanity in all its fury and glory. Stories include "Introduction: Mortal Dreads," "Jeffty Is Five," "How's the Night Life on Cissalda?," "Flop Sweat," "Would You Do it For a Penny?" (written in collaboration with Haskell Barkin), "The Man Who Was Heavily Into Revenge," "Shoppe Keeper," "All the Lies That Are My Life," "Django," "Count the Clock That Tells the Time," "In the Fourth Year of the War," "Alive and Well on a Friendless Voyage," "All the Birds Come Home to Roost," "Opium," "The Other Eye of Polyphemus," "The Executioner of the Malformed Children," and "Shatterday." .… (more)

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Short stories that can give you nightmares but so well written that you read them again and again. (

)

Karen74Leigh | Sep 4, 2019 |

(Original Review, 1980-12-10)

Houghton Mifflin finally delivered a receptacle for the Shatterday limited edition book plate Ellison: the book itself. I definitely approached the book with a pro-Ellison prejudice, but even normalizing for that leaves me in awe of this guy. Half way through, every story so far has captivated me--even the funny ones have their punch. The book is 332 pp., 16 stories including "Jefty is Five", "Count the Clock That Tells the Time", "All the Lies That Are My Life", and the story everyone will remember Harlan read during his lecture a few years back, "The Man Who Was Heavily Into Revenge". (Note: Harlan said he wrote that one "just for us Techies", but I've been told the very same story was read at an earlier lecture at some other US Univ. earlier...) The quality of the physical volume is startling, compared to the cardboard-like nature of "Dragon's Egg" (binding only, Bob! The book was great!) and "Beyond the Blue Even Horizon", the other hardcovers I've recently purchased. Shatterday's binding is close to Gregg Press durability, paper heavy, and there are nice frills like tinted intro-pages to each story. There is an interesting continuity to the intro's this time, revolving around the phrase "Writers take tours in other people's lives".

PS1. Cripes. Doesn't the Lennon ordeal sound like something out of "The Beast That Shouted Love At The Heart of the World"?

[2018 EDIT: This review was written at the time as I was running my own personal BBS server. Much of the language of this and other reviews written in 1980 reflect a very particular kind of language: what I call now in retrospect a “BBS language”.] (

)

antao | Nov 4, 2018 |

Shatterday

I felt this was a very balanced collection and enjoyed Harlan's introductory anecdotes. He is one of my favorite writers. (

)

Feralreader | Nov 25, 2017 |

Harlan Ellison will be EIGHTY years old in May (2014). How the hell did that happen? I realized that this was one of those books I'd read from the library, and that I did NOT own, and I've just rectified it. It has "Jeffty is Five" (first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, an issue I no longer own, to my terrible regret).

This is one of his better collections, filled with some of the best. (

)

Lyndatrue | Jan 7, 2014 |

Brilliantly disturbing, deeply satirical, blackly humorous short stories by sci-fi and speculative fiction writer Harlan Ellison. (

)

leavesandpages | Feb 13, 2013 |

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Author name	Role	Type of author	Work?	Status
Harlan Ellison	—	primary author	all editions	calculated
Dillon, Diane	Cover artist	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Dillon, Leo	Cover artist	secondary author	some editions	confirmed

▾Series and work relationships

Belongs to Publisher Series

Gateway Essentials

Science Fiction Book Club (1966)

Is contained in

Dreams With Sharp Teeth: a Three Volume Omnibus - 42 remarkable fantasies with a new introduction by Harlan Ellison

Contains

▾Awards and Honors

Awards

World Fantasy Award (Nominee – Collection / Anthology – 1981)

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Canonical title

Shatterday

Original title

Alternative titles

Original publication date

1980

People/Characters

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Important events

Epigraph

Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil; but its duty, like that of other passions, is not to overbear reason, but to assist it. It should not be suffered to tyrannize in the imagination, to raise phantoms of horror, or to beset life with supernumerary distresses. DR. JOHNSON

Dedication

Jim Blish once dedicated a book to me.

He did other things for me: He introduced me to the music of Charles Ives, to the taste of Vander Flip, to the urgency of avoiding the said-bookism, to the concept of the watershed, to the pleasures of Indo-Ceylonese food. He taught me to the value of uncompromising literary criticism and the absolute necessity for perfect grammar, and I try, Jim, God knows I try. But the most indispensable lessons he taught were how badly I could write when I wasn't paying attention, and how I could be king of the world when I did the work with love and courage. Jim is gone now, but for that, and for much more, this progress report, this book, with respect and friendship, for JAMES BLISH

First words

Quotations

Last words

Disambiguation notice

Publisher's editors

Blurbers

King, Stephen

Nye, Robert

Bradbury, Ray

Original language

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▾References

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (2)

Jeffty Is Five

Shatterday (book)

▾Book descriptions

Fiction. Short Stories. HTML:

"One of the great . . . American short-story writers" exposes the darkness of the human heart in these speculative tales of terror and tragedy (George R. R. Martin).
A five-year-old boy never ages, living as an immortal in a past that no longer exists while the world encroaches upon his innocence, in the Hugo and Nebula Award�winning "Jeffty Is Five."

An alien attack leaves Earth on the brink of Armageddon, as humans find themselves unable to resist the sexual allure of their invaders in "How's the Night Life on Cissalda?"

In the Nebula Award�nominated "Shatterday" (subsequently adapted into the pilot episode of the second Twilight Zone series), a man fights for his life against a relentless enemy who knows his darkest secrets�his own doppelganger.

In these and other thought-provoking stories, legendary author Harlan Ellison dissects the primal fears and inherent frailties common to all people and gives voice to the thoughts and feelings human beings bury deep within their souls. Unflinching and unapologetic, Ellison depicts men and women in all their ugliness and beauty, and humanity in all its fury and glory.

Stories include "Introduction: Mortal Dreads," "Jeffty Is Five," "How's the Night Life on Cissalda?," "Flop Sweat," "Would You Do it For a Penny?" (written in collaboration with Haskell Barkin), "The Man Who Was Heavily Into Revenge," "Shoppe Keeper," "All the Lies That Are My Life," "Django," "Count the Clock That Tells the Time," "In the Fourth Year of the War," "Alive and Well on a Friendless Voyage," "All the Birds Come Home to Roost," "Opium," "The Other Eye of Polyphemus," "The Executioner of the Malformed Children," and "Shatterday."

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