Product Description:
A revolutionary classic from one of science fiction's most highly regarded authors, this collection of 16 brilliant stories remains as scathing and influential today as it was when it was first published more than 20 years ago. These category-defying stories combine science fiction, horror, and fantasy with ironic humor, sardonic social criticism, and intense self-revelation. From "Jeffty Is Five," the tragedy of an innocent child wrenched out of an idyllic past, to humanity's encounter with dangerously seductive aliens in "How's the Night Life on Cissalda?" and "Shatterday," the dark allegory of an identity-stealing doppelgänger replacing his inferior twin, this incendiary collection re-establishes its legendary author's place at the cutting edge of the short story form.
Review:
...only a few short-story collections that have changed the course of literature in a profound way.... Shatterday is the heart of the heart of energy and insight that is Harlan Ellison.”
Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion and Ilium
The spellbinding quality of a great nonstop talker with a cultural warehouse for a mind.”
New York Times Book Review
One of the greatest speculative fiction writers this country has ever produced....”
Ron Moore, executive producer of Battlestar Galactica
Harlan Ellison’s short stories have already won high praise in his native America, and the sixteen recent specimens collected in Shatterday are impressively various and accomplished.... An authentic writer.”
The Guardian
Fiction with a sharp, fantastic edge.”
People
...one of the great living American short-story writers.”
George R. R. Martin
You have to read Shatterday, feel it, experience it.... It is an event.”
Science Fiction Review
Shatterday should be banned from all science-fiction shelves. Harlan Ellison no longer belongs there. Do Jonathan Swift, Edgar Allan Poe, Rimbaud, or Kafka? Occasionally, there’s a writer with the mind, passion, and audacity to create a one-man revolution in his field. Harlan Ellison is such a writer.”
Roger Corman
Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, stand aside: Harlan Ellison is a better short-story writer than you will ever be again in the rest of your lives.”
Ray Bradbury
Whatever the genre or blend of genres, Ellison delivers.”
Publishers Weekly
One of the great living American short-story writers.”
Washington Post Book World
The categories are too small to describe Harlan Ellison. Lyric poet, satirist, explorer of old psychological corners, moralist, purveyor of pure horror and black comedy; he is all these and more.”
San Francisco Chronicle
Speculative fiction without Harlan Ellison would be like the Fourth of July without fireworks.”
Ursula K. Le Guin
It’s long past time for Harlan Ellison to be awarded the title: 20th-century Lewis Carroll.”
Los Angeles Times
He is a brave and lively little beast, who makes a great show of himself to the hounds but remains far too wary to lead them to his real lair.”
Michael Moorcock, author of The Best of Michael Moorcock
Harlan Ellison’s prose has a remarkable vitality. Adrenaline seems to drive him to the typewriter where, for our entertainment, he produces cracking and powerful tales.”
Steve Allen
Harlan Ellison has a supersonic mind, and Shatterday is its flagship, a streak of literary light across a mythological sky.”
William Kotzwinkle
Because Harlan Ellison pretends that he is just a nice guy who has dropped in to read you his latest tale, you drop your defenses and wham you discover that he is a horror writer in disguise. Things do not go bump in Ellison’s tales. That would be too easy. Instead, his heroes crash into the night en route to final, fatal meetings.”
Saturday Review
One of the few masters of the short story.”
Locus
...confrontational and shocking...you’ll remember again why Harlan Ellison is considered one of America’s best short-story writers.”
Charles de Lint, Fantasy & Science Fiction
...timeless stuff, speaking to (mostly) the dark within each of us, but also at times uplifting, light, and funny.”
SF Scope
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