Shatterday
Mercurial, belligerent, passionately in love with language and wild ideas. Harlan Ellison has, for exactly a quarter of a century, steadily gathered to himself and his thirty-seven books an undeniably fanatical readership. Winner of more awards for imaginative literature than any other living writer, he is the only scenarist ever to win the Writers Guild of America award three times for most outstanding teleplay. Though his contemporary fantasies have been compared favorably with the dark visions of Borges, Barthelme, Poe and Kafka, Ellison resists categorization with a vehemence that alienates critics and reviewers seeking easy pigeonholes for an extraordinary writer. The San Francisco Chronicle writes, "The categories are too small to describe Harlan Ellison. Lyric poet, satirist, explorer of odd psychological corners, moralist, purveyor of pure horror and black comedy; he is all these and more. In this, his thirty-seventh book, celebrating twenty-five years of setting down the mortal dreads we all share, Harlan Ellison has put together his best work to date: sixteen uncollected stories (half of which are award-winners), totaling a marvel-filled 105,000 words and including a brand-new novella, his longest work in over a dozen years.
Contents:
- Introduction: Mortal Dreads
- Jeffty Is Five
- How's the Night Life on Cissalda?
- Flop Sweat
- Would You Do It For a Penny? (with Haskill 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 and on a Friendless Voyage
- All the Birds Come Home to Roost
- Opium
- The Other Eye of Polyphemus
- The Executioner of the Malformed Children
- Shatterday
Harlan Ellison
Harlan Jay Ellison (1934-2018) was an American writer, known for his prolific and influential work in New Wave speculative fiction, and for his outspoken, combative personality.
His published works include more than 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media. Some of his best-known work includes the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", A Boy and His Dog, "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream", and " 'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman", and as editor and anthologist for Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). Ellison won numerous awards, including multiple Hugos, Nebulas, and Edgars.