Shatterday was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1980, and it contains some of Ellison’s most celebrated individual stories, written during a period of extraordinary productivity in the late 1970s.
“Jeffty Is Five” won the Hugo, Nebula, and British Fantasy awards — a rare triple — and is one of the most beloved stories in science fiction. Jeffty is a boy who was five years old in 1958 and is still five years old twenty years later. He hasn’t aged, and in his presence, the world hasn’t aged either: his radio plays new episodes of programs that were canceled decades ago, his comics contain new stories by artists who are long dead, and the Saturday matinee at his local cinema shows new serials that were never made. Jeffty is a window into a world that is better than the one we live in — more innocent, more imaginative, more generous — and the story’s devastating conclusion asks what happens when that window closes.
“Shatterday” is about a man who accidentally calls his own phone number and finds himself talking to a version of himself — a better version, more honest, more courageous, more alive. The two versions compete for the single life, and the less worthy one — the real one — must decide whether to surrender his existence to the better self. The story was adapted for the premiere episode of the revived Twilight Zone in 1985.
Collecting Shatterday
First edition (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1980): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $30–$80
- Signed copies: $60–$200
- Paperback editions: $8–$15