Note: I received an ARC through NetGalley, and the passages quoted may not be in their final forms.

With Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others and Exhalation being two of my favorite books, I couldn't wait to get my hands on another science fiction short story collection. Charlie Jane Anders is the first (out) trans author I've read in the SciFi genre, and I hope to read many more stories from trans voices. The wide range of topics and gender identities Anders explores in this book provide an excellent example of science fiction at its best.

From the intro to the last line, this collection kept me captivated and on my toes. As this was my first Anders' read, I appreciated the background information the intro provided as well as the individual introductions before each story. Her love of short fiction is intoxicating, and she conveys these thoughts in evocative detail.

"Short stories are dangerous: tiny sparks of pure narrative fire that burn hotter because they snuff out
sooner."

Let's delve into a few of these stories. Many of these stories touch close to home, with discussions of depression, gentrification, and the current socio-political climate we live in today. <i>The Time Travel Club</i>, one of the longer stories in this compilation, offers a science fiction narrative that feels true-to-life, with flawed characters and convincing discourse.

"People can justify almost anything, if their perspective is limited enough."

Six Months, Three Days reminded me of Ted Chaing's Story of your Life.Those who love to debate fate vs. free-will will enjoy this read that explores both sides of the debate. Both stories examine the concept Anders provides in the story intro from an optimistic and pessimistic lens.

"We all go through life knowing that horrible loss and devastation awaits us in the future, no matter what we do."

Finally, we have The Bookstore at the End of America, where Anders imagines America's current socio-political divide in physical form. California and the United States have become two separate entities, with a bookstore straddling the border. I loved this story and especially loved this meta quote about authorship.

"An author is just someone who tried their utmost to make sense of their own mess, and maybe their failure contains a few seeds to help you with yours."

Overall, I fell in love with many of these stories and their concepts, and I believe everyone can find a piece in this collection that speaks to them. This collection solidified my adoration of short science fiction, and I hope it becomes a staple in the SciFi community!

Is there anything Charlie Jane Anders CAN'T write? I've enjoyed her novels, her writing manual, and now, her short stories. She's one of the most creative, versatile s/f authors out there, and her talent is brilliantly showcased in this new collection. Sure, not every last one of the short stories in "Even Greater Mistakes" was amazing, but most of them were! In these pieces, Anders unpacks the gender binary, discusses the trans experience in an authentic way, and writes about queer sexuality unapologetically. All of these themes are present in a sci-fi setting.
Each individual plot was distinct and meaningful in its own way, and I didn't feel like the narratives blurred together at all. This is quite an impressive feat, seeing as many of the short story collections I've read tend to get a bit repetitive.

I will be recommending this to all the sci-fi-loving queer nerds I know :)

I like Anders writing. This is based originally upon reading a short story in a dystopian anthology about the future of the US about a peculiarly split bookstore (the penultimate entry in this collection) and then Anders’ novel The City in the Middle of the Night. So I was excited to try out her short fiction, a format she claims to be her favorite.
She indeed does a good, occasionally great, short story. They are on the longer side of short and are always well rounded, meaning they read more like a mini novel than a slice of life scenes from a movie sort of things. They are lively, fun and wildly imaginative. They are pretty much exactly what you might want out of speculative fiction, but…here comes the but…they are also imbued heavily with messages (political, social, economic, you name it, it’s there) and messages can overwhelm the story and here at times do.
Mind you, sometimes a message is what takes the story from good to great, but the thing is that purely depends of how relevant the readers finds the message and so when it comes to Anders’ writing, user mileage may vary. Drastically.
With that said, for this reader some of the stories didn’t work and not because of the disagreement with the message, more because of how much message there were.
The collection begins perfectly with what might have been my favorite story about surviving apocalypse with only a genie for company. It’s clever, cute and fun and demonstrates all of Anders’ effervescent charms as a writer perfectly. The next story is good too. And then it begins to meander. It stands to mention that Anders is a transperson and as such the subjects of gender, sexuality, etc. are obviously very important to her and these things are heavily featured in her writing. Her favorite story is one of three in this collection from a postapocalyptic queer wilderness of San Francisco. Those stories did nothing for me. I mean, everyone’s pansexual, queer and hip…yey, great, and then what. The pronoun juggle alone was exhausting. It’s almost as if the author took this opportunity to try out every pronoun there is and imagine some more. That’s the recurring theme in the book and with a lot of characters, their love lives are a rainbow colored mess, often in a way that steals focus from the narrative itself. It’s understandable for an author who considers themselves one of a marginalized minority to want to imagine words where it’s the norm, but it’s just so…overpowering.
And I know, I know, I’m most definitely going to get accused of homophobic anger or transphobia or something, because these days political correctness has all but steamrolled any attempt at critical thinking and who would dare not to wave the flag right next to the person waving it. And I can assure you that isn’t the case. I’m hugely supportive of the queer community and I’m thrilled for Anders to have her literary platform. It just doesn’t quite work for me in fiction in these quantities.
And having dared to say that…it stands to also mention that the general tone of the stories started to get tiresome after a while, the effervescence can only take you so far, the hip bubbly quality of youth and young hip characters who seem to be composed almost entirely of quirks…tiresome. This is far from YA, but there’s a certain underlying dearth of maturity in Anders’ characters.
When she’s on, she’s on. Power Couple is such a clever story about the insanity of the unrealistic expectations our society paces on young people to have their entire life worked out by college. Or 6 months, 3 days, a story of a relationship between a man who can see the future and a woman who can see many possible futures. Very clever, indeed. Although the latter story does have that heavy quirk thing going for it.
Overall, it’s very much a mixed bag. A wildly left of the center, quirky, rainbow coalition of queer punks of all stripes surviving the strikingly imagined speculative scenarios of Anders’ terrific hopped up imagination. There’s plenty of organic storytelling talent on display here. Context wise it’ll work differently for different readers. But celebrating diversity is kind of a theme here anyway. Thanks Netgalley.

I first discovered Charlie Jane Anders' short fiction online some years ago with the award-winning short Six Months, Three Days and was immediately completely hooked. Her blend of speculative fiction/sci-fi ideas and gut-punchingly human drama struck an immediate chord and as a bookseller I've recommended and handsold her books many a time.
With this collection, I quickly found that I'd already read the vast majority of the content but the short stories I hadn't yet read hit the exact same sweet spot that I'd come to expect from this author. In her introduction Anders explains the appeal of short fiction to her as an author: that it allows her to explore ideas briefly and brightly and fully and then let the idea burn out and one can see that attitude throughout so many of the stories here: intensely fascinating and weird speculative fiction ideas but wrapped around an intensely relatable human core.
This collection is weird, queer, proud and I absolutely love it.
A couple of the short stories tie in to some of Anders' novels and so are less appealing to those who haven't read those and some of her novellas and stories veer into very dark areas that some readers may find off-putting.

I reviewed this book on behalf of the magazine Booklist. My review will appear there, in the magazine.

Nice collection of sci-fi and fantasy stories. I really enjoyed Rock Manning Goes for Broke and Captain Roger in Heaven. Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book.

Even Greater Mistakes is a collection of nineteen short stories by Charlie Jane Anders; mostly sci-fi and fantasy, mostly set in space or a near-future/post-apocalyptic Earth. As the author notes in an intro, this collection spans her entire career, and as she was encouraged to “showcase the full range of (her) writing”, this is a real mixed bag: as a consequence, there were a few misses for me, but many more hits. Anders can swerve from angrily political to gonzo comedy, and consistently, display a lot of heart and relatable human characters (even if those humans are engineered or cat-shaped or zombie vampires). Throughout, people are having uninhibited sex, making meaningful art, and trying to find where they belong in the world (the answer usually being: San Francisco). This was quite a long and varied read and I’d expect there would be something for most everyone in it.