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 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.