| Title | : | Even Greater Mistakes: Stories |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1250766508 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781250766502 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 352 |
| Publication | : | First published November 16, 2021 |
| Awards | : | Locus Award Best Collection (2022) |
The woman who can see all possible futures is dating the man who can see the one and only foreordained future.
A wildly popular slapstick filmmaker is drawn, against his better judgment, into working with a fascist militia, against a background of social collapse.
Two friends must embark on an Epic Quest To Capture The Weapon That Threatens The Galaxy, or else they’ll never achieve their dream of opening a restaurant.
The stories in this collection, by their very outrageousness, achieve a heightened realism unlike any other. Anders once again proves she is one of the strongest voices in modern science fiction, the writer called by Andrew Sean Greer, “this generation’s Le Guin.”
Even Greater Mistakes: Stories Reviews
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Short stories are dangerous: tiny sparks of pure narrative fire that burn hotter because they snuff out sooner. Small, self-contained adventures gave me the freedom to fail — to push my limits, to experiment with styles and ideas that I wasn’t sure I could pull off. And fail I did, over and over. I wrote scores of short pieces before I managed to turn out one that fired on all cylinders. The wonderful thing is, if you blow it with something short, you’ve only wasted a week or three of writing time. And if someone reads your story in a magazine and hates it, there’ll be another story, by another author, on the next page.
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. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
Anders helpfully introduces each story (explaining its inspiration or process; adding content warnings where appropriate), and as an example of something I found interesting, she noted that If You Take My Meaning is a sort of sequel to the novel
The City in the Middle of the Night; and although I hadn’t read that book, it wasn’t necessary to have found the short story moving and meaningful (I could feel that these characters had a complete back story, even if I didn’t know it.) On the other hand, I learned that the story Clover was written as a followup to the novel
All the Birds in the Sky (which I have read, and loved), but I didn’t get much out of that story; hit and miss. Move on. I loved the concept behind Six Months, Three Days: A woman who can see every possible future for herself (and who spends her life arranging things to her best advantage) is finally about to have her first date (which she has anticipated her entire life) with the only other clairvoyant on Earth — a man who can only see the actual future that will occur. They both know that they are about to experience the happiest days of their lives and that the affair will end terribly: what does this say about free will and the power of love? From the story:“I don’t think you’re any more or less powerful than me. Our powers are just different,” Doug says. “But I think you’re a selfish person. I think you’re used to the idea that you can cheat on everything, and it’s made your soul a little bit rotten. I think you’re going to hate me for the next few weeks until you figure out how to cast me out. I think I love you more than my own arms and legs and I would shorten my already short life by a decade to have you stick around one more year. I think you’re brave as hell for keeping your head up on our journey together into the mouth of hell. I think you’re the most beautiful human being I’ve ever met, and you have a good heart despite how much you’re going to tear me to shreds.”
When I was reading Love Might be Too Strong a Word (about a spaceship manned by a variety of specially-bred humanoids), I couldn’t decide how I felt about the main character’s use of confusing pronouns. Mab uses “be and ber” when referring to Dot the pilot (“I came up with the correct pronoun by instinct, even before my mind took in the fact that a pilot was touching my hand”), “yr and ym” when referencing their roommate Idra, and I couldn’t decide if that was really inventive or an unnecessary barrier to my own understanding. When I asked my daughter what she thought, she said that was the coolest thing she ever heard: Why should nonfamiliar characters, who don’t even have human genitals, need to be divided only into standard males/females? And especially in the realm of scifi — where geeks and nerds turn for belonging — why not be ultimately inclusive? When she put it like that, my own understanding was expanded, and I have to thank Anders for that. (As a trans author, Anders goes on to explore more ideas regarding gender and invents more pronouns in these stories, and if someone is looking for a truly horrifying story that goes a long way towards explaining why these ideas are important, Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue is about a stomach-churning “conversion therapy” for trans folks.) From Love Might be Too Strong a Word:“I can’t stand it among the other pilots anymore, or any of the upper dars. The spirers with all those fingers, with their base-twenty-seven cleverness. The breeders, tending those breedpods as if they’re going to amount to something. It all makes me feel so hopeless. But when I’m with you, it’s different. I feel alive. Like life is worth something after all.”
Anders introduces Rock Manning Goes for Broke as “a meditation on violence, slapstick comedy, and the relationship between the two. The part of us that lets us laugh at someone else’s pratfall might also be what allows us to tolerate horrific violence against people who aren’t part of our in-group.” (The exploration of societal ills through niche artforms comes up again with the use of standup comedy in Ghost Champagne and mural painting in My Breath is a Rudder) A group of outlandish antifascist filmmakers find themselves even more popular after some kind of pressure bomb destroys everyone’s hearing:Sneaking up on people was suddenly way easier — but so was getting snuck up on. The fear of somebody creeping up behind me and cutting my throat was the only thing that kept me from being bored all the time. I always thought noise was boring, but silence bored me even worse. If you walked up behind someone, especially a member of the red bandana militia who were keeping order on our streets, you had to be very careful how you caught their attention. You did not want a red bandana to think you were sneaking up on them.
And I was really intrigued by the concept of Captain Roger in Heaven: As Anders writes, “Marith didn’t mean to start a sex cult, she just wanted to feel sexy for once.” But Marith does start a sex cult (attributing all of the esoteric teachings to some absent guru) in order to combat loneliness, and once her group gets large enough to attract Christian protestors, they are required by law to own a “Visualizer”; a device that will show where any given person is spending their afterlife. When a member of the cult dies and ends up in a fiery hell, the rest of the group scrambles to invent an afterlife worth living for:The longer he stared, the more it seemed to Leon that the Christians were generating their afterlife, focusing psychic energy so that they made a stable conduit and created something on the other side of it. They were almost writing lines of code in the fabric of reality.
Again, there’s a lot of variety in this collection — not everything worked for me — but it’s overall smart and heartfelt and relatable. I need to remember to read more of Anders’ novels.
-
I was actually rather impressed with a number of these short stories. The sheer creativity is highlighted and when the shorts work, they have some pretty brilliant world-view skewing and worldbuilding that is definitely off-center and enjoyable.
I enjoyed most of these. There were, however, a few that were still good for the worldbuilding, but there were a LOT of stories that just seemed to glorify truly hot messes of relationships. Now, mind you, I don't care one way or another what KIND of relationships are described (use a large alphabet soup that goes on for a long time after the standard LGBTQ) but my enjoyment is kind of limited when the number of BAD relationships, slippery relationships, screwed-sideways relationships, and anchorless, random relationships take over the tale.
I'm all... huh, that sounds like some kind of hell and he/she/them is just fine with the insanity. I can't even tell what's going on. But good for them... this insanity isn't for me. I had the same issue with Ander's second novel. I loved the first one. And this happens many times in these stories.
So my takeaway is: It's one thing to represent. but it's another thing to dump pots of hot spaghetti on my head. HOWEVER, for any of you folks who want the wild, take anything you can get from any kind of person who'll give it up, THIS WILL probably be your speed and you'll love it.
Me, I just want good SF.
As Good As New - Easily my favorite of the bunch with a great dystopian Genie twist.
Rat-Catcher’s Yellows - Pretty interesting game setup.
If You Take My Meaning - Carry on with Ander's second novel.
The Time Travel Club - A good drill-down into space travel by way of a funny club.
Six Months, Three Days - Re-read, a classic Cassandra-type story about different kinds of future knowledge and how it messes with relationships.
Love Might Be Too Strong a Word - One of my favorites. Post-human, equivalent alien love story. :)
Vampire Zombie vs Fairy Werewolf - Good mostly for the schlock value. But it IS valuable to fandom. :)
Ghost Champagne - Very eerie and lovely and emotional.
My Breath Is a Rudder - Queer life in SF.
Power Couple - Didn't really do anything for me.
Rock Manning Goes For Broke - Pretty interesting stab at UF.
Because Change Was the Ocean and We Lived By Her Mercy - Great drowned SF story but the good worldbuilding parts were also drowned in way too much drama.
Captain Roger in Heaven - Not my favorite, but props to sexual violence and mental health issues.
Clover - Carry over to All the Birds in the Sky.
This Is Why We Can’t Have Nasty Things - Not SF so much as a regular LGBTQ extravaganza.
A Temporary Embarrassment in Spacetime - Fairly amusing space opera with a humorous vein.
Don’t Press Charges, and I Won’t Sue - Ander's response to 45's rise.
The Bookstore at the End of America - Also a political piece but it's still fun to have books involved. :)
The Visitmothers - A transitioning SF. -
Real Rating: 4.5* of five, rounded up because it's that good a collection
WINNER OF THE 2022 LOCUS AWARD—BEST COLLECTION! Watch the entire ceremony
here.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: This is a collection to dip into not slurp down greedily. I mean, where else do you find, "A whole book of short stories can be overwhelming, like imaginative speed dating." This isn't even in a story! It's in the opening act, the Introduction! She's not keepin' her powder dry, unlikely for a seasoned campaigner who's founded geeky websites; or she's just got that immense an arsenal and knows she doesn't need to pace herself.
The best thing I can say of this epitome of Author Charlie Jane Anders's career is that you are unlikely to become bored. A story about time travel that includes, as I've never seen any other place, the fact that the Earth is moving in space; the Sun is moving in space; and not one bit of that enables a careless time-traveler to land where they began. Another story about time travel, but for an extremely specific time, and how that affects a love affair. Love, in every guise you can imagine, underpins every story. Love unspoken, love requited, love rejected...love all over the shop. Seriously. Get some towels.
You'll note that you're denied the story-by-story breakdown...you must
venture blogwards to bring you the flavor of the tales. -
The good ones were incredibly good, the mid ones were incredibly mid
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Charlie Jane Anders is my favorite gonzo techno-geek romantic queer trans science fiction writer.
In a field where there's a lot of new representation of diverse voices, Charlie Jane stands out as someone who writes silly spoofs, heart-wrenching romances, characters whose dialogue sounds like real people speak, difficult scenes of sexual and other types of violence...and more.
She epitomizes the contention that science fiction and fantasy allows us to take a closer look at the reality of human affairs. As Ursula Le Guin put it, she is a “realist of a larger reality”.
Some of these stories are really difficult to read, dealing with the aforementioned topics of sex, violence, and oppression; to her credit, she provides trigger warnings in the introductions. Some, however, are just a hoot, like “Love Might Be Too Strong a Word”, where a spaceship holds six different kinds of alien life, and each alien has various protuberances and orifices that correspond to all the other aliens' anatomy. She must have had fun creating names for all the different types of what we would call genitalia.
I also commend her and her editor to decide to include stories showing different aspects of her growth rather than just an 'award-winning stories' collection. The variety in quality shows her progression as a writer, while also showcasing all the different types of themes and plot devices she has tried out.
She is categorized as a science fiction writer, but a lot of these stories show that she is a romantic at heart. Really, some of these could be classified as romances even though they involve aliens with unusual parts or a single-celled organism in the shape of a person.
Charlie Jane has had recent success with novels, but short stories allowed her to look into themes that might not warrant a full book, and play with story structures just to see what she could do. It's an engaging look at an author who almost always wears her heart on her sleeve. -
An engaging and creative collection of sci-fi and fantasy stories. Written with a lot of heart, every story feels like a labour of love. Recommended.
-
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. The time travel story is fun too.
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 and genuine cleverness on display here. Context wise it’ll work differently for different readers. But celebrating diversity is kind of a theme here anyway. Thanks Netgalley.
This and more at
https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/ -
The thing that struck me about Ander’s short story collection, the thing that all the stories had in common, was how imaginative, cleverly crafted and fantastically bizarre they all were. While I didn’t always connect with each story, some were just not for me, I always admired Anders ability to create characters and world-building that felt fresh and new.
I also really enjoyed her commentary before each story, telling readers where the story first appeared and a little about her writing inspiration. In her intro Anders talked about how she had over 600 rejections and 93 stories published within the past 10 years. It was in the process of writing these stories that helped her master beginnings and endings, world building and character creation.
While I still enjoy Anders novels more than her short stories- I believe her strengths work better in novel form- I’m glad to have read these stories since there were a few standouts for me that I will remember for a long time.
Here is a brief description of each story and the individual ratings I gave:
1. 3.5 stars- As Good as New- A playwright who decides she can make more of a difference in the world as a doctor meets a genie during the apocalypse and must carefully decide her three wishes. Thoughtful-provoking.
2. 4.5 stars - Red Catcher’s Yellows-Is about a character with dementia who finds a degree control over her life through a cat role playing game and how her partner finds a connection with her through the game, even if it wasn’t what she imagined. Very poignant for me after having a father and father-in-law with dementia.
3. 3 stars - If You Take My Meaning- Takes place after Ander’s novel The City in the Middle of the Night. You won’t get the full effect without reading the novel first, but you can still understand what is going on. My favorite part? How memories are shared through tentacles.
4. 3.5 stars -Time Travel Club- A unique way to approach time travel-considering displacement of space due to the Earth’s moving orbit so you can’t land in exactly the same place. While I liked the dry humor, there was an abrupt ending and I wanted more development of main character.
5. 4.5 stars- Six Months, Three Days -One of my favorites of the collection. I love the dilemma of whether it would be better to know one fixed future or be able to see a variety of possible futures and how would you live life differently depending on which type of future you could see. This type of story and its themes are what make me love the sci fi genre!
6. 3 stars -Love Might be too Strong a Word- Interesting world-building and commentary on gender. Not my favorite plot or characterization.
7. 3 stars- Fairy Werewolf Vs. Vampire Zombie- Reads like fun, campy, urban fantasy fan fiction. Not really my thing, but it kept me entertained.
8. 3.5 stars- Ghost Champagne-A woman is haunted by a ghost of herself from the future. Loved the premise, buildup of the character, and the strong ending, but I wanted more of an exploration of the idea of making peace with the past.
9. 2 stars - My Breath is a Rudder-One of my least favorite in the collection. I liked where the story was going with the theme of repression and the proximity to danger-of how people secretly want to be in close proximity to dangerous behavior or ideas because they can’t explore those things themselves- but the execution wasn’t there for me. Not enough focus and too an abrupt ending.
10. 4 stars- Power Couple -A woman and man agree to go into cryogenic sleep until each finishes their schooling and starts their career. Well-though out commentary on the pressure high paying jobs and how people put their life on hold for a decade only to find out it’s not all they thought it would be.
11. 4 stars- Rock Manning Goes for Broke - I gave most of these 4 stars to Andres for crafting a highly creative slapstick story with a lot of heart underneath.
12. 2.5 stars- Because Change Was the Ocean and We Lived by Her Mercy - A near future story that felt underdeveloped and would have worked better as a longer piece of work.
13. 2 stars - Captain Roger in Heaven -A woman inadvertently starts her own sex cult. Not my type of story, but props for originality.
14. 3.5 stars - Clover-If you’ve read All The Birds in the Sky, you’ll enjoy learning what happened to Patricia’s cat, Berkeley. If you haven’t read it, it’s still a fun read.
15. 2 stars- This Is Why We Can’t Have Nasty Things- A seven page story about a group of friends displaced from their usual hangout. It’s about change and the meaning of home, but it was too short for me to make any connection with the characters or care about the plot.
16. 3.5 stars - A Temporary Embarrassment in Spacetime -Creative world building and a zany plot. It felt more like an episode of a larger work, though, than a complete story in itself.
17. 2.5 stars - Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue- Just ok for me.
18. 5 stars - The Bookstore at the End of America-Of course a story about bookstores is gonna be my favorite! But I also love the discussion of the way books can bridge divides and bring people together in ways other media cannot.
19. 3 stars -The Visitmothers-A modern day Cinderella-type story that felt like it needed to be fleshed out just a little bit more-but great concept!
*Thank you to Tor and NetGalley for the ARC copy in exchange for an honest review -
Charlie Jane Anders had overwhelmed me with her "Six Months, Three Days, Five Others". Consequently, her first complete collection of stories had become a "must buy".
I bought it. Read it.
Unfortunately, this one turned out to be not that glorious.
Why?
Because the sublime combination of pathos and humour, love and strangeness that used to distinguish her works, seemingly have got submerged by personal angst and fears.
As a result, despite having those stories here, duly accompanied by the awesome "Fairy Werewolf vs. Vampire Zombie", this book generated rather mixed feelings in me.
It’s got an award and all. But I would like to retain that small, beautiful and wondrous volume in place of this tome.
Your call. -
Thank you so much @torbooks for this free copy of Even Greater Mistakes!
I love Charlie Jane Anders. I don’t know how to explain what a ray of sunshine she is in the pandemic dampened reality we live in. There’s always kindness, support, a smile, a laugh and an uplifting dance and of course, excellent writing there for you whenever you need it.
I feel like this anthology of short stories, each introduced with context in how they were inspired and what time in her career they were written, is a most welcome and uplifting escape.
Each story is unique, quirky, imaginative..I can’t even choose a favorite!
It’s really difficult for me to put my feelings on this book into words other than to say: it’s important and it’s amazing just like it’s author.
Additionally, the LGBTQIA+ rep is inspiring. I love when stories have rep and it’s the norm in the world, and the focus of the story is the character development and the storyline. It’s just *chef’s kiss*.
Most of the stories are based in sci-fi or speculative fiction, but I think there’s a story for everyone and something relatable to enjoy. Even if that’s not your regular genres, it’s well worth a read! -
Charlie Jane Anders's short stories always span the spectrum of emotion and world-building. Some of her stories leave you gut-punched; others are uplifting. At the same time, others are deep science fiction. It is a nod to her as an author that she can evoke so many emotions from her readers in such a small word count.
"Short stories are dangerous: tiny sparks of pure narrative fire that burn hotter because they snuff out sooner. Small, self-contained adventures gave me the freedom to fail — to push my limits, to experiment with styles and ideas that I wasn't sure I could pull off. And fail I did, over and over. I wrote scores of short pieces before I managed to turn out one that fired on all cylinders. The wonderful thing is, if you blow it with something short, you've only wasted a week or three of writing time. And if someone reads your story in a magazine and hates it, there'll be another story, by another author, on the next page."
Short stories need to be concise to the point of being brutal. A short story is no time to go mucking around with your reader's attention. There aren't enough words. By the time a writer gets done fancifully describing a door know, the story needs to be done. This is why Anders does brilliantly as a short story writer and long-form if you have read her long-form novels. She gets to the point. I appreciate that as a short fiction reader.
Even Greater Mistakes, her newest anthology of work, is a beautiful collection of stories that run the gamut. And while I won't go into each one, I can call out some that are excellent:
As Good As New is one of the first short stories I read. It is such a unique story to me as a reader because apocalypses, while awful essentially, take the individual and their lives after the fact out of the equation. Yes, life is terrible, but people need to move on. There has to be some joy, or life isn't worth struggling for.
"It is astounding to me that Anders wrote so much about human emotions in only 28 pages. I have IKEA instructions longer than 28 pages. But it works, and it is damn good."
In this case, it is Marisol and her ability to find hope and joy, even amongst the muck and mire. It is uplifting and joyous.
"The first thing I thought of when I finished "Rat Catcher's Yellow" was the Hamlet quote, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." This seems like an odd quote for this story, but it is a vast world that is constantly changing. Even after a significant disease destroys people's minds, they interact and build kingdoms online with cats. It seems absurd, but it is steeped in the truth. There is more to this world than we know, and depending on the angle in which you approach a problem, anything is possible.
If you Take My Meaning was one of the more complex stories to read and understand. But through the context of Ander's story The City in the Middle of the Night, it makes a lot of sense. It is a continuation after the end of the novel. It gives us a hint as to the future of the characters.
Six Months, Three Days is when an unmovable object meets an unstoppable force: two characters, one who can see all possible futures and another who can see only their lot. Nothing deviates; nothing changes. What if they have a relationship? What would it look like? Yes, we know there will be lots of pain in this relationship. Yes, we know exactly how it is going to end. However, there are many beautiful moments, moments of love, and life that are worth celebrating even if you have already seen them in your mind's eye; you haven't experienced them. The juice is worth the squeeze!
There is a brilliant variety in this collection told by a master short story author. It is vibrant and queer and wonderful but holds to concise storytelling. These stories might not hit for everyone, but they hit pretty hard for me as a reader and reminded me why she is one of my favorite storytellers. -
9+ This is a great example of modern speculative fiction, that contains a raucous collection of stories from all kinds of genres (ghost stories, body horror, dystopia, space opera and fantasy) with great 'what if?'-scenario's that remain a purely human focus, centering around ideas of deteriorating relationships, queer identities, found family and repressive systems. They differ enough to remain entertaining to the end, every story offering something different and managing to be surprising within the pages of the story as well. They also have enough in common to recognize the author in her, even if she is multifaceted. There is the enthousiastic writing style, without a lot of pondering but with a lot of joy in the creating of prose. A youthful exuberance maybe - I don't know Anders' age, but she is one of the more recent authors to break through in SFF. Also the stories feel 'young' as they are truly 'of our time'. It feels like this is the direction a lot of speculative fiction will be going in in the future.
These stories are often about hipsters, with hipster sensibilities. They are woke and contain all kinds of pronouns and queer identities. I can imagine that some readers will describe this all as 'identity politics' and 'virtue signaling' - but I think these voices deserve to be heard, and the author herself has dealt with lots of these issues seeing how she is trans and living in a country where this is not something everybody embraces. She clearly loves her queer communities, describing the protection of a group of outcasts where one is free to find his/her/their-self but also free to leave if necessary.
Further more, the stories are anti-kapitalist and pro-environment, often dealing with the fall out of the election of Trump or the deterioration of our climate. They are postmodern, quoting other media and embracing cliché without the fear of being unoriginal (there's time travel here, a ghost offering three wishes and more) but adding a modern twist to them as well. What I didn't like as a bit of a traditionalist on the issue of story structure, were the endings. In a lot of the stories I sensed that they were about the idea and the exploration of that in a certain context, but not necessarily about a surprising ending. In other words: it's the idea of the story that stays in mind, not the conclusion, or denouement - often it peters out a bit and the reader is left having to come to their own conclusion. I think this is a matter of preference and not a shortcoming in the stories, as others will like the freewheeling nature of these stories and the sense of openness that they leave in their conclusion. Also a couple of stories felt insubstantial, more like filler material than stories that really had someting to say. But most were very good.
The best were 'Rat Catcher's Yellows' - a touching story about a woman losing her wife to early onset dementia and finding a way she can still communicate with her.
'Six Months, Three Days' - the story of a man who can see the future, falling in love with a woman able to see all kinds of possible futures ...
'The Time Travel Club' - an enjoyable tale of a group of make believe time travellers giving shelter to a recovering alcoholic and finding one of them may really have built a working time machine.
'Rock Manning Goes For Broke' - a novella about young filmmakers making slapstick comedy in a country slowly slinding into fascist dystopia.
'Captain Roger in heaven' - a great story about a sex cult having to invent its own afterlife ...
'Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue' - a scary story about a society that tries to change trans people into a new identity.
'The Bookstore At The End of America' - I had read this one already in two anthologies, but it's still very good.
All in all, if you want to be thoroughly entertained by a bunch of very diverse genre stories, if you are interested in diversity in fiction, and you are interested in the direction speculative fiction will be going in the next five to ten years, this is a collection you definitely need to pick up. -
Thanks to Netgalley and Tor/Forge for the ARC of this in exchange for my honest review.
This was such a well done collection of short stories, that vary greatly in type of science-fiction and fantasy. There was time travel and aliens and post apocalyptic settings, diversity of characters, all with different feelings being evoked. The ones I struggled with were based on the author’s other works, which I haven’t read yet. My favorites were the last two which kind of felt a little more hopeful than the other stories. I’m definitely planning to go back and read more of the author’s books! -
This is a very 2010's piece of work, all the stories come with trigger warnings, specified pronouns, and a panoply of non-cis characters. Which is all well and good. By all means, express the gender and sexuality of characters, if it's a plot element and moves the story forward. In a lot of these stories it just felt every side character and bit player was called out and identified which tended to distract from the story being told. Made me wonder if this was something editorial for the modern short-story, a kind of litmus test for a stories acceptability.
There were some gems in here (noted below) and a lot of chaff (also noted below). One general complaint I had for a number of the stories is that they didn't really end so much as they just stopped. Things are building to a climax, the main character starts to do a thing and then next story. I suppose it could be a style thing but it feels like lazy writing.
• As Good as New: **** A wanna-be playwright finds a genie in a post-apocalypse world. Very much liked the careful consideration and work the protag put into the whole wishing process.
• Red Catcher’s Yellows: *** A spouse finds a video game that lets her relate to her partner with dementia. I enjoyed the story but it really just felt more like an introduction to something else than a standalone piece.
• If You Take My Meaning: ** Kinda weird story about human/alien hybrids but the world building and random background details really tended to get in the way of the story.
• Time Travel Club: ** Poorly organized story about a club of LARP time travelers who end up with a time machine. There was a lot of wasted potential here.
• Six Months, Three Days: *** Story about a relationship between a woman who can see all of her possible futures and a man who can sees his own future as a predestined series of events. The writing is good, the voices of the characters are believable but overall I think I enjoyed the concept of the story more than I enjoyed how it played out.
• Love Might be too Strong a Word: ****? A story about an alien society with multiple gender castes and a protag who isn't interested their role.
• Fairy Werewolf Vs. Vampire Zombie: * Dumb, dumb, dumb
• Ghost Champagne: ***** A depressed stand-up comic is haunted by her own ghost. An interesting concept, well executed.
• My Breath is a Rudder: ** A mural painter looking for inspiration for a painting. Kind of an aimless story that just ended without getting anywhere.
• Power Couple: ** A college couple alternatingly go into suspended animation so that they can start their lives together after they both finish school. Couldn't buy into the premise at all.
• Rock Manning Goes for Broke: **** Enjoyed this riding the edge of the apocalypse story.
• Because Change Was the Ocean and We Lived by Her Mercy: ** Life in a post-climate change world that's just set dressing for a thin relationship drama.
• Captain Roger in Heaven: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I wouldn't have thought a story about accidentally founding a sex cult could be boring, but there you go.
• Clover: ***** Possibly the best story in the collection about a cat protecting the couple he lives with.
• This Is Why We Can’t Have Nasty Things: * San Francisco navel gazing
• A Temporary Embarrassment in Spacetime: *** An attempt at space-opera rogue story a'la "Stainless Steel Rat".
• Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue: ** A story apparently resulting from cognitive dissonance following the 2016 election. Another one of the many stories here that just kind of ends in the middle.
• The Bookstore at the End of America: *** A story I found vaguely offensive with it's tired stereotyping of religious conservatives & godless liberals.
• The Visitmothers: *** This very short and abrupt story pairs well with the opening story about being careful how you wish for something. -
The first story in this collection, "As Good as New," is the only post-apocalyptic story that has ever made me laugh out loud (and it did that multiple times)! So (startlingly) much fun.
And oof, that second story, "Rat Catcher's Yellows"! This one packs SUCH an emotional punch, it is absolutely heartwrenching - and yet, it still made me laugh a couple of times along the way, which is incredibly impressive. (Also, I have to say here that I usually *hate* stories told from the perspective of someone looking after a disabled partner - there's sooooo much ableism usually folded into that fictional framework - but this one actually really worked for me, which is a near-miracle.)
I'll keep on updating as I read my way through the collection! -
I like Anders' writing based originally on reading a short story in Press Start to Play. Even Greater Mistakes is a collection of nineteen short stories by Charlie Jane Anders. Anders helpfully introduces each story, explaining its inspiration or process and adding content warnings where appropriate.
This kind of stuff is called sci-fi even though it mostly isn't. Speculative fiction fits best, but nobody seems to like that term. These stories cover various genres: soft sci-fi, urban fantasy, dystopian, post-apocalyptic, contemporary, and contemporary but with a speculative element added, a ghost, or precognition. Even most of the soft sci-fi is really more fantasy, think Bradbury or Sturgeon. This collection reminds me a lot of Sturgeon, not stylistically, but in content. Whatever the setting, or speculative element, these stories are really about relationships.
Charlie Jane Anders is a trans person so many of these stories contain non-heteronormative stuff. There are same-sex couples, polyamorous relationships, trans characters, characters with indeterminate gender, and many invented pronouns. The book can feel like Tumblr at times. I consider that a good thing. If you are looking for a pride month read, this is worth considering. There are also plenty of stories where none of this appears or matters and two very good stories that are cishet romances.
This is a long and varied read and I’d expect there would be something for almost everyone in it. -
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. The Time Travel Club, 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! -
Review of Uncorrected Digital Galley
A collection of nineteen science fiction/fantasy tales filled with unexpected twists on classic tropes, gender, heartbreak while offering [often with humor] social commentary in a variety of settings. Each imaginative story stands alone, filling its own particular niche in this compilation.
Consider a genie in a bottle, found by a survivor in an apocalyptic world. Or a game developed for dementia sufferers. Perhaps a tale of Human-Gelet hybrids or a contemplation of the possibilities of time travel. Perhaps a vampire/zombie tale or a bookstore standing at the border between the United States and the now separate country of California. The widely-varied content is sure to give readers much to consider.
A short commentary by the author prefaces each story.
Recommended.
I received a free copy of this eBook from Macmillan-Tor/Forge and NetGalley
#EvenGreaterMistakesy #NetGalley -
Okay: I give up. Not a fan of the one novel by Anders that I tried to read, but I did like a couple short stories, so placed a hold on the copy of this that the Daniel Boone Regional Library had ordered. There were the two short stories I'd enjoyed. Unfortunately, the book also includes ... others.
I like a plot. Yes, also an engaging way with words, but I also need a story line; and most of what I read here seemed more like notes for a novel. And a novel I didn't actually want to read. Part of the problem seems to be Anders' writing style, which is breezy, even when the story is serious. The mismatch doesn't always work. (It should have in "Rock Manning Goes for Broke," but somehow didn't work for me.)
So it's going back to the library. Maybe Anders and I just weren't meant for each other. But I've still got those two stories I enjoyed, so there is that. -
I love short stories when I'm running low on reading time
and this set sounds great!
A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book. -
This is an excellent short story collection. My favorite stories were the first and the last, so good job editor.
-
Even Greater Mistakes contains nineteen different short stories featuring all kinds of genres: contemporary, science fiction, fantasy, dystopian, and a bit of horror. They all contain queer love, and mostly queer joy. There’s sapphics, trans people, polyamorous couples. It’s really a treat.
As Good As New: a strange fungus has caused the world to end and only Marisol has survived.
Rat Catcher’s Yellows: Shary has leptospirosis X (Rat Catcher’s Yellows) and her wife Grace is adapting to a life with a young wife with dementia. Soon, a kitty video game changes the odds.
If You Take My Meaning: I skipped this one because I haven’t read City in the Middle of the Night yet, and it contains spoilers.
The Time Travel Club: young adults get together and form a club to discuss time travel, when a professor shows up with a real time machine.
Six Months, Three Days: both Judy and Doug can see the future. Judy can see multiple outcomes, while Doug can only see one.
Love Might Be Too Strong a Word: Dot, a pilot, falls madly in love with Mab, a daily, who is much farther below in the cultural standing of the ship.
Fairy Werewolf vs. Vampire Zombie: exactly what the title says. Antonia left her family due to her condition, and she starts singing at Rachel’s Bar.
Ghost Champagne: Gloria is a comedian, and she’s being followed by her own ghost.
My Breath is a Rudder: the first story in a dystopian San Francisco where Julie needs to paint a mural on the wall protecting them from the Pacific Ocean.
Power Couple: John and Willa were both studying for careers with long-term education. They decide to freeze themselves for seven years while the other gets their education. It may not go as planned.
Rock Manning Goes for Broke: a dystopian story with people trying to fight the system.
Because Change was an Ocean and We Lived By Her Mercy: we return to dystopian San Francisco, instead following Jaconda and Miranda.
Captain Roger in Heaven: Marith accidentally creates a sex cult, and years later it’s grown exponentially.
Clover: Anwar and Joe receive a strange cat named Berkley that brings them nine years of good luck, until the cat Patricia shows up.
This Is Why We Can’t Have Nasty Things: follows the closing of a queer bar, the Glamrock.
A Temporary Embarrassment in Spacetime: Sharon is a monster, spying on The Vastness and its cult members.
Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue: Rachel is taken to the Love and Dignity for Everyone center, which “fixes” people. TW for transphobia/conversion camps.
The Bookstore at the End of America: Molly owns a rare bookstore between two countries: one liberal and one more conservative.
The Visitmothers: Cait calls on the Visitmothers to help give her the body she was meant to have.
Thank you to NetGalley, Tor Books, and Charlie Jane Anders for the chance to read this advanced review copy! -
All my reviews live at
https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.
TL;DR REVIEW:
Even Greater Mistakes is a wide-reaching collection of stories that will have something for everyone. Anders is just so good at cutting to the heart of our humanity with bravery and compassion.
For you if: You like short stories with speculative elements.
FULL REVIEW:
Thank you, Tor, for providing me with an electronic advanced copy of this book! I am a big fan of Charlie Jane Anders, as a person and as a writer, and I jumped at the chance to read her first official story collection.
As you might expect from a prolific SFF writer who hasn’t published a story collection before (what?), this book is absolutely packed — truly, there’s something for everyone here. Perhaps my favorite was “Six Months, Three Days,” in which a girl who sees many futures and a boy who sees one future fall in love, despite knowing it won’t end well. It raised so many questions about free will. There are also follow-up stories to Anders’ novels The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky (which is one I especially loved). She also gives introductions and background on each story, which added an extra touch I really appreciated.
Anders cuts to the heart and humanity with clear-eyed compassion. These stories are not always comfortable (see trigger warnings), but the discomfort is always purposeful. She explores themes of transness and queerness, choice and identity, love and friendship, and so much more. I didn’t love every single story in this book, but I loved many and liked the rest.
If you’re a fan of speculative fiction, pick this one up!
CONTENT AND TRIGGER WARNINGS:
Transphobia and violence against trans people; Dementia (having a loved one suffer from it); Depression (acute metaphorical description of suffering from it); Addiction/alcoholism (recovering from it); PTSD -
This book collects some of Anders's
many short stories, all full of memorable characters and inventive speculative elements. I was glad to have an opportunity to spend time with a range of her work, because though most of these stories are freely available online, I'd only gotten around to reading a couple of them before. The short introduction before each story providing context about Anders's career is a nice bonus.
Some of my favorite stories in the collection play with time.
"The Time Travel Club" cleverly combines imaginary and real time travel in a story featuring a whole group of wonderful characters. (Really, wonderful characters are a hallmark of every story here.)
"Six Months, Three Days" charts the turbulent romance between two people who can both see the future, but in different ways.
"Ghost Champagne" is an emotional story about a woman who is tormented by the constant presence of her own ghost, back from the future to haunt her.
Finding and building community is also a big theme in Anders's work. I enjoyed
"Because Change Was the Ocean and We Lived By Her Mercy", a quiet story about people trying to make a community on the San Francisco archipelago after the sea rises. "The Bookstore at the End of America" takes place in a divided future country that wages nonstop civil war, but the story itself is a hopeful one about the owner and patrons of a bookstore at the borderlands.
While not every story was to my taste, I was a fan of others I haven't listed here, and the collection was more hits than misses for me. A big chunk in the middle of the book is the novella "Rock Manning Goes for Broke" (the
first section is online), and I was wary since the introduction warns it's extremely violent. But I was quickly drawn in by the character voice, and the surreal, slapstick nature of the story appealed to me far more than I would have expected. Which is fitting, because the unexpected is a constantly impressive feature in the work of Charlie Jane Anders. -
Charlie Jane Anders is prolific. If you have somehow managed to not encounter her work before, I urge you to pick up this collection. Even Greater Mistakes is a collection of almost twenty stories, covering a plethora of topics and genres, unbelievably written by the same talented human.
Where do I even begin? The collection opens with As Good As New, a gorgeous story about a woman in her panic room with a genie in the form of a theater critic. It is absolutely hilarious, and as Anders’ states in her introduction to the story, you can find a glorious reading by LeVar Burton on his podcast.
Anders can make me weep with the beauty of her prose. Rat Catcher’s Yellows is an unexpectedly moving story about a dementia-like disease, and a video game. It wonderfully captures the life of caring for a loved one. Clover is a magical story about a couple and their lucky cat. In The Time Travel Club, a group of misfits band together to try and travel through time. The ending literally had me weeping happy tears, and definitely my favorite story in this consistently wonderful collection.
Another highlight is The Bookstore at the End of America, about immigration, the power of literature, and Californians (as an adopted California, I found some of Anders’ descriptions of stereotypical sun-dwellers hilariously accurate).
There are some incredible, unconventional love stories in this collection, such as Six Months, Three Days, Power Couple, and the strangely arousing Love Might be Too Strong a Word.
As well as the stories themselves, Anders offers a hugely insightful introduction not only to the collection, but to each individual story. She shares her experience as a writer, and a person, and offers some fantastic advice for budding authors.
Anders is a fantastic writer. She is funny, profound, and incredibly imaginative. I loved pretty much every story in this collection. And with titles such as Fairy Werewolf vs. Vampire Zombie, you cannot possibly go wrong. Highly recommended for fans of SF, Douglas Adams, N.K Jemisin, and Ursula K. Le Guin. Anders is one the best SFF authors around, and this collection perfectly demonstrates her awesomeness. -
In
Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories, Anders writes about how she loves short fiction and how it taught her how to write. This is a collection of nineteen of those many short stories, spanning her whole career and with a lot of range.
I like Anders - as she says, she's most interested in human relationships, whether they take place in space, a near future dystopian San Francisco, or in a world like ours but where magic exists. She's also funny, great at writing political rage and finding the nub of a conflict or relationship. In
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life, George Saunders says that a really great short story leaves you knowing that the characters will never be the same again, and Anders almost consistently nails that here. Sometimes it's because they find love, sometimes it's because they come through a challenge, and sometimes it's because they're destroyed. I really admire all the voices Anders managed to craft, and there are a few stories in this collection that are going to stick with me.
