Even Greater Mistakes

"Irresistible and observant . . . Whatever mood you're going for, there's a story in [this collection] to match it." —San Francisco Chronicle Charlie Jane Anders came to national attention with her bestselling debut science fiction fantasy novel, All the Birds in the Sky. Since then, Anders has been steadily publishing some of the most lively, outrageous, and engaging short fiction in the field. The woman who can see all the possible branching 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. A trans woman is captured by an agency that brutally forces detransition by means of brain transplants – only to discover that the person overseeing her case is her childhood friend. And in the liminal space between the warring fragments of what was once the United States, a mysterious bookstore is the place where all the incompatible realities can touch. Here are delightful upendings of genre cliches, and heartfelt revitalizations of classic tropes. Here is social commentary with teeth, and here are scenes of pants-wettingly funny comedy. Here are characters and situations that by their very outrageousness achieve a heightened realism unlike any other. Here is one of the strongest voices in modern science fiction, the writer called by Andrew Sean Greer, "this generation's Le Guin." "An essential Anders treasury." ―Kirkus Reviews, starred review