Even greater mistakes by Charlie Jane Anders

Winner of the 2022 Locus Award for Best Collection, in Even greater mistakes, Charlie Jane Anders has written 19 short stories that span her writing career. The publisher’s blurb states: ‘Here are delightful upending’s of genre cliches, and heartfelt revitalisation 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.'

These stories are challenging to read and will be enjoyed by lovers of science fiction and fantasy. The first in the book As good as new, has a survivor isolated in a panic room and she turns the fairy story of the genie in a bottle upside down into a memorable tale. Rat catcher’s yellows is an intriguing take on being a carer of a life-time partner and brings all the heartbreak and diffuclties alive for the reader.

All the stories are original, unique, and often strange. Some are not easy to read but for hard core fans of science fiction and fantasy this will be a compelling collection. Some may like to try her novel Dreams bigger than heartbreak. 

Themes: Short stories, Science fiction, Fantasy, LGBT.

Pat Pledger