A master absurdist...Highly recommended. --The New York Times
Before the success of her debut SF-and-fantasy novel All the Birds in
the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders was a rising star in SF and fantasy short
fiction. Collected in a mini-book format, here--for the first time in
print--are six of her quirky, wry, engaging best:
In The Fermi Paradox Is Our Business Model, aliens reveal the terrible
truth about how humans were created--and why we'll never discover
aliens.
As Good as New is a brilliant twist on the tale of three wishes, set
after the end of the world.
Intestate is about a family reunion in which some attendees aren't quite
human anymore--but they're still family.
The Cartography of Sudden Death demonstrates that when you try to solve
a problem with time travel, you now have two problems.
Six Months, Three Days is the story of the love affair between a man who
can see the one true foreordained future, and a woman who can see all
the possible futures. They're both right, and the story won the 2012
Hugo Award for Best Novelette.
And Clover, exclusively written for this collection, is a coda to All
the Birds in the Sky, answering the burning question of what happened
to Patricia's cat.