Six Months, Three Days, Five Others

Six short stories by Charlie Jane Anders, gathered in a mini-book and printed together for the first time. They run from science fiction to fantasy, with a quirky, wry, absurdist tone throughout.

In one, aliens reveal how humans were created and why we will never find other life in the universe. In another, a wish-granting setup of three wishes plays out after the end of the world. A third follows a family reunion where some relatives are no longer quite human, though they remain family.

Time travel gets a skeptical treatment in a story where fixing one problem with it leaves a person holding two. The title story is a love affair between a man who sees the single foreordained future and a woman who sees every possible future. Both turn out to be right. It won the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.

The last story, "Clover", was written for this collection and is a coda to All the Birds in the Sky. It answers what became of Patricia's cat, so it will mean most to readers who know that novel.