Charles Yu

In a world transformed by time-travel technology, counselor Charles Yu searches for the father who invented time travel and vanished, a quest marked by quirky pseudo-companions. A first novel by the award-winning author of the collection, Third Class Superhero.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

Joshua Karjala

charisa

man charles yu can write some LOOOONG sentences 

3.5/5! or maybe 3.75/5. it read like a nerdier midnight library, and i wasn’t really too fond of that book. i think the whole “you are the one who determines your life” trope gets old after a while, even if it IS set within a cool spacetime continuum traveling complex. i liked the weirdness though, and i found the book kind of harrowing since it seemed to be somewhat autobiographical? lots to think about

Originally published in hardcover: New York: Pantheon, c2010.

A Novel

Katherine Yang

formally and stylistically incredible. sort of reminded of Aimee Bender, of Michael Ondaatje. truly fascinating – i think i enjoyed the first and second parts more than the highly abstract third, but i felt that the themes and structure and style were all just so strong.

Frederik De Bosschere

Wildly imaginative book, about a bored time machine repair man, in one of the smaller science fictional universes. Clever. Witty. Although I must admit I did have a hard time keeping up with all that was happening. Maybe that's just time travel fiction. Maybe I lack the brain computer. Maybe I should just re-read the book.

Becky A

This was a really beautiful, smart book - I wish I had loved it the way I wanted to, but it wasn't really a story (it wasn't really trying to be, I don't think). It would be great for someone whose tastes skew more literary than mine but who wants to dip a toe into scifi, I think.

Taylor

Recommended listening: https://open.spotify.com/album/7Kyvfo...

“Again with the physical universe stuff. What exactly do you think you are? What exactly do you think this place is? You want to tell a story? Grow a heart. Grow two. Now, with the second heart, smash the first one into bits. Gross, right? A bloody pulpy liquid mess. Look at it, try to make sense of it. Realize you can't. Because there is no sense. Ask your computer to print out a list of every lie you have ever told. Ask yourself how much of the universe you have ever really seen. Look in the mirror. Are you sure you're you? Are you sure you didn't slip out of yourself in the middle of the night, and someone else slipped into you, without you or you or any of you even noticing?”

Arron Kau

Weirdly compelling and well-written, but ultimately more about itself than about anything else.

A time machine repairman becomes trapped in a time loop of his own making: Douglas Adams collides with Douglas Coupland.

Emmett

Read another review which commented that only Charlie Kaufman could make a movie adaptation of this if it ever came to that, and I heartily agree. But only Charles Yu, as he proves it here, Q.E.D., could blend physics with poignancy, build equations from sadness, form poetry out of words like 'chronodiegesis', talk naturally of betas and gammas in his business of breaking the heart. The subject is time-travel, a messy business of imprisoning loops (voluntary or otherwise) and alternate scenarios, here additionally dressed up by Yu in the plausible physics jargon of 'Science Fiction Science', and here, backgrounding a narrative of a son going back (in time? I'm not sure...) to find his missing father. At some points the novel sounds like a page torn out from a university physics textbook, at others it is a rumination on regret, memory, blind spots, disappointment, longing, culminating in the simple desire to change what has already been lost. And where it is playfully metafictional, the novel sounds like many pages torn out from itself, with title and character real-world-ness intertwined so tightly to the point of breaking. (The protagonist is also named Charles Yu, who meets future Charles Yu, who gives him a book with the title on our cover, and Charles Yu naturally will become future Charles Yu, who will give past Charles Yu the book, etc ad infinitum; and the page number references he makes to his book tally with our own.) In this sense then the novel echoes already familiar chimes: the value of arresting the present before it becomes the past, the slow conversion of inaction and neglect into mistakes made, the impossibility of changing the past without corroding the present. What is familiar Yu makes strange in order to make more precious again when we see them, and that is where the beauty of this book lies. When the physics textbook speaks of melancholy in exquisite tongues, where theory-worthy abstraction and simplicity can hold so much sentiment, that, ultimately, both end up talking about the same thing.

"Most people I know live their lives moving in a constant forward direction, the whole time looking backward."

Risa C

Enjoyment of this book demands that you buy into the meta of its premise and just accept the wonky, literary science. I definitely enjoyed this book and I think I was always going to enjoy this book, because I'm a sucker for emotionally exhausting time traveling.

I loved how this was written. It dips in and out of fairly simple prose to a stream of consciousness that is more melancholic and poetic, that skirts the line between literary and maudlin, and (I'm starting to realize) that's probably my sweet spot. I love a good figure of speech that becomes so overwrought that is nearly buckles under its own weight. The incorporation of science or scientific elements into a literary narrative is always one of my favorite things and the excerpts from the meta book were some of my favorite parts (though I do acknowledge that a number of them were sentimental, pithy attempts at pathos not entirely dissimilar from my own weak, teenage attempts at writing).

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book; I might have even loved it. What's stopping me from giving this five stars is that I feel it fumbled some of its emotional landings. I wasn't disappointed with the story's resolution, but I had been hoping for a moment of pure, intense feeling. Still, I'd recommend this book and would seek recommendations for books similar to this.

jam 🍯

This book was a relatively quick read (I think it took me a week in January, and I mostly only read on the subway and in coffee shops), but a rewarding one. Although it's not quite as satisfying as your typical genre fiction, I would chalk it up to an innovative style that breaks from traditional narrative structure and left me going... woah.

As another reviewer has mentioned, not a lot really "happens" in the book. Instead, it centers around the main character's relationship with his father and reads as the author's own attempt to understand his relationship with his father. As an Asian American, I resonated with many of family dynamics shown in the book, which was a heartwarming (and heart-wrenching) plus.

edit: adding a star because I think about this book quite a bit. Unlike some of the other Asian American lit I've read (such as a certain series that is coming to theaters in August), this one has stuck with me and added to the way I think about narrative structure (or the lack thereof)

Rebecka S.

With only TAMMY - a slightly tearful computer with self-esteem issues - a software boss called Phil - Microsoft Middle Manager 3.0 - and an imaginary dog called Ed for company, fixing time machines is a lonely business and Charles Yu is stuck in a rut. He's spent the better part of a decade navel-gazing, spying on 39 different versions of himself in alternate universes (and discovered that 35 of them are total jerks). And he's kind of fallen in love with TAMMY, which is bad because she doesn't have a module for that. With all that's on his mind, perhaps it's no surprise that when he meets his future self, he shoots him in the stomach. And that's a beginner's mistake for a time machine repairman. Now he's stuck in a time loop, going in circles forever. All he has, wrapped in brown paper, is the book his future self was trying to press into his hands. It's called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. And he's the author. And somewhere inside it is the information that could save him.

kari <33

please don't read this book. i read it for class and yes there were some lines that I enjoyed but overall the book was a tiresome read. please don't do that to yourself. the main character is highly unlikable which is terrible because he's essentially the only character throughout the entire book

Michael Chen

[3.5]
Note: ~”Reading is a creative act”

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

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