Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Pantheon (2010), Hardcover, 256 pages
Description
Charles Yu, time travel technician, helps save people from themselves in Minor Universe 31, a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction. When he's not taking client calls, Yu visits his mother and searches for his father, who invented time travel and then vanished. Accompanied by TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and a nonexistent but ontologically valid dog named Ed, and using a book titled "How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe" as his guide, Yu sets out, and back, and beyond, in order to find the one day where he and his father can meet in memory.
Media reviews
Library Journal
The deceptively simple plot can be told in one sentence: a time-travel-machine repairman wants to locate his missing father before his past catches up to him and shoots him dead. Our anxieties and fears are heightened as the protagonist's past gets ever closer. That the protagonist's father devoted
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his life to creating a time-travel machine allows us to ponder the dilemma of a brilliant person trapped in the role of a family man. VERDICT: Fans of Ursula K. Le Guin and 'social science fiction,' as well as readers of an adventurous nature, will enjoy this book, which has the potential to become a cult classic. Show Less
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is intellectually demanding, but also emotionally rich and funny. It's clearly the work of a scifi geek who knows how to twist pop culture tropes into melancholy meditations on the nature of consciousness.
There are times when he starts off a paragraph about chronodiegetics that just sounds like pseudo-scientific gibberish meant to fill in some space. And then you realize that what he’s saying actually makes sense, that he’s actually figured out something really fascinating about the way time
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works, about the way fiction works, and the “Aha!” switch in your brain gets flipped. That happened more than once for me. There are so many sections here and there that I found myself wanting to share with somebody: Here—read this paragraph! Look at this sentence! Ok, now check this out! Show Less
Booklist
The eponymous lonely-guy narrator in Yu’s debut novel is a time-machine repairman working in the slightly damaged Minor Universe 31, where people can time-travel for recreational purposes—or, Charles muses, is it re-creational purposes, given our desire to rewrite history? Charles dwells in a
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small module with TAMMY, a cute but insecure operating system, and Ed the dog, who is good company even though he’s a “weird ontological entity” rather than a flesh-and-blood animal. Woebegone Charles has never gotten over the disappearance of his father, a thwarted time-travel pioneer. With Star Wars allusions, glimpses of a future world, and journeys to the past, as well as hilarious and poignant explanations of “chronodiegetics,” or the “theory of the nature and function of time within a narrative space,” Yu, winner of the National Book Foundation’s 5 under 35 Award, constructs a clever, fluently metaphorical tale. A funny, brain-teasing, and wise take on archetypal father-and-son issues, the mysteries of time and memory, emotional inertia, and one sweet but bumbling misfit’s attempts to escape a legacy of sadness and isolation. Show Less
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is a triumph, as good as anything in Calvino or Stanislaw Lem. I wish I could travel back in time with a copy and fraudulently publish it under my own name. Like most people, I thought I learned everything I needed to know about time travel from
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H.G. Wells and Star Trek, but I thought wrong: In Yu's skillful hands a worn-out science fiction plot device becomes a powerfully expressive metaphor for how we experience the flickering, ineffable, ungraspable spatio-temporal phenomenon of life. Because after all, we're all time travelers, blundering forward into the future at the rate of one second per subjectively experienced second.
Except when we don't. Think about it: How many times have you yourself been trapped in a time loop, cycling obsessively through one inescapable moment, again and again and again, while the rest of the universe rolled forward and left you behind? Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member richardderus
The Book Report: I have no bloody idea what this, this hideous waste of a perfectly good tree is about. If anything.
My Review: DO NOT READ IT. No one on Planet Earth could conceivably be geeky enough to want to read this. It is ungainly in its lineaments and sounds like what would happen if you
Unpleasant.
My Review: DO NOT READ IT. No one on Planet Earth could conceivably be geeky enough to want to read this. It is ungainly in its lineaments and sounds like what would happen if you
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gave Stephen Hawking a big dose of ketamine and stood back to watch.Unpleasant.
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LibraryThing member fyrefly98
Summary: Our narrator is a time-machine repairman, living alone inside his own personal time machine, with nothing but the ship's computer and his non-existent dog Ed for company. His father, one of the time machine's inventors, has been missing for years, and his mother has locked herself in a
Review: This is one of those books that it seems like everyone either really loves or really hates, and I still - even a week after finishing it - can't quite decide which camp I belong to. It is, without question, beautifully written, and imaginative as hell. It's full of drifting thoughts and parenthetical musings, a number of which are quite profound, and couldn't have been found in a simpler story.
This book dwells not only on the metaphysical, but also on the metafictional. Whether that's a positive or a negative depends entirely on how much you go in for that sort of thing. Personally, while I initially found it clever and charming, the "meta"-ness is unrelenting, and its self-aware quirkiness eventually got a kind of grating.
My biggest problem with this book, though, was how incredibly long it took to find a plot. My plot summary makes this sound a bit like a zany Jasper-Fforde-style madcap adventure, but that's a mistaken impression. The surface details may be similar, but the narrator's way more neurotic (and rather whiney), and for at least the first 100 pages, he doesn't actually do anything except philosophize about the fact that he's not doing anything. Even once the plot get started, it's not even so much a proper plot, but simply a thread connecting one set of musings to the next.
How to Live Safely... actually felt the most similar to Jonathan Carroll's The Ghost in Love in its use of speculative fiction quirks and non-linear storytelling to explore a coming-of-age story in a philosophical and psychological space. And my reaction to it is unsurprisingly much the same: parts of it I found fascinating, parts of it I found insightful, parts of it I found over-the-top, and while I found it intellectually engaging, for most of it there wasn't enough story for me to really get involved with it on an emotional level. 3 out of 5 stars.
Recommendation: Despite the title, I actually think this book will appeal more to literary fiction fans who are willing to read over all of the sci-fi surface stuff to get at the metaphysical musings underneath. Not recommended if you like: linear plot structure and non-run-on sentences.
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one-hour time loop of an idealized family dinner. Charles himself is drifting, aimless, spending most of his time out of time and alone, as uncomfortable with the normal universe and linear time as he is with himself. Only once he gets caught in a time loop of his own does he realize that in order to break free, he'll have to confront his demons, starting with his own timeline.Review: This is one of those books that it seems like everyone either really loves or really hates, and I still - even a week after finishing it - can't quite decide which camp I belong to. It is, without question, beautifully written, and imaginative as hell. It's full of drifting thoughts and parenthetical musings, a number of which are quite profound, and couldn't have been found in a simpler story.
This book dwells not only on the metaphysical, but also on the metafictional. Whether that's a positive or a negative depends entirely on how much you go in for that sort of thing. Personally, while I initially found it clever and charming, the "meta"-ness is unrelenting, and its self-aware quirkiness eventually got a kind of grating.
My biggest problem with this book, though, was how incredibly long it took to find a plot. My plot summary makes this sound a bit like a zany Jasper-Fforde-style madcap adventure, but that's a mistaken impression. The surface details may be similar, but the narrator's way more neurotic (and rather whiney), and for at least the first 100 pages, he doesn't actually do anything except philosophize about the fact that he's not doing anything. Even once the plot get started, it's not even so much a proper plot, but simply a thread connecting one set of musings to the next.
How to Live Safely... actually felt the most similar to Jonathan Carroll's The Ghost in Love in its use of speculative fiction quirks and non-linear storytelling to explore a coming-of-age story in a philosophical and psychological space. And my reaction to it is unsurprisingly much the same: parts of it I found fascinating, parts of it I found insightful, parts of it I found over-the-top, and while I found it intellectually engaging, for most of it there wasn't enough story for me to really get involved with it on an emotional level. 3 out of 5 stars.
Recommendation: Despite the title, I actually think this book will appeal more to literary fiction fans who are willing to read over all of the sci-fi surface stuff to get at the metaphysical musings underneath. Not recommended if you like: linear plot structure and non-run-on sentences.
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LibraryThing member frisbeesage
In Minor Universe 31 there is one cardinal rule - you can't change the past and trying will only cause trouble. Yet everyday people climb in time machines and go back to undo the wrongs in their past. That's where Charles Yu comes in. He's a time travel repairman and he spends his days rescuing all
It is interesting to see the wide range of feelings this novel has produced!I'll start by admitting that I am not normally a sci-fi reader, so I was looking for an entertaining novel, not good sci-fi. I was definitely entertained! To begin with the book is written in long, drawn-out, run on sentences and is full of time-travel, science fiction jargon. It took me awhile to get into the rhythm, but before long I relaxed into it and the story seemed to flow easily. The plot felt unique and interesting, the characters likable and well rounded, and the problems they deal with real world and timely. Who doesn't have something they'd like to change about their past? A day they wish they could live differently? Ultimately Yu uses his original and funny protagonist of a time-travel machine repairman to address some serious issues - father/son relationships, living in the past, and failure - yet the book remains light and entertaining throughout. A great debut novel, I'll be watching to see what he does next!
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the hapless time travelers from themselves. His sidekicks are TAMMY, his machine's operating system and Ed, a nonexistent dog. The only problem is Charles, himself, is stuck in the past, brooding on his distant and missing inventor father and his unhappy mother. It is interesting to see the wide range of feelings this novel has produced!I'll start by admitting that I am not normally a sci-fi reader, so I was looking for an entertaining novel, not good sci-fi. I was definitely entertained! To begin with the book is written in long, drawn-out, run on sentences and is full of time-travel, science fiction jargon. It took me awhile to get into the rhythm, but before long I relaxed into it and the story seemed to flow easily. The plot felt unique and interesting, the characters likable and well rounded, and the problems they deal with real world and timely. Who doesn't have something they'd like to change about their past? A day they wish they could live differently? Ultimately Yu uses his original and funny protagonist of a time-travel machine repairman to address some serious issues - father/son relationships, living in the past, and failure - yet the book remains light and entertaining throughout. A great debut novel, I'll be watching to see what he does next!
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LibraryThing member suetu
Yu’s fanciful debut would have benefited from warp drive
There’s a great deal to like in Charles Yu’s debut novel, and not much to hate. It’s the story of a reclusive time machine repairman also named Charles Yu. Yu has sort of been drifting through life, a not very active participant. He
“It’s not comfortable in here. But it’s not not comfortable either. It’s neutral, it’s the null point on the comfort-discomfort axis, the exact fulcrum, the precise coordinate located between the half infinity of positive comfort values to the right and the half infinity of negative values on the left. To live in here is to live at the origin, at zero, neither present nor absent, a denial of self- and creature-hood to an arbitrarily small epsilon-delta limit.
Can you live your whole life at zero? Can you live your entire life in the exact point between comfort and discomfort? You can in this device. My father designed it that way.”
He has a crush on his computer’s operating system:
“Is TAMMY’s curvilinear pixel configuration kind of sexy? Yes it is. Does she have chestnut-colored hair and dark brown eyes behind pixilated librarian glasses and a voice like a cartoon princess? Yes and yes and yes. Have I ever, in all my time in this unit, ever done you know what to a screenshot of you know who? I’m not going to answer that.”
For me, the principal joy of this novel was Yu’s delightful use of language, often amusing and Jasper Fforde-clever, but also philosophical and even poignant at times. Where Fforde mostly sticks to peppering his novels with literary references, no aspect of pop culture is off-limits to Yu:
“Client call. Screen says
SKYWALKER, L
And my first thought is oh, man, wow, but when I get there, it’s not you know who, with the man-blouse and soft boots and the proficiency at wielding light-based weapons. It’s his son. Linus.”
So, this is all charming, right? Where the book falls down is narrative drive. The novel opens with Yu offering some exposition about his life, the world, and the ins and outs of time travel. So far, so good. However, it bogs down in the middle. After the set-up, there’s a meandering plot about Yu’s search for his lost father, the inventor of time travel. The meta-fictional Yu reflects at length on his dysfunctional family and rambles in circles about the physics of time travel. As short as this small novel is, it’s a bad sign that it tended to drag due to a lack of real plot. At one point, deep in the middle, Yu mused, “But what if I were to skip forward? Just cut out all of this filler in the middle?” I found myself wondering the same thing.
There’s a great deal to like in Charles Yu’s debut novel, and not much to hate. It’s the story of a reclusive time machine repairman also named Charles Yu. Yu has sort of been drifting through life, a not very active participant. He
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lives in a closet-sized time machine with a fictional dog:“It’s not comfortable in here. But it’s not not comfortable either. It’s neutral, it’s the null point on the comfort-discomfort axis, the exact fulcrum, the precise coordinate located between the half infinity of positive comfort values to the right and the half infinity of negative values on the left. To live in here is to live at the origin, at zero, neither present nor absent, a denial of self- and creature-hood to an arbitrarily small epsilon-delta limit.
Can you live your whole life at zero? Can you live your entire life in the exact point between comfort and discomfort? You can in this device. My father designed it that way.”
He has a crush on his computer’s operating system:
“Is TAMMY’s curvilinear pixel configuration kind of sexy? Yes it is. Does she have chestnut-colored hair and dark brown eyes behind pixilated librarian glasses and a voice like a cartoon princess? Yes and yes and yes. Have I ever, in all my time in this unit, ever done you know what to a screenshot of you know who? I’m not going to answer that.”
For me, the principal joy of this novel was Yu’s delightful use of language, often amusing and Jasper Fforde-clever, but also philosophical and even poignant at times. Where Fforde mostly sticks to peppering his novels with literary references, no aspect of pop culture is off-limits to Yu:
“Client call. Screen says
SKYWALKER, L
And my first thought is oh, man, wow, but when I get there, it’s not you know who, with the man-blouse and soft boots and the proficiency at wielding light-based weapons. It’s his son. Linus.”
So, this is all charming, right? Where the book falls down is narrative drive. The novel opens with Yu offering some exposition about his life, the world, and the ins and outs of time travel. So far, so good. However, it bogs down in the middle. After the set-up, there’s a meandering plot about Yu’s search for his lost father, the inventor of time travel. The meta-fictional Yu reflects at length on his dysfunctional family and rambles in circles about the physics of time travel. As short as this small novel is, it’s a bad sign that it tended to drag due to a lack of real plot. At one point, deep in the middle, Yu mused, “But what if I were to skip forward? Just cut out all of this filler in the middle?” I found myself wondering the same thing.
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LibraryThing member bragan
Charles Yu -- the fact that the character's name is the same as the author's is appropriate in ways that are hard to explain -- lives in a universe that's not entirely real, a fact he seems strangely comfortable with. When he was young, his father invented a time machine and subsequently
Well, OK, that's sort of what the book is about, but that summary doesn't really describe it properly at all. A more accurate description, I suppose, is that it's a bizarre kaleidoscope of time travel tropes and melancholy memories, metafiction and metaphysics. It's weird and it's poignant, and having used those two adjectives, I honestly don't know what else to say about it, but it was certainly an interesting read.
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disappeared somewhere into space and time. Now Charles Yu travels around in his own self-contained little box of a time machine repairing others' time-travel devices (which have a tendency to break when their operators try to alter the worst moments of their lives), hoping one day to find his father again.Well, OK, that's sort of what the book is about, but that summary doesn't really describe it properly at all. A more accurate description, I suppose, is that it's a bizarre kaleidoscope of time travel tropes and melancholy memories, metafiction and metaphysics. It's weird and it's poignant, and having used those two adjectives, I honestly don't know what else to say about it, but it was certainly an interesting read.
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LibraryThing member Course8
Charles Yu, the author, has created a fictional universe for Charles Yu, the time machine repairman. Yu choses to live in solitude inside his own time machine and each night returns to a nameless, dateless day in a cul-de-sac of space time rather than the apartment he rents. He seeks his father who
It is difficult to unpack all of the science/fiction concepts presented by Yu, the author. He spins off intriguing phrases, images and constructs from every page. Helpful hints are provided on what to do if you are caught in a time loop. He provides factors for determining one's coefficient of attachment, (1.00 or higher is required for one to be a hero.) He postulates math functions that operate on literary concepts.
While I found it a great book to read I felt that the ending was a coasting down, like the end of a Cedar Point ride which has lots of great twists and turns but in the end you haven't really gone anywhere. It is as if Yu, the author, tried to get every great idea that he every had into one book and then cobbled together an ending when he reached the end of the list.
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is lost in time but cannot be compassionate to his mother who is still present, although living in a one-hour time loop. He could not bring himself to start a conversation with a woman with whom he shared a park bench, yet is attracted to TAMMY, the operating system of his time machine. His pet is a non-existent dog that was retconned out of another story. He creates tiny quantum windows to spy on his alternative selves in other universes but when he meets his own future self immediately shoots him (self), killing his own future. In his desire to avoid anything bad happening, Yu puts himself in a position where nothing good can happen. It is difficult to unpack all of the science/fiction concepts presented by Yu, the author. He spins off intriguing phrases, images and constructs from every page. Helpful hints are provided on what to do if you are caught in a time loop. He provides factors for determining one's coefficient of attachment, (1.00 or higher is required for one to be a hero.) He postulates math functions that operate on literary concepts.
While I found it a great book to read I felt that the ending was a coasting down, like the end of a Cedar Point ride which has lots of great twists and turns but in the end you haven't really gone anywhere. It is as if Yu, the author, tried to get every great idea that he every had into one book and then cobbled together an ending when he reached the end of the list.
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LibraryThing member raboyer
Tumultuous Time Travel
I absolutely adored this book it gets a terrific 5 out of 5 gnomes for having a sincere engaging main character and a story that really keeps you thinking. This is one of the most well written and lyrical stories that I've read in a long time. It is so full of great quotes and
The overall story is intriguing in both structure and theme. Throughout there are excerpts from How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe so it's like a book inside a book. The plot is explained like a story. Charles, the main character, lives in Minor Universe 31 where, "physics was only 93 percent installed,..." Some universes have more heroes and better protagonists then others. Minor Universe 31 though is very small.
Charles is a time travel technician, he repairs or helps people when they or the machine go wrong. He can open windows to other universes and see what he's like there. Just thinking about that would be enough to paralyze me and most people because what if you find out that you're the worst off out of all the possible yous? Charles doesn't really live in the present, he uses his time machine and stays in between certain minutes so when he has to go in for repairs it turns out that from the present he's been gone for ten years.
The secondary characters in this book are full of quirks but also very fun to read about. There's Ed, TAMMY, Phil and Charles's Mom. Ed, Charles's dog he found was retconned out of a western show. TAMMY is the operating system of the time machine who has low self esteem and is extremely funny in her interactions with Charles. Phil, his manager doesn't know he's a computer program. His Mom lives in one hour of time because that's all he could afford for her retirement. (This buying of a certain hour or time limit to live over and over is another interesting concept that is introduced which makes you contemplate what you would choose.
An incident occurs that leads to a time loop (because as any watcher of Star Trek can attest to, meeting yourself in the past or future is not the best idea). He has to figure out how to get out of the loop and why the book How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, a book seemingly written by him that he hasn't written yet, is important. Because of the loop he gets to look back at important events in his life between him and his father. What follows is an epic journey to find his father that he lost long ago. The father and son relationship is vividly explored and it's shown how he and his father came to build a time machine and the ramifications it had between them. It's shown how the past impacts him and what happens to people that tend to live in the past. There is plenty of adventure along the way and a plethora of surprises as Charles goes through the time loop trying to figure everything out before it starts all over again.
Overall this book has quite the story to tell and will leave you thinking about it for a long time past the last page. Last but certainly not least is the major plus that How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe ends happily.
I absolutely adored this book it gets a terrific 5 out of 5 gnomes for having a sincere engaging main character and a story that really keeps you thinking. This is one of the most well written and lyrical stories that I've read in a long time. It is so full of great quotes and
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lines, I have over thirty pages bookmarked where I wanted to go back and note what was said. The overall story is intriguing in both structure and theme. Throughout there are excerpts from How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe so it's like a book inside a book. The plot is explained like a story. Charles, the main character, lives in Minor Universe 31 where, "physics was only 93 percent installed,..." Some universes have more heroes and better protagonists then others. Minor Universe 31 though is very small.
Charles is a time travel technician, he repairs or helps people when they or the machine go wrong. He can open windows to other universes and see what he's like there. Just thinking about that would be enough to paralyze me and most people because what if you find out that you're the worst off out of all the possible yous? Charles doesn't really live in the present, he uses his time machine and stays in between certain minutes so when he has to go in for repairs it turns out that from the present he's been gone for ten years.
The secondary characters in this book are full of quirks but also very fun to read about. There's Ed, TAMMY, Phil and Charles's Mom. Ed, Charles's dog he found was retconned out of a western show. TAMMY is the operating system of the time machine who has low self esteem and is extremely funny in her interactions with Charles. Phil, his manager doesn't know he's a computer program. His Mom lives in one hour of time because that's all he could afford for her retirement. (This buying of a certain hour or time limit to live over and over is another interesting concept that is introduced which makes you contemplate what you would choose.
An incident occurs that leads to a time loop (because as any watcher of Star Trek can attest to, meeting yourself in the past or future is not the best idea). He has to figure out how to get out of the loop and why the book How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, a book seemingly written by him that he hasn't written yet, is important. Because of the loop he gets to look back at important events in his life between him and his father. What follows is an epic journey to find his father that he lost long ago. The father and son relationship is vividly explored and it's shown how he and his father came to build a time machine and the ramifications it had between them. It's shown how the past impacts him and what happens to people that tend to live in the past. There is plenty of adventure along the way and a plethora of surprises as Charles goes through the time loop trying to figure everything out before it starts all over again.
Overall this book has quite the story to tell and will leave you thinking about it for a long time past the last page. Last but certainly not least is the major plus that How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe ends happily.
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LibraryThing member Mithril
So-so overall, somewhat tedious and self-absorbed narrative, short on actual brilliance in ideas.
LibraryThing member TheoClarke
A post-modern non-linear is what makes this such a remarkable work: literary fiction flavoured with science fiction. It is more than author as subject; a book about the book — with delicious humour Yu explores loss, family, and romance. The mass of rayguns on the cover misled me into expecting
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something with more pace and it took a while for me to get with the programme. Fortunately, the piece merits rereading and I can enjoy it fully. Show Less
LibraryThing member StigE
This is a book I by all accounts should not like. It reeks of postmodernism, the characters would harshen the mellow of most Dickensian characters and it swims in ironic detachment and trying to be clever. In this story it kind of works.
This book is very much in the spirit of, and quite unlike the
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style of, Douglas Adams. It'll be returning to this one from time to time. Show Less
LibraryThing member 1morechapter
“You can’t build a car that violates the laws of physics. Same goes for a time machine. You can’t go just anywhere, only to places it will let you go. You can only go to places that you will let yourself go.”
“But the reason I have job security is that people have no idea how to make
I want to read more books like this one — philosophical, humorous, a little ‘techy,’ and demonstrating a great use of the English language. I really loved it. It reminded me a lot of how much I loved Rivka Galchen’s Atmospheric Disturbances, also a NYT Notable book. But, just as with Galchen’s novel, this one won’t appeal to everyone.
It’s really so difficult to even describe what’s going on in this story. Guy works at a job fixing time machines. Not only does he fix time machines, but while he does it, he’s in a time machine so he can travel to wherever the problem is. His operating system, TAMMY, and his not-really-alive dog, Ed, are the only ones to keep him company. He’s been living in the time machine for a long time. Some incidents happen (don’t want to spoil it), and he gets caught in a time loop. While in the time loop, he waxes philosophical about his parents, in particular his father, and just life in general. The book has all kinds of crazy diagrams and intended blank spaces to illustrate his points.
I really, really loved this book. I borrowed this from the library, so I plan on buying it when it comes out in paperback just so I can mark it up like crazy. Highly recommended for fans of offbeat, philosphical fiction.
“But the reason I have job security is that people have no idea how to make
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themselves happy. Even with a time machine. I have job security because what the customer wants, when you get right down to it, is to relive his very worst moment, over and over and over again.”I want to read more books like this one — philosophical, humorous, a little ‘techy,’ and demonstrating a great use of the English language. I really loved it. It reminded me a lot of how much I loved Rivka Galchen’s Atmospheric Disturbances, also a NYT Notable book. But, just as with Galchen’s novel, this one won’t appeal to everyone.
It’s really so difficult to even describe what’s going on in this story. Guy works at a job fixing time machines. Not only does he fix time machines, but while he does it, he’s in a time machine so he can travel to wherever the problem is. His operating system, TAMMY, and his not-really-alive dog, Ed, are the only ones to keep him company. He’s been living in the time machine for a long time. Some incidents happen (don’t want to spoil it), and he gets caught in a time loop. While in the time loop, he waxes philosophical about his parents, in particular his father, and just life in general. The book has all kinds of crazy diagrams and intended blank spaces to illustrate his points.
I really, really loved this book. I borrowed this from the library, so I plan on buying it when it comes out in paperback just so I can mark it up like crazy. Highly recommended for fans of offbeat, philosphical fiction.
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LibraryThing member ChristaJLS
Charles Yu (the character) is stuck in a time loop. His future self and his present self have interacted and well...the results aren't good. Thankfully future Charles left present Charles some help, a book. This book to be exact. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is an explanation
I love the premise of this book. Time travel is often confusing and filled with techno babble that (to me) doesn't make a lot of sense. Charles Yu, however, uses just the right amount of cyber jargon and uses it in a way that just makes you laugh at loud at the absurdity of it all. Don't expect this book to follow a normal course of events, it breaks rules of space and physics so it's a safe bet it's going to break narrative convention as well. Try not to think about how impossible it all is and just enjoy the ride.
When I first heard about this book I was excited. It's been awhile since I've read a recently released science fiction title that I actually liked and this one sounded right up my alley. That's a lot of pressure for a book, but thankfully it delivered. It is a hilarious read and you won't want to put it down. It is very much in the spirit of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and it isn't often you come across someone who can pull off good science fiction and good comedy in one go. If you like science fiction and/or are looking for something out of left field check this book out and enjoy!
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of the world of the future with handy tips, including details on the capital city, the socioeconomic strata and most importantly what to do in the event you're trapped in a time loop. With the help of this book, Ed and TAMMY (my personal favourite) Charles not only looks for a way out of the time loop but learns something about his life as well.I love the premise of this book. Time travel is often confusing and filled with techno babble that (to me) doesn't make a lot of sense. Charles Yu, however, uses just the right amount of cyber jargon and uses it in a way that just makes you laugh at loud at the absurdity of it all. Don't expect this book to follow a normal course of events, it breaks rules of space and physics so it's a safe bet it's going to break narrative convention as well. Try not to think about how impossible it all is and just enjoy the ride.
When I first heard about this book I was excited. It's been awhile since I've read a recently released science fiction title that I actually liked and this one sounded right up my alley. That's a lot of pressure for a book, but thankfully it delivered. It is a hilarious read and you won't want to put it down. It is very much in the spirit of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and it isn't often you come across someone who can pull off good science fiction and good comedy in one go. If you like science fiction and/or are looking for something out of left field check this book out and enjoy!
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LibraryThing member UnderMyAppleTree
Charles Yu, not to be confused with the author Charles Yu, is a time travel technician; more specifically, Charles is “a certified network technician for T-Class personal-use chronogrammatical vehicles”. His job is to fix the errors of other time travelers.
In Minor Universe 31 time travel is
Charles lives in his time machine. Instead of parking it when not working he continuously travels in the Present-Indefinite mode except when he is peeking into alternate universes to spy on other versions of himself. P-I mode allows him to avoid straight forward travel and live achronologically. He can ignore the future and see everything as the present. He has been living like this for the past 10 years while in reality only a few weeks have passed.
All this sounds like the makings of a great science fiction adventure; but it’s not. The story does not revolve around Charles’ adventures as a time travel repairman or anyone that he might be sent to rescue. There are lots of science fiction elements and we are in a science fiction world but it’s more of a literary story about a young man searching for his father, worrying about his mother and confronting his dysfunctional childhood. Charles has issues. He is searching for his father, an inventor of time machines, who disappeared into time years ago and was never seen again; he visits mother who lives in a time-loop of her own choosing, “the sci-fi version of assisted living”, but only observes her; and now he is stuck in his own time loop because he abused P-I mode and the gear broke down.
This was not an easy book to read, follow or understand. I’m still not sure I understand it. I could not get engaged in it and I really tried. After reading about 40 pages I thought, “huh? what? I’m lost”. So I went back and re-read them hoping to gain better understanding. At about half way through this book still wasn’t happening for me but I finished it anyway. There was just enough there to keep my interest and, frankly, I wanted to know how it ended.
I liked the concept but the story wasn’t going anywhere. The idea was original, the writing clever, sometimes a little too clever, quite a bit geeky and often funny. I loved the blending in of pop culture and science fiction references. Time Warner Time, a division of Google, owns the rights to Universe Minor 31. Charles has a software boss called Phil – Microsoft Middle Manager 3.0 who doesn’t know he’s software (that one made me laugh out loud) and a neurotic operating system named TAMMY. As children, everyone wants to be Han Solo, except Charles.
I kept waiting for a plot to develop, but it never happened. Everything was about the main character, Charles, and he spent too much time pontificating and whining. We learn little about anyone else. Sentences were rambling, often with long wordy paragraphs, to the point where it got tedious to read. I kept thinking this would have made a great short story. Perhaps I was expecting a Doctor Who type adventure or a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy type universe, and that is not what this book is. Or maybe, as an old-time science fiction reader (think Heinlein, Asimov, PK Dick, Bradbury) I’m not the target audience. Or maybe the book needed more editing for my tastes.
This is not a book for everyone. If you don’t read any science fiction at all I can’t recommend it but if you enjoy the genre you might want to give it a try. Would I read any future works from this author? Yes, definitely. There’s a lot of promise here, I just didn’t like the way it was carried out.
In Minor Universe 31 time travel is
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commonplace. Anyone can rent a machine and go for a ride. Breakdowns occurs when people try to do things they are not supposed to do. Give people the opportunity to travel back in time and most end up choosing to go to the worst day of their lives and try to fix it rather than going back to a day they enjoyed. Fixing the past is not allowed and ultimately their machine gets stuck in place until Charles arrives to rescue them.Charles lives in his time machine. Instead of parking it when not working he continuously travels in the Present-Indefinite mode except when he is peeking into alternate universes to spy on other versions of himself. P-I mode allows him to avoid straight forward travel and live achronologically. He can ignore the future and see everything as the present. He has been living like this for the past 10 years while in reality only a few weeks have passed.
All this sounds like the makings of a great science fiction adventure; but it’s not. The story does not revolve around Charles’ adventures as a time travel repairman or anyone that he might be sent to rescue. There are lots of science fiction elements and we are in a science fiction world but it’s more of a literary story about a young man searching for his father, worrying about his mother and confronting his dysfunctional childhood. Charles has issues. He is searching for his father, an inventor of time machines, who disappeared into time years ago and was never seen again; he visits mother who lives in a time-loop of her own choosing, “the sci-fi version of assisted living”, but only observes her; and now he is stuck in his own time loop because he abused P-I mode and the gear broke down.
This was not an easy book to read, follow or understand. I’m still not sure I understand it. I could not get engaged in it and I really tried. After reading about 40 pages I thought, “huh? what? I’m lost”. So I went back and re-read them hoping to gain better understanding. At about half way through this book still wasn’t happening for me but I finished it anyway. There was just enough there to keep my interest and, frankly, I wanted to know how it ended.
I liked the concept but the story wasn’t going anywhere. The idea was original, the writing clever, sometimes a little too clever, quite a bit geeky and often funny. I loved the blending in of pop culture and science fiction references. Time Warner Time, a division of Google, owns the rights to Universe Minor 31. Charles has a software boss called Phil – Microsoft Middle Manager 3.0 who doesn’t know he’s software (that one made me laugh out loud) and a neurotic operating system named TAMMY. As children, everyone wants to be Han Solo, except Charles.
I kept waiting for a plot to develop, but it never happened. Everything was about the main character, Charles, and he spent too much time pontificating and whining. We learn little about anyone else. Sentences were rambling, often with long wordy paragraphs, to the point where it got tedious to read. I kept thinking this would have made a great short story. Perhaps I was expecting a Doctor Who type adventure or a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy type universe, and that is not what this book is. Or maybe, as an old-time science fiction reader (think Heinlein, Asimov, PK Dick, Bradbury) I’m not the target audience. Or maybe the book needed more editing for my tastes.
This is not a book for everyone. If you don’t read any science fiction at all I can’t recommend it but if you enjoy the genre you might want to give it a try. Would I read any future works from this author? Yes, definitely. There’s a lot of promise here, I just didn’t like the way it was carried out.
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LibraryThing member TheDivineOomba
This is one of those books that works on many different levels - the top level is a basic science fiction, a bit disjointed, but easily understood. Underneath that we find a man searching for something, himself, his father, maybe his lost love. The third level is nothing but metaphor for a person
Unfortunately for me, I picked this up thinking it will be a straight forward time travel story, with a twist. Instead, I got a rather boring character, who spends too much time whining about his life, not enough time living it. The story is well written, I just didn't really connect with it.
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lost in society, with the time travel a symbol for living in the past.Unfortunately for me, I picked this up thinking it will be a straight forward time travel story, with a twist. Instead, I got a rather boring character, who spends too much time whining about his life, not enough time living it. The story is well written, I just didn't really connect with it.
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LibraryThing member glitrbug
I heard a great review of this on NPR so I bought it without reading a sample first on my Kindle. Big mistake. I read a lot of Sci-Fi but this was just boring. It seemed to be little bits from other books and movies just mashed together. For Pete's sake, there's even the robot dog from Dr. Who!
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What geek wouldn't recognize that bit. First time I ever wanted to return a book. Show Less
LibraryThing member fakelvis
This is the story of time machine repair man, Charles Yu: the "real-life" author of this book, the author of this book inside this book, and more). Yes, it's self-referential and full of wonderful and slightly-confusing science fiction conundrums and paradoxes.
In the acknowledgements, the author
With a wonderful story of loss and of a man searching to fill a void left by his father and their forgotten dreams, we are given an equally wonderful metaphor for the complications of living in the modern world.
Some quotes that I particularly liked that may pique your interest:
"The axes of past, alternate present, and future, or more formally, the matrix operators of regret, counterfactual, and anxiety."
"The good news is, you don't have to worry, you can't change the past.
The bad news is, you don't have to worry, no matter how hard you try, you can't change the past."
In the acknowledgements, the author
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nods to Douglas Hofstadter for his excellent tome, 'Gödel, Escher, Bach'. Fans of that book may get a idea for what is in store here, but on a much smaller scale, and with the story of a time machine repair man as the backdrop.With a wonderful story of loss and of a man searching to fill a void left by his father and their forgotten dreams, we are given an equally wonderful metaphor for the complications of living in the modern world.
Some quotes that I particularly liked that may pique your interest:
"The axes of past, alternate present, and future, or more formally, the matrix operators of regret, counterfactual, and anxiety."
"The good news is, you don't have to worry, you can't change the past.
The bad news is, you don't have to worry, no matter how hard you try, you can't change the past."
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LibraryThing member BurgandyIce
My Review Part I:
Good grief.
This book is an inventive knot. It takes Science and the Space Travel and mooshes it together with Fiction and alternative universes, kneads it into an artistic, theoretical whole and then lets it expand into something completely unique.
The result is scientific and
This guy writes a book – his name is Charles Yu – and he writes this book while traveling through time in his ship which is about as big as a hotel shower (like his hotel room doesn’t have.) He has a dog (that isn’t real) and falls in love with someone whom he can’t marry (because she isn’t entirely human).
So, Charles Yu writes this book while getting jambed into a time loop, which sounds really freaky. It doesn’t last but a minute, the same minute over and over, but takes the entire book to write out (over and over) so he can move on.
[SPOILERS] He figures out, by the end, how to forgive his dad for leaving, and forgive his mom for preferring her hypothetical dream to real life. He also forgives himself for not appreciating people (or non-people) around him or living life in the present tense moving chronologically into the future (vs. present indicative that does not progress into the future, even if he continues to age.)
It’s dramatic when he runs into himself (not the time he shoots himself, but the other time) and he slaps himself around and then kisses himself, which is really weird, but significant. He basically gives himself the shove he needed to move on and make decisions that may or may not be good, to love and live.
I quote his self, “You’re bigger than you think. More complicated than you think…. You don’t always have your own best interests at heart. That’s true. You are your own best friend and your own worst enemy…. Only you know what you need to do… you are the only you. Does that make sense?” And of course he answered himself, “Not really.”
My Review Part II:
I loved the way Yu attacks the idea - of ditching the minutes ticking away on a clock that kill creativity with the hope of doing something amazing.
His dad had a dream that if he put enough effort into his invention of time travel, that he would get equal parts success out of it, which wasn’t true. Sometimes people succeed very well by happening upon great ideas accidently, sometimes over and over, like Charles’ Dad’s boss. Sometimes, effort is doubled and the result is getting lost and needing to be rescued. But should he give up? Cease caring?
This book left me feeling like regret is a waste of time. The past can’t be changed, even if we figured out time travel and attempted to fix it. This book also made me feel like depression was a waste of time because even if Yu could pass ten years in the same moment, it didn’t change anything except his age. He could live there, suspended, ‘til he died, but what was the point?
Once he figured out why he was depressed, then he was able to unravel the mystery that got him out of that suspension.
My Review Part III:
En fin, this is one of the weirdest books I have ever read. It’s absolutely memorable, although, without writing down what happened, I think I will forget the semi-direct storyline. I think what I’ll remember forever is that this book is hugely quotable. When it was funny, I snorted, laughing so hard. When it was sad, my jaw dropped and I was in shock. When it launched into the technicalities of science fictional space travel with xy loops and stuff, my brain spaced out while my eyes continued to read… and I finally decided that it wasn’t understandable, and I probably grasped the gist, anyway.
Oh, and then there were moments, unforgettable moments, like describing the wonder of writing on a pad of paper, the feel of the ink and the depression of the layers of paper that cling to the ink just that smallest of moments longer to make a thicker, blacker mark. Those moments I will remember (and wonder where in the world I read them, b/c some of the greatness of this book has nothing to do with “Science Fictional Universes.”)
Yea, so this book has moments of greatness, moments of Wha?! And an overall feeling of accomplishment.
I seriously have no idea what to rate this book. It was not an easy book to read, necessarily, and I can think of a few people who might not like it at all. Then again, I can think of a few people who would think it was the best book ever written, too. EVER. WRITTEN. (Especially if they liked The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy!) This is like twisted humor meets serious intent (and it shoots itself?)
Quotes on the cover I agree with 100%:
“Poignant, hilarious, and electrically original. Bends time, mind, and genre.” David Eagleman, author of Sum.
“One of the trippiest and most thoughtful novels I’ve read all year, one that begs for a single sit-down experience” – Sarah Weinman, the Daily Beast
My Rating: 4.5 GREAT book
I think this book deserves a higher rating than I'm giving it, but this is what it was for me. I totally see where the Award came from - this book is outstandingly unique and a masterpiece. But there were passages I skimmed, details I didn't want to wallow in.
Good grief.
This book is an inventive knot. It takes Science and the Space Travel and mooshes it together with Fiction and alternative universes, kneads it into an artistic, theoretical whole and then lets it expand into something completely unique.
The result is scientific and
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impossible simultaneously in equal measure.This guy writes a book – his name is Charles Yu – and he writes this book while traveling through time in his ship which is about as big as a hotel shower (like his hotel room doesn’t have.) He has a dog (that isn’t real) and falls in love with someone whom he can’t marry (because she isn’t entirely human).
So, Charles Yu writes this book while getting jambed into a time loop, which sounds really freaky. It doesn’t last but a minute, the same minute over and over, but takes the entire book to write out (over and over) so he can move on.
[SPOILERS] He figures out, by the end, how to forgive his dad for leaving, and forgive his mom for preferring her hypothetical dream to real life. He also forgives himself for not appreciating people (or non-people) around him or living life in the present tense moving chronologically into the future (vs. present indicative that does not progress into the future, even if he continues to age.)
It’s dramatic when he runs into himself (not the time he shoots himself, but the other time) and he slaps himself around and then kisses himself, which is really weird, but significant. He basically gives himself the shove he needed to move on and make decisions that may or may not be good, to love and live.
I quote his self, “You’re bigger than you think. More complicated than you think…. You don’t always have your own best interests at heart. That’s true. You are your own best friend and your own worst enemy…. Only you know what you need to do… you are the only you. Does that make sense?” And of course he answered himself, “Not really.”
My Review Part II:
I loved the way Yu attacks the idea - of ditching the minutes ticking away on a clock that kill creativity with the hope of doing something amazing.
His dad had a dream that if he put enough effort into his invention of time travel, that he would get equal parts success out of it, which wasn’t true. Sometimes people succeed very well by happening upon great ideas accidently, sometimes over and over, like Charles’ Dad’s boss. Sometimes, effort is doubled and the result is getting lost and needing to be rescued. But should he give up? Cease caring?
This book left me feeling like regret is a waste of time. The past can’t be changed, even if we figured out time travel and attempted to fix it. This book also made me feel like depression was a waste of time because even if Yu could pass ten years in the same moment, it didn’t change anything except his age. He could live there, suspended, ‘til he died, but what was the point?
Once he figured out why he was depressed, then he was able to unravel the mystery that got him out of that suspension.
My Review Part III:
En fin, this is one of the weirdest books I have ever read. It’s absolutely memorable, although, without writing down what happened, I think I will forget the semi-direct storyline. I think what I’ll remember forever is that this book is hugely quotable. When it was funny, I snorted, laughing so hard. When it was sad, my jaw dropped and I was in shock. When it launched into the technicalities of science fictional space travel with xy loops and stuff, my brain spaced out while my eyes continued to read… and I finally decided that it wasn’t understandable, and I probably grasped the gist, anyway.
Oh, and then there were moments, unforgettable moments, like describing the wonder of writing on a pad of paper, the feel of the ink and the depression of the layers of paper that cling to the ink just that smallest of moments longer to make a thicker, blacker mark. Those moments I will remember (and wonder where in the world I read them, b/c some of the greatness of this book has nothing to do with “Science Fictional Universes.”)
Yea, so this book has moments of greatness, moments of Wha?! And an overall feeling of accomplishment.
I seriously have no idea what to rate this book. It was not an easy book to read, necessarily, and I can think of a few people who might not like it at all. Then again, I can think of a few people who would think it was the best book ever written, too. EVER. WRITTEN. (Especially if they liked The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy!) This is like twisted humor meets serious intent (and it shoots itself?)
Quotes on the cover I agree with 100%:
“Poignant, hilarious, and electrically original. Bends time, mind, and genre.” David Eagleman, author of Sum.
“One of the trippiest and most thoughtful novels I’ve read all year, one that begs for a single sit-down experience” – Sarah Weinman, the Daily Beast
My Rating: 4.5 GREAT book
I think this book deserves a higher rating than I'm giving it, but this is what it was for me. I totally see where the Award came from - this book is outstandingly unique and a masterpiece. But there were passages I skimmed, details I didn't want to wallow in.
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LibraryThing member ladycato
There has been a lot of buzz around this book, so when it was selected as a book cub read, I was eager to try it out.
Charles Yu (yes, the exact same name as the author) is a time travel technician. He's lived in the same closet-sized box for ten years, unattached to reality as he wanders through
There are many ways I could describe this book, but the most apt description is one word: weird. Very few things actually happen within the book, and that is kinda the point. Yu emphasizes that time travel is not simply a physical act, it's a mental one. Being stuck in memories is an act of time travel. A lot of the book is spent in the past as Yu delves into his relationship with his parents and the reasons for his own melancholy isolation. The prose is stream-of-consciousness to an extreme. I found it difficult to read sometimes because the sentences were so long and convoluted; there were a couple sentences that were a half page in length. I found myself restless, waiting for something to happen, for some forward momentum to grab the story. The good news is that it's a short read or I might not have even finished it.
Deep down, I think this is as much a philosophy or psychology book as it is a science fiction novel. You're dropped into the deep well shaft of Yu's neuroses and the book is his long, slow climb out to the light. I'm all about character growth, but the pace here is so long and slow, and so deeply introspective. It's not a book I will read again, though I intend to share it with others to see what their take on the subject is.
Charles Yu (yes, the exact same name as the author) is a time travel technician. He's lived in the same closet-sized box for ten years, unattached to reality as he wanders through
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time to save others. Still, he can't save the person who matters most: his father, an inventor of time travel, who has vanished somewhere in the scope of time. His mother is alive but re-living her own favorite one-hour time loop, every day. Then Yu accidentally encounters himself, and everything goes wrong. He presents himself a book--"How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe." A book he hopes he can use to find his father, but more importantly, it may save his own life.There are many ways I could describe this book, but the most apt description is one word: weird. Very few things actually happen within the book, and that is kinda the point. Yu emphasizes that time travel is not simply a physical act, it's a mental one. Being stuck in memories is an act of time travel. A lot of the book is spent in the past as Yu delves into his relationship with his parents and the reasons for his own melancholy isolation. The prose is stream-of-consciousness to an extreme. I found it difficult to read sometimes because the sentences were so long and convoluted; there were a couple sentences that were a half page in length. I found myself restless, waiting for something to happen, for some forward momentum to grab the story. The good news is that it's a short read or I might not have even finished it.
Deep down, I think this is as much a philosophy or psychology book as it is a science fiction novel. You're dropped into the deep well shaft of Yu's neuroses and the book is his long, slow climb out to the light. I'm all about character growth, but the pace here is so long and slow, and so deeply introspective. It's not a book I will read again, though I intend to share it with others to see what their take on the subject is.
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LibraryThing member charlottejones952
I was hooked in by the line in the blurb on the inside cover; "In one minute Charles Yu is going to murder himself. Again". This novel is about Charles Yu, the protagonist in this book, and the events that take place in his life.
I found the plot of this novel very slow. Although it was enjoyable
The main character was very likeable and at points I almost felt sympathetic towards him. I loved his interactions with his computer, TAMMY, and also Phil. I think that these characters really helped to develop Charles' personality, and make the reader find him more approachable.
The writing was really interesting and I found it complicated at points, but understandable despite the technical language used.
Overall, I would give this novel 4 out of 5 stars as I really grew to like the characters and on the whole I enjoyed the plot.
I found the plot of this novel very slow. Although it was enjoyable
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overall, I found that the main story didn't really start until at least half way through. I enjoyed the references to other science fiction narratives such as Star Wars and the amount of background information that was provided by the protagonist.The main character was very likeable and at points I almost felt sympathetic towards him. I loved his interactions with his computer, TAMMY, and also Phil. I think that these characters really helped to develop Charles' personality, and make the reader find him more approachable.
The writing was really interesting and I found it complicated at points, but understandable despite the technical language used.
Overall, I would give this novel 4 out of 5 stars as I really grew to like the characters and on the whole I enjoyed the plot.
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LibraryThing member TheAmpersand
I'd heard it mentioned in a year-in-review forum that Charles Yu participated in at Slate that his "How to Live Safely in a Science-Fictional Universe" had something of a video-gamer sensibility, but actually reading it still brought me up short: anyone who's spent any time at all on Second Life,
The author's choice of setting also frees him up to play all manner of clever metafictional games. Some of these, such as the time-travel storyline that makes up most of the book's plot, may seem prosaic to readers in search of cutting-edge science fiction, but Yu's mein is literary, not genre-specific. His book's spacier, more futuristic elements contrast sharply and elegantly with his narrator's casually self-deprecating, unmistakably human tone. Yu's also has something very right about the way that most humans interract with the machines at their disposal. In the "real world," people use unimaginably powerful informational appliances connected to an immense global network to look at funny pictures of cute kittens. Yu's main character, or author doppelganger, toys with the fabric of space and time but maintains a worldview more appropriate to a bored TV repairman. That's pretty realistic, too.
In a certain sense, I sort of wish that Yu had decided to stick with Mirror Universe 031's very artificiality. As the book progresses, and the "time loop" that the author/narrator finds himself in draws tighter and tighter, Yu shifts his focus to the novel's more traditionally fictional elements. That's not exactly a bad thing, since his story of growing up in a financially disadvantaged, emotionally unresponsive immigrant family rings true and his articulation of a specifically twenty-first century class divide is skillful and important. At he same time, "How to Live Safely in a Science-Fictional Universe" is a good example of how technogical progress can also spur artistic creativity. I'm thrilled with the idea that video games and synthetic online environments might provide writers with whole new categories of experience to explore. Of course, you might argue that writers have been wedding computer-age concepts to literary form since "Neuromancer," or even "Tron," but this novel still feels like a major advance. There's still, I feel, lots to be said about the way that we live in "science fictional" universes, and about how what happens in those imaginary places spills out into the world we live in.
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or remembers the charmingly clunky, lo-res internet of the nineties, will feel very much at home in this novel. The author doesn't take the easy way out by playing up his setting's kitsch value, either: this book's viritual reality isn't science-fictional gee-whizzery or information-age nostalgia, it's a Conrad-quality framing device. Built and then abandoned by an unseen hand, rent by economic instability and transcultural shifts, slightly decrepit and home to the struggling, the bored and the lonely, the place where this novel is set -- "Mirror Universe 031," you want to be specific -- is, in other words, a world uncannily like our own. The author's choice of setting also frees him up to play all manner of clever metafictional games. Some of these, such as the time-travel storyline that makes up most of the book's plot, may seem prosaic to readers in search of cutting-edge science fiction, but Yu's mein is literary, not genre-specific. His book's spacier, more futuristic elements contrast sharply and elegantly with his narrator's casually self-deprecating, unmistakably human tone. Yu's also has something very right about the way that most humans interract with the machines at their disposal. In the "real world," people use unimaginably powerful informational appliances connected to an immense global network to look at funny pictures of cute kittens. Yu's main character, or author doppelganger, toys with the fabric of space and time but maintains a worldview more appropriate to a bored TV repairman. That's pretty realistic, too.
In a certain sense, I sort of wish that Yu had decided to stick with Mirror Universe 031's very artificiality. As the book progresses, and the "time loop" that the author/narrator finds himself in draws tighter and tighter, Yu shifts his focus to the novel's more traditionally fictional elements. That's not exactly a bad thing, since his story of growing up in a financially disadvantaged, emotionally unresponsive immigrant family rings true and his articulation of a specifically twenty-first century class divide is skillful and important. At he same time, "How to Live Safely in a Science-Fictional Universe" is a good example of how technogical progress can also spur artistic creativity. I'm thrilled with the idea that video games and synthetic online environments might provide writers with whole new categories of experience to explore. Of course, you might argue that writers have been wedding computer-age concepts to literary form since "Neuromancer," or even "Tron," but this novel still feels like a major advance. There's still, I feel, lots to be said about the way that we live in "science fictional" universes, and about how what happens in those imaginary places spills out into the world we live in.
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LibraryThing member malrubius
Yu is a great writer, and it shows in this book as well as in Third Class Superhero. Some of the ideas are ingenious and the commentary on life-as-narrative is compelling. However, despite its classic search-for-the-father theme, I just don't think this book had the scope to carry a novel-length
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work. It seemed like one of the stories from Third Class Superhero, padded out to novel length. I think Yu is going to be one of my favorite authors, and I look forward to his development as a novel writer. Show Less
LibraryThing member nicolewbrown
First off, this book has a lot of physics terms (at least I think they are physics terms; he could be making it all up for all I know of physics). But that does not matter. Just like watching Star Trek or Star Wars, or any other science fiction show or movie, you do not really have to understand
This book centers on a thirty-year-old time machine tech, Charles Yu who spends most of his time in his time capsule named Tammy (who has a self-esteem problem and cries often). His job is to go back in time to help other time travelers who have damaged their machines and fix them so they can get back to the present. He finds it sad that when you can go to any point in your timeline and visit (you must NEVER meet yourself or bad things will happen) they choose the worst moment of their life and relive it over and over again, hoping for a different outcome which never happens, because no matter how hard you try, you can not change the past. The universe will not allow it.
Charles got into the time machine business as a young child. His father came up with a theory on how to make time travel possible and the two spend ten years working on building a time machine. When things do not work out as planned, Charles's father hops into his new time machine and disappears, leaving him and his mother alone. He is forced to drop out of school and get work as a tech and his mother ends up renting a machine that replays one hour on a loop for however many years you pay for. She plays out a dinner with Charles and her husband as holograms. Charles, in person, rarely visits her, which he feels guilty about. Charles has shut himself off from the world by essentially living in his time machine with a science fiction dog and Tammy for company. Every few years or so he goes back home for maintenance of his vehicle, and while years have passed in his life a day or maybe a week has only passed at home.
After returning for maintenance he shows up to pick up his machine and he sees another him step out of a machine and instead of running away, which is what he is supposed to do, he shoots his future shelf and climbs into the time machine and is now in a time loop. Inside the machine is a book that is partly filled out and shows him how to find his father, who can possibly save him. But time is running out and as he tries to accept his impending death, he cannot quite give up so easily, even though you cannot change time he will do his best to attempt it.
This book delves into the life of a lonely man who longs to know why his father deserted him and his mother and shows how he refuses to face life and instead hides away from it in his machine. He makes up a life he could have lived and convinced himself that he does not need others, but over time, he begins to regret that he did not try to meet the girl of his dreams or make those close friends or be nicer to Tammy and his manager, a computer program that does not know it is only a program and acts like it is human and has a family, with a wife who is a spreadsheet program. She knows they are not real, but she goes along with it to keep him happy in his delusion. Truly this is a story of a boy and his father and their attempts to connect until it all falls apart and he loses his father, this incredibly innovative, creative, and emotional book will keep you turning the pages until the end dying to find out if you can cheat fate.
Quotes
…but unfortunately, it’s true: time does heal. It will do so whether you like it or not, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. If you’re not careful, time will take away everything that ever hurt you, everything you have ever lost, and replace it with knowledge. Time is a machine: it will convert your pain into experience. Raw data will be compiled, will be translated into a more comprehensible language. The individual events of your life will be transmuted into another substance called memory and in the mechanism something will be lost and you will never be able to reverse it, you will never again have the original moment back in its uncategorized, preprocessed state. It will force you to move on and you will not have a choice in the matter.
--Charles Yu (How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe p 54)
If I could be half the person my dog is, I would be twice the human I am.
--Charles Yu (How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe p 65)
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what they are talking about. You can get the general gist of what it means in normal terms. I do not understand how the Star Trek: The Next Generation Enterprise Core worked, but I have general ideas when the plot centers around the engine core blowing up.This book centers on a thirty-year-old time machine tech, Charles Yu who spends most of his time in his time capsule named Tammy (who has a self-esteem problem and cries often). His job is to go back in time to help other time travelers who have damaged their machines and fix them so they can get back to the present. He finds it sad that when you can go to any point in your timeline and visit (you must NEVER meet yourself or bad things will happen) they choose the worst moment of their life and relive it over and over again, hoping for a different outcome which never happens, because no matter how hard you try, you can not change the past. The universe will not allow it.
Charles got into the time machine business as a young child. His father came up with a theory on how to make time travel possible and the two spend ten years working on building a time machine. When things do not work out as planned, Charles's father hops into his new time machine and disappears, leaving him and his mother alone. He is forced to drop out of school and get work as a tech and his mother ends up renting a machine that replays one hour on a loop for however many years you pay for. She plays out a dinner with Charles and her husband as holograms. Charles, in person, rarely visits her, which he feels guilty about. Charles has shut himself off from the world by essentially living in his time machine with a science fiction dog and Tammy for company. Every few years or so he goes back home for maintenance of his vehicle, and while years have passed in his life a day or maybe a week has only passed at home.
After returning for maintenance he shows up to pick up his machine and he sees another him step out of a machine and instead of running away, which is what he is supposed to do, he shoots his future shelf and climbs into the time machine and is now in a time loop. Inside the machine is a book that is partly filled out and shows him how to find his father, who can possibly save him. But time is running out and as he tries to accept his impending death, he cannot quite give up so easily, even though you cannot change time he will do his best to attempt it.
This book delves into the life of a lonely man who longs to know why his father deserted him and his mother and shows how he refuses to face life and instead hides away from it in his machine. He makes up a life he could have lived and convinced himself that he does not need others, but over time, he begins to regret that he did not try to meet the girl of his dreams or make those close friends or be nicer to Tammy and his manager, a computer program that does not know it is only a program and acts like it is human and has a family, with a wife who is a spreadsheet program. She knows they are not real, but she goes along with it to keep him happy in his delusion. Truly this is a story of a boy and his father and their attempts to connect until it all falls apart and he loses his father, this incredibly innovative, creative, and emotional book will keep you turning the pages until the end dying to find out if you can cheat fate.
Quotes
…but unfortunately, it’s true: time does heal. It will do so whether you like it or not, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. If you’re not careful, time will take away everything that ever hurt you, everything you have ever lost, and replace it with knowledge. Time is a machine: it will convert your pain into experience. Raw data will be compiled, will be translated into a more comprehensible language. The individual events of your life will be transmuted into another substance called memory and in the mechanism something will be lost and you will never be able to reverse it, you will never again have the original moment back in its uncategorized, preprocessed state. It will force you to move on and you will not have a choice in the matter.
--Charles Yu (How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe p 54)
If I could be half the person my dog is, I would be twice the human I am.
--Charles Yu (How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe p 65)
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LibraryThing member MGD_L
I agree with fyrefly98 and believe that the 'recommendation' portion of the review was a succinct way of discussing the genre-spanning core of the book. The critics that disliked the book may have been disappointed with the lack of science fiction but the author holds the subject matter in high
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regard, (see the author's thank-you notes). I enjoyed this book thoroughly and, if one can enjoy a far from straight-forward genre and a less-than linear plot, I believe one will appreciate more universal themes of the familial and personal choice. Show Less
LibraryThing member lorax
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe isn't really science fiction; it's more of a modern literary novel in a science fictional setting. While the trappings of SF are present, from time machines (the protagonist is a time machine repairman) to artificial pocket universes, the concerns
That's not to say the time travel is metaphorical or symbolic - it's there, and it's real in the book, even if it's not at all rigorous and if the sorts of questions and setup that would characterize an SF novel are absent. Rather, the real-in-universe time travel is used to explore the questions that interest the author - memory, the nature of consciousness, and of course the protagonists' relationship with his missing father, who he spends much of the book searching for. When Charles (the character shares the author's name, which is a rather large pointer to the self-referential nature of the novel) is trapped in a time loop, an SF reader would expect the novel to be concerned with whether and how he gets out, which would depend on something he does - instead, he spends his time thinking about the loop and what it means for - you guessed it - his relationship with his father.
It's an interesting book, and I'm glad that I read it (three stars for me means "solidly average", not the condemnation it is from some), but dedicated SF readers may be disappointed (especially since the book starts out seeming more like a straightforward SF story).
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of the novel are the hoariest of mainstream cliches - the relationship between father and son, regret and introspection.That's not to say the time travel is metaphorical or symbolic - it's there, and it's real in the book, even if it's not at all rigorous and if the sorts of questions and setup that would characterize an SF novel are absent. Rather, the real-in-universe time travel is used to explore the questions that interest the author - memory, the nature of consciousness, and of course the protagonists' relationship with his missing father, who he spends much of the book searching for. When Charles (the character shares the author's name, which is a rather large pointer to the self-referential nature of the novel) is trapped in a time loop, an SF reader would expect the novel to be concerned with whether and how he gets out, which would depend on something he does - instead, he spends his time thinking about the loop and what it means for - you guessed it - his relationship with his father.
It's an interesting book, and I'm glad that I read it (three stars for me means "solidly average", not the condemnation it is from some), but dedicated SF readers may be disappointed (especially since the book starts out seeming more like a straightforward SF story).
Show Less
LibraryThing member scott.neigh
First started this novel over a year ago then life -- don't remember if it was school or if it was the book deadline -- intervened and I only got half way through. Which should not at all be taken as a comment on its quality. Recently, I started back from the beginning, and it was just as clever
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and well-written as I remembered, though also just as melancholy in tone. Worth reading. Show Less
Awards
Locus Award (Finalist — First Novel — 2011)
SF Site Reader's Choice (8 — 2010)
John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (Finalist — 2011)
The New York Times Notable Books of the Year (Fiction & Poetry — 2010)
Locus Recommended Reading (First Novel — 2010)
Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Science Fiction and Fantasy — 2010)
Time Magazine's Best Books of the Year (Fiction — 2010)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2010-09-07
Physical description
256 p.; 8.64 inches
ISBN
0307379205 / 9780307379207