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Vintage

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: A Novel

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Description

From the National Book Award–⁠winning author of Interior Chinatown, comes a razor-sharp, hilarious, and touching story of a son searching for his father ... through quantum space-time. Every day in Minor Universe 31 people get into time machines and try to change the past. That's where Charles Yu, time travel technician, steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally. When he's not taking client calls, Yu visits his mother and searches for his father, who invented time travel and then vanished. The key to locating his father may be found in a book. It's called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and somewhere inside it is information that will help him. It may even save his life. Read more

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage (June 28, 2011)


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0307739457


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 52


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.2 ounces


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.02 x 0.75 x 7.97 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #225,129 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #4,082 in Space Operas #6,408 in Science Fiction Adventures #13,015 in Literary Fiction (Books)


#4,082 in Space Operas:


#6,408 in Science Fiction Adventures:


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • reflections on loss and on fathers & sons, within an awesome, creative, & funny time-traveling framework
I have a limited tolerance for science fiction. I loved Lethem's Gun, with Occasional Music (crime noir in sci-fi setting) and liked his As She Climbed Across the Table (sci-fi relationship story, maybe). I enjoyed Gibson's Neuromancer . At the high risk of sounding pretentious, I like "literary science fiction"; Yu, in his interview at the end of the book, describes his inspiration, a book that "handled actual science...without watering it down, and yet it was clearly Serious Fiction, ... the kind that was in the Sunday book review sections." This book definitely falls in that category. The main character, Charles Yu, is a time machine technician in a science fictional universe. He has spent the last decade living in his time machine (a little bigger than a telephone booth), racing around and saving clients who get stuck. For example, Linus Skywalker going back in time to try and kill his father Luke: "You have no idea what it's like, man. To grow up with the freaking savior of the universe as your dad" (p13). Or a woman who wants to have been there when her grandmother died. (But while you can visit the past, you can't change it or you risk splitting off into a parallel universe in which the past was as you have changed it...or something.) I loved two things about this book. First, the science fiction is so fun. I laughed out loud several times. From running into Luke Skywalker's patricidal son to making out with some alien ("Not human exactly. Humanish. Close enough that she looked awesome... She was a good kisser. I just hope that was her mouth" p52) to Charles's manager, "an old copy of Microsoft Middle Manager 3.0 ... The only thing is, and this isn't really that big a deal, is that Phil thinks he's a real person" (p40). Lots of managerial "yo dog" and "I'm still your homie?" ensues. Second, so much of the book resonated emotionally. In the margins of my copy, I over and over have jotted down notes of empathy. "My thoughts, normally bunched together, wrapped in gauze, insistent, urgent, impatient, one moment to the next, living in what I realize is, in essence, a constant state of emergency" (p122). "I bet there's a secret door! This is so cool! I'm so smart! It's like my very own adventure story. ... The only problem is that the TM-31 [where the book is] is nowhere to be found. I guess I'm not so smart. I am kind of an idiot" (p128). While I didn't love the main character, I feel him. Occasionally, early in the book, I wished for more action. And I don't really understand what happened at the end. But it was still totally worth the ride, and I'll check out Yu's earlier short story collection, as well as Saunders' Civil War Land in Bad Decline , which Yu cites as an inspiration in his interview at the end. Finally, one of my favorite passages: "I modified it slightly to pry open really tiny temporary quantum windows into other universes, through which I am able to spy on my alternate selves. I've seen thirty-nine of them, these varieties of me, and about thirty-fave of them seem like total jerks. I guess I've come to terms with that, with what it probably means. If 89.7 percent of the other versions of you are [jerks], chances are you aren't exactly mister personality yourself" (p10). Note on objectionable content: Some reference to the existence of sex with robots but not explicit. A smattering of strong language. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2010 by David Evans
    • A stellar debut novel, at turns both hilarious and moving.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The premise seemed wonderfully nutty: Take a universe populated with the standard sci-fi tropes and concepts, then set a story inside it, fully self-aware of its genre trappings. I also noted the metafictional conceit of the main character being one Charles Yu (the author of this novel). As it turns out, the meta goes even deeper with that, as "How to Live Safely..." is also a book which exists in the narrative itself - specifically, one that is being created/written by the author/protagonist by the very act of, and at the same time as, his reading of it. This is the kind of thing you'd better be prepared for: Seriously, totally nuts. What's even better is that this mind-bending and often hilarious approach is only one side to the novel. The other side, as it turns out, is much more introspective and even slightly morose; we discover that time machines, for instance, are fueled not by some made-up radioactive isotope - but by the extraordinarily powerful elements of memory and regret. We're told that 99% of people who use a time machine never visit the far-flung future or the historical past - but instead return to the scene of their worst mistake, again and again. Knowing human nature, this immediately rang as profoundly, instinctively true. The main plot of the book concerns not a time-space battle between warring factions or any other overplayed, meaningless trope - but rather the protagonist's search for his father (whom he only ever connected with when they were trying to were trying to build that first time machine in their garage), and what was lost. Most of us, we are told, are trapped in our own time loops, and they're ones of our own making. It's not a perfect book; after introducing richly funny bits in the beginning like meeting Luke Skywalker's kid son, bratty and resentful, the author seemingly forgets this element - the idea of a universe which casually contains not just sci-fi concepts like time-travel, but also sci-fi characters such as those from the Star Wars franchise. Granted, an overabundance of such would have devolved the novel into yet another goofy SF parody, and the novel that we have is one I much prefer, but it would have been nice to see that delicious concept used just a little bit more than it is. That said, this was an incredibly engaging, incredibly compelling novel. I can't wait to see what Yu does next. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2012 by Don

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