How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe [Kindle Edition]

Charles Yu has a really neat concept, and some extremely clever and funny ideas, but this book was extremely hard for me to get into. Despite all that it had going for it, the early chapters felt like work to read, and it was a very easy book for me to put down. I ended up reading most of it in very small segments, and I never spent more than half an hour with it at a time. I just never felt either truly invested in the characters or truly entertained by them, and I think that Yu needed me to feel either one or the other for this to really work.

That being said, this would probably be a very appealing book to anyone who likes their fiction on the experimental, and there are some very witty ideas and moments.

Colson Whitehead thinks that this book is cool as hell. I have some reservations about that.

Yu grapples with time travel problems and paradox, physics and metaphysics, and the unmathematical mysteries of the human heart. The protagonist, who is also named Charles Yu, is an emotionally stunted time machine technician who gets himself into a time loop, armed with a cryptic message from his future self. He writes a book that his future self has already written. The title of the book that Charles writes (re-writes) is also the title of this book: How to live safely in a science fictional universe. So which book are we reading? Is this physical book different from the book in the story? Is the question unnecessary? The paradoxes quickly pile up in a logical and slightly dismaying sequence, until the plot becomes very confusing.

Yu has thought a lot about the complications and ramifications of time travel, presenting them to the reader in rapid sequence, all with the laid back attitude that says these things are already well known, so try to keep up. The tone of the early pages is a bit jaded, but when he gets into emotional space-time, the tone changes, becoming more sympathetic. I liked the emotional parts of this book a lot more than the technical ones.In the emotional part of the story Charles revisits his childhood, his mother, and his father, and we learn about their tortured Huis Clos relationships. They mistreated each other for years, but they love each other nevertheless, and he wants to return to them, if he only could.

Yu makes lengthy asides on various topics, from the mathematics and physics of space-time to the personal nature of failure. He writes in plain, unadorned prose, at times conveying profound emotion and meaning, at other times boring me half to death. His explanations about events, truth and volitional interstices often just get in the way of the story, and left me sorely tempted to skim ahead until the story started moving again. I wish Yu had spent more time with the emotional universe, less in the technical one. He has a gift for both, but the emotional one is much more satisfying. This is his first novel, and I think he has a bright future. Three stars.

I loved this awesome book. It's a word-lover's feast! It blew my mind, literally. I'm a literature person, not a science person at all, but that didn't matter much. I did Google a few words, but mostly I figured out things in context. My vocabulary is definitely larger. That's always a plus when reading a fabulous book: it takes you to places you've never been. And that's an understatement with this spectacular little tome.

The story is lyrical, exciting, surprising, elegant, funny, sad and ultimately, wise. It's a masterpiece of imagination that demands to be read with an open mind because the lines between past, present and future often blur or completely disappear. I found myself in an unexplored literary landscape marveling at the words on my skin and the exotic language piercing my heart. I underlined most of the book, but one of my favorite lines is on page 86: "After a night out in the lost half city, you end up with dust of dead robots in your hair, or someone's dreams, or their nightmares."

This is the story of Charles Yu who lives in Minor Universe 31, a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction. And yes, paradox fluctuates like the stock market, as the back cover states. I laughed out loud on page 13 at the reference to 'Linus Skywalker' son of Luke who has father issues: "You have no idea what it's like, man. To grow up with the freaking savior of the universe as your dad." The author's sharp wit, sarcasm and sense of humor are worth the price of the book.

Charles Yu is a time travel technician. The main issue with time travel is that everyone wants to do the one thing they can't and shouldn't do: change the past. Therein lies Mr. Yu's job security. But the larger story is his relationship with and search for his father, who invented time travel, then disappeared. The father/son relationship is the beating heart of the beautiful story.

Wildly Kafkaesque one moment, then comic sci-fi the next, "How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe" is peppered with witty tongue-in-cheek sarcasm from TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and hilarious one-liners from lonely sexbots. What is real and what is not is for you to figure out.

Mr. Yu is a startling new voice in this undefineable genre. When I finished the book, I realized it was a prayer to language and the power and glory of living in the present moment and not letting your one precious life pass you by. I'll be reading this book over and over. It's that good.