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Sorry Please Thank You: Stories

3.62 of 5 stars 3.62 · rating details · 594 ratings · 160 reviews

The author of the widely praised debut novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe returns with a hilarious, heartbreaking, and utterly original collection of short stories.

A big-box store employee is confronted by a zombie during the graveyard shift, a problem that pales in comparison to his inability to ask a coworker out on a date . . . A fighter leads his...more

Hardcover, 240 pages

Published July 24th 2012 by Pantheon

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Jul 25, 2012 Kyle Muntz rated it 5 of 5 stars

This collection was so good I read the first 100 pages in one sitting. It's mostly made up of two types of stories: more narrative, character oriented pieces, that play with genre in the way Yu is really known for. For a lot of people these are probably the highlight of the collection, but I enjoyed the rest of them as well. They're more disassociated, and read like meditations on the poetry of loneliness, subjectivity, meta-textuality, etc--the same themes as the rest of the collection, but mor...more

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Aug 16, 2012 Pantheon Books added it

Shelves: fiction, 2012-summer

ABOUT THE BOOK: The author of the widely praised debut novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe returns with a hilarious, heartbreaking, and utterly original collection of short stories.

A big-box store employee is confronted by a zombie during the graveyard shift, a problem that pales in comparison to his inability to ask a coworker out on a date . . . A fighter leads his band of virtual warriors, thieves, and wizards across a deadly computer-generated landscape, but does he have...more

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May 20, 2013 Clay rated it 2 of 5 stars

The line is not always explicit, but it’s always there – the line between craft and art.

By “craft” in this case, I mean the ability to tell a story that draws in readers with character, plot and some substance. “Art,” in its most esoteric form, can delight even without such bourgeois affectations, though the most successful forms of art, at least to me, are those that are solidly based in a mastery of craft.

Almost all of the books reviewed here are clearly in the category of craft, and primarily...more

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Mar 31, 2013 Alan rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Mopey and dissociated cubicle drones

Recommended to Alan by: Previous work

I actually liked Charles Yu's novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe quite a lot (though I know not everyone did). This newer short-story collection, though, did not strike nearly as many sparks for me. It's a very slight work, a short collection of stories, made even sparser-seeming by widely-spaced paragraphs and, in one case, by splitting up each paragraph to its own page.

The book is divided up into sections—"Sorry," "Please" and "Thank You," obviously—but there didn't seem...more

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Mar 27, 2013 samkrunch rated it 4 of 5 stars

So, I liked this more than How to Live Safely. Wasn't a huge fan of the stories with a heavy fantasy/scifi emphasis, but there were some good ones in here. My favorites --

(Warning! There are possible spoilers ahead.)

Standard Loneliness Package: A company has developed a technology for transferring emotional experiences .. and they outsource all the unpleasant experiences (funerals, sickness, losing your job) to a help center in India, where the main character works and falls in love with a fema...more

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Feb 18, 2013 Denny rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013

I loved Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, about a time travel machine repairman searching for his lost father. Most of Yu's short stories in this collection lean heavily on the same concept of a science fiction trope explored as an allegory for some deep crisis of introspection in adult life. When you come across that idea on its own, as I did reading How To Live Safely, it's brilliant. But when you read a bunch of those similar stories back-to-pack, it starts to s...more

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Jan 15, 2013 Matt Stalbaum rated it 4 of 5 stars

Working along the lines of Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, Charles Yu's stories tackle a myriad of science fiction and fantasy topics - multiverse identities, MMORPG heroes, companies that sell you cures for emotions, companies that let others feel your emotions for you, red shirt deaths, etc. - with humor, originality, and a keen sense of human sadness. His "heroes" are regular people living through extraordinary times, with the indifference that adaptation inevitably instills. Or,...more

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Nov 24, 2012 Hollowspine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Sorry Please Thank You contains stories about people in the act of self realization, questioning their self, questioning what is real, trying to turn their real self into someone else, realizing others selves for them. It was sometimes hard to follow, but always interesting.

The stories are similar to George Saunders' in that Yu takes society as it is and spins it around, often creating worlds/situations that are satirical and hilarious. Most of his stories have a more sci-fi flavor to them than...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars

I am in a hospice.

I have been here before. A regular client.

I am holding a pen.

I have just written something on a notepad in front of me.

My husband is gone.

He died years ago.

Today is the tenth anniversary of his death.

I have Alzheimer’s, I think.

A memory of my husband surfaces, like a white-hot August afternoon, resurfacing in the cool water of November.

I tear off the sheet of paper.

I read it to myself.

It is a suicide note.

I raise a glass to my mouth, swallow a pill. Catch a glance of my note to...more I am in a hospice.

I have been here before. A regular client.

I am holding a pen.

I have just written something on a notepad in front of me.

My husband is gone.

He died years ago.

Today is the tenth anniversary of his death.

I have Alzheimer’s, I think.

A memory of my husband surfaces, like a white-hot August afternoon, resurfacing in the cool water of November.

I tear off the sheet of paper.

I read it to myself.

It is a suicide note.

I raise a glass to my mouth, swallow a pill. Catch a glance of my note to the world.

The fail-safe kicks on, the system overrides. I close the ticket. I’m out just in time, but as I leave this dying mind, I feel the consciousness losing its structure. Not closing down. Opening. As it dies, I feel it opening up, like a box whose walls fall away, or a maybe a flowering plant, turning towards the sun.

***

Charles Yu’s debut novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe was one of my top five books for 2010. A meta-science fiction narrative that wilfully, gleefully wrapped itself up in all manner of time travel paradoxes, it was at once brilliantly conceived, laugh-out-loud funny, and vicious in its density of ideas. Sorry Please Thank You, his second collection of short stories and his first book since How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, is a welcome, light-hearted follow-up that continues to showcase Yu’s caustic wit and intellect in new and interesting ways.

Sorry Please Thank You is a collection of thirteen stories split into four smaller subsections: Sorry, Please, Thank You, and All of the Above. Sorry, the first section, is about individuals seeking to shirk their feelings and responsibilities—deliberately working to, and in some cases paying great sums of money to void their emotions and sidestep failure. In the collection’s first story, “Standard Loneliness Package,” an awkward call centre worker stationed in Bangalore absorbs the feelings of others—taking on an individual’s fear as they confront their boss, or their grief at the funeral of a loved one. Naturally, depression, anxiety, and all manner of mental and psychological issues ripple through a workplace of insular avatars all designed to take an emotional beating every minute of their lives. “First Person Shooter” is a loose Walmart shopper-parody, as two customer service reps reflect on their own stagnation while watching as a self-aware zombie shuffles through the store. “Troubleshooting” is a smattering of Dr. Phil-style romantic advice for the IT crowd, expounding on the dangers of living through technology—more than that, expecting technology to do your living for you.

The second section in the collection, Please, is more personal than the first. “Hero Absorbs Major Damage” is a contemporary, Diablo-esque spin on the old ’90s cartoon Reboot, using RPG stats and tracking to highlight the successes and failures of a fractured in-game family, and in the end, both confronting and removing “God”—the player—from the equation, embracing one’s choices as their own. “Human for Beginners” offers a segment of an alien species handbook—a guide for understanding the strangeness of extended family connections (and as someone whose extended family is very alien and unknown to him, this entry was particularly insightful). “Inventory” is broken paragraph story starring the author, describing what makes a man into a man—or more appropriately, the man he thinks he should be. This story is very much what its title implies: an inventory, of accountability, of blame, and of reason—reasons why the unnamed “she” of the story has at one point abandoned the author, or why he abandoned her. “Open” is one of the more on-the-nose stories in the collection, using the concept of an apartment and the lives inside as a diorama, with realities flipped; the couple, broken and spiteful towards one another within the diorama apartment, live their exterior lives “in reality” as performance artists playing to a crowd of their best friends who want only the best for them and do not see the loss of love that exists right in front of them. The final story of the Please section, “Note to Self,” is about as meta an exercise as anything from How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. It presents—and answers—the age-old question of what one might say to oneself if presented with your double, or in this case, doubles spread across any number of universes. As it turns out, not a whole hell of a lot beyond basic mind games.

Thank You is a more emotionally removed set of stories focussed on adding filters over life, to lessen the impact of some of its more challenging and horrific aspects, and to continue to exist in safe, albeit muted, ways. It is the weakest section of this book, as it repeats, in less interesting ways, some of the themes presented in the first two segments. “Yeoman” is a classic behind-the-camera take on the self-aware Starfleet “redshirt”—the crewman who will, undoubtedly, die on some eventual away mission, so that the more important members of the ships crew will survive another week of potboiler narratives. Though the message of valuing life for the sake of one’s family if not one’s own existence is strong, it is one of the more obviously plotted tales in the collection, in the end offering more surface texture than anything particularly deep or introspective. “Designer Emotion 67” presents an unintelligent CEO of a pharmaceutical company addressing a future of emotional band-aids designed to eliminate dread. This story works as an amusing companion piece to the first story in the collection, but treads too much of the same water to be effective on its own, feeling more like a straight-up comedy piece than any other story in the book. “The Book of Categories” plays with an interesting concept that I would love to see developed into something larger: an open-sourced bible of sorts—a symbolic wiki defining our world, or possibly an individual’s world, its pages and meanings forever in a state of flux as experiences change the course of lives in large and small ways. “Adult Contemporary” is the closest approximation to a literary The Truman Show I’ve come across. Again, it feels as if this story borrows and expands upon ideas presented in the collection’s first story, “Standard Loneliness Package,” through the purchasing of a life manufactured for pleasure, to remove oneself from their own less-than-ideal existence; however, “Adult Contemporary” is a bit more grounded in the here and now, using television and people’s willingness to live vicariously through the lives of their heroes and celebrities to indict those who seek escapism to the detriment of their own lives and the lives of those near and dear to them.

The final segment, All of the Above, consists only of the title story, “Sorry Please Thank You,” and is less a wholly realized tale in and of itself and more a final nail in the coffin of personality flaws spread bare by the previous twelve stories. It feels almost like an umbrella piece under which to collect all others. Interesting, but certainly the weakest link in an otherwise engaging collection.

Even in the collection’s “lesser” entries, Yu’s writing is always sharp, and very carefully crafted. He frequently employs literary paradoxes, playing words and meanings off one another in rhythmic ways that, more often than not, add a great deal of comedy to even the more emotionally dour stories. The second segment, Please is the strongest collection of stories, though if I had to point to one to read above all others it would likely be the very first story, “Standard Loneliness Package.” It is by far the most developed, both creatively and in terms of its characters.

That is, perhaps, my only true complaint with the collection—that some of the stories feel less developed than others, which is more apparent when placed one after the other, when their sometimes obvious similarities are made visible. Read separately, I think certain entries like “Yeoman,” “Designer Emotion 67,” and “Note to Self” would stand stronger, but when placed within the collection their highlights are dampened by the stories surrounding them.

Charles Yu is a little bit Philip K. Dick crossed with Joseph Heller or Kurt Vonnegut. Not a terribly original set of comparisons, I’m sorry to say, but it rings true nonetheless. Though Sorry Please Thank You doesn’t reach the same giddy heights as How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, it is in itself a bright, highly amusing collection, and another notch in the belt of an original, accomplished creative voice.(less)

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Sep 01, 2012 Grady McCallie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: metafiction

Very post-modern, these stories draw on science fiction technology or fantasy tropes to tell metafictions. Several play with the choice of narrator: an avatar in an online game; the author's alter ego; multiple selves from across the multiverse. The dominant mood is melancholy, underpinned by existential angst, with an occasional ray of happiness breaking through, if you don't look at it very hard. But the stories are more clever than moving, and several of the characters seem kind of pathetic,...more

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Aug 22, 2012 Ryandake rated it 4 of 5 stars

in my experience, there's generally two geographical locations for Charles Yu's works: Out There on the Edge, and So Far Out There I Can't Follow Him. this book is a mixed bag of both locations.

Out There on the Edge is a very very good place to be: reaching to that space is stretching, is moving arthritic thought processes, is growth, and a number of the stories in this book will encourage you, like a really good yoga teacher, on that path. plus, the stories can be very funny in places. in this...more

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Jul 25, 2012 Liviania rated it 4 of 5 stars

Charles Yu has been making a big splash. His short story collection THIRD CLASS SUPERHERO won him the 5 Under 35 Award from the National Book Foundation. Then he received the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award. Last year his debut novel HOW TO LIVE SAFELY IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE came out to near universal acclaim including being named a New York Times notable book and 2011 Best Book of the Year by such publications as Time Magazine and io9. He comfortably straddles science fiction and liter...more Charles Yu has been making a big splash. His short story collection THIRD CLASS SUPERHERO won him the 5 Under 35 Award from the National Book Foundation. Then he received the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award. Last year his debut novel HOW TO LIVE SAFELY IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE came out to near universal acclaim including being named a New York Times notable book and 2011 Best Book of the Year by such publications as Time Magazine and io9. He comfortably straddles science fiction and literary fiction. Now he returns to short stories with a collection containing works that have previously appeared in publications as varied as The Oxford-American, Playboy, and THE THACKERY T. LAMBSHEAD CABINET OF CURIOSITIES.

SORRY PLEASE THANK YOU is divided into four sections: Sorry, Please, Thank You, and All of the Above. It's a clever idea, but the division doesn't feel organic. Many of the stories in different sections are preoccupied with the same themes. Yu continually returns to pondering the authenticity of relationships and satisfaction or dissatisfaction with one's self.

But here's the really important thing about Yu: he's fiercely funny. Sometimes he goes overboard with the meta or postmodern formatting. It works when there's really something to think about when you untangle what he's saying. Other times it's just flash for no good reason. Maybe I just really didn't like "Human for Beginners." It starts promising, then gets pleasantly weird, then fast becomes tedious.

If you can't tell by my last statement, not every story in SORRY PLEASE THANK YOU is a winner. But the high points shine brightly and come fairly frequently. The collection opens with the one-two punch of "Standard Loneliness Package" and "First Person Shooter." "Standard Loneliness Package" imagines a future where the rich pay other people to feel their pain, guilt, and other less pleasant emotions. On the other hand, people in dire straights mortgage their lives and other people rent it for escape. The protagonist attempts to romance coworker Kirthi, a heartbreak specialist. In this story, Yu pulls off the darker side of human emotion beautifully. "First Person Shooter" also deals with a romance between coworkers. But this time they work in a WalMart expy and are trying to deal with a zombie roaming the store.

The Please section is the longest and weakest. But "Hero Absorbs Major Damage" and "Open" are both must reads. "Hero Absorbs Major Damage" explore the typical RPG through the point of view of an avatar who tries to lead his team as best he can and sometimes worships the fallible young deity Fred. "Open" begins perfectly. It shows off Yu's command of language and his playful universes. Plus, it ends with quite the hook.

"We need to talk about that," I said.
"Why? Why do we always have to talk everything to death?"
"The word 'door' is floating in the middle of our apartment. You don't think maybe this is something we need to discuss?"
- p. 131, ARC

What follows is an intriguing story about identity and intimacy.

Thank You contains "Yeoman" as well as the best story in the collection "Designer Emotion 67." "Yeoman" is for fans of John Scalzi's REDSHIRTS: A Novel with Three Codas and Galaxy Quest. When a man receives a promotion to crew's yeoman, he realize it means he's going to die. That's not an option, considering he has a baby on the way. It's a hilarious send up of science fiction tropes and the yeoman's wife is priceless. "Designer Emotion 67" is a transcript of PharmaLife, Inc.'s annual report to shareholders in 2050. "The Depression-industrial complex has been built (175)" and now they're exploring the possibilities in curing Dread. The CEO is cocky and brash and should probably have an intern edit his speech, but he does know what the shareholders are really after. Money. It's crazy yet plausible and funny in all the worst ways.

SORRY PLEASE THANK YOU ends on a dark note with eponymous story "Sorry Please Thank You." A suicide note on a bar napkin, it hovers somewhere between Yu's best and worst. It has his long, propulsive paragraphs were the narrator babbles, searching to make sense of something. It's preoccupied with human interaction. There's the strange bitterness about love. It may not be a highlight of the anthology, but it's a fitting end.

Fans of the short story and of Charles Yu should pick up a copy of SORRY PLEASE THANK YOU. (Although if you have no stomach for postmodernism, you might stay away.) Yu's work in this collection will further his standing with both the literary and sci-fi crowds. Six standouts in a collection of thirteen stories isn't bad at all. (less)

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Jul 06, 2012 Sean Hoade rated it 3 of 5 stars

I enjoy the work of Charles Yu. I liked his first collection of stories, Third-Class Superhero, and his novel, How to Live Safely in a Science-Fictional Universe, for their New Yorker-meets-quantum physics style. There's something inherently funny and interesting about the combination of worrying about marriages, employment, and family ties in the context of time travel, space travel, and alternate universes. That said, the well runs a bit dry in Sorry Please Thank You. About half of the stories...more

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Jun 27, 2012 Lacey rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a fairly eclectic compilation of stories by Yu. Because of this,I think the collection will appeal to a wide variety of people, but the collection (also because of this) is somewhat disjointed. If zombies are your thing (like you've actually a discussion with your friends over weapons of choice come the apocalypse), then you're going to enjoy "First Person Shooter." If philosophy is your bag (more specifically Metaphysics and possible universe theory), then you'll probably enjoy "Note to...more

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Jan 22, 2013 John Pappas rated it 4 of 5 stars

With prefatory quotes from Sapir and Whorf, Yu's fun and inventive meta-science fiction stories about longing and language revolve around the human need to think and feel and imagine in words in order to create or recreate one's self or one's world. The strongest ("Troubleshooting", "Standard Loneliness Package", "Hero Absorbs Major Damage") do this with maximal heart and pathos. Some of the stories ("The Book of Categories") have an inventive form along with that heart and sincere longing (alth...more

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Aug 02, 2012 Ryan I rated it 4 of 5 stars

The words 'sorry', 'please' and 'thank you' can be thrown around so fast and furious that the meaning of the words can feel thin – especially in an apology-happy country like Canada. But the ideas behind those words form the entirety of human interaction, observes the narrator in Charles Yu's final story from his short story collection (not coincidentally titled) 'Sorry Please Thank You.'

Even though the title suggests a bland and polite collection of pleasantness, Yu’s tales crackle with wild,...more The words 'sorry', 'please' and 'thank you' can be thrown around so fast and furious that the meaning of the words can feel thin – especially in an apology-happy country like Canada. But the ideas behind those words form the entirety of human interaction, observes the narrator in Charles Yu's final story from his short story collection (not coincidentally titled) 'Sorry Please Thank You.'

Even though the title suggests a bland and polite collection of pleasantness, Yu’s tales crackle with wild, genre-fueled ideas and clever experiments in form. The through-line of the collected stories seems to be injecting new life to overlooked and taken-for-granted things, filling them with big ideas along with a dash of humor.

Although he’s been mostly labeled a sci-fi author, Yu plays with meta-fiction, magic realism and even the zombie apocalypse. But no matter how weird and imaginative the idea, the stories have a surprisingly personal touch.

Featured in ‘Sorry Please Thank You’ are alternate-realities, lab-designed emotions and technology that allows one outsource their unwanted emotions. But it’s the humanity at the core of each of the stories that makes it stand out, from a red shirt yeoman facing certain death on an Enterprise-like ship, to a hulking warrior hero who realizes his god may be an adolescent boy playing video games. In one story the word “open” literally appears floating in the middle of a couples’ apartment, signaling a surreal end to their relationship.

The first and strongest story in the collection is ‘Standard Loneliness Package’, following a minimum wage-earning cubicle jockey who works for a company that outsources unwanted human emotions to its employees, from funeral grief to breakup pity.

Even the words ‘sorry’, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are used to divide up the sections, categorizing each story, and opening up thematic alternate-worlds for each phrase.

Complaints about the book are minor. Each story reads effortlessly and even the stories that don’t quite connect are over before you can flip to the next one. But some stories also end up feeling a little on the thin side.

Yu experiments with form in interesting ways with mostly successful results. One story describes the contents of a mystical book and gets a little too precious to earn a moving conclusion. But “Note To Self” follows a clever conversation between alternate-selves that ends on a surprisingly meditative and perplexing note.

Since his breakout novel, ‘How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe’ (which I haven’t read) – about a character also named Charles Yu who explores alternate realities – Yu has been praised by the likes of io9 as a promising new literary genre writer. In ‘Sorry Please Thank You’, it’s not hard to see why, and to see what worlds he'll visit next.
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Jun 27, 2012 Louise rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories

Sorry. Please. Thank you. They say that if you knew the words of these three phrases in any language, you can probably get by pretty well. Maybe if you can understand all the stories in here, you'll be able to get by in life? Overall, I found it to be like a less-successful Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang (which you should read if you haven't already). Each of the stories in here is a little bizarre in the way Twilight Zone episodes are bizarre.

Unfortunately, the stories were hit o...more

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Sep 19, 2012 April rated it 4 of 5 stars

I greatly enjoyed this collection of short stories from the author of Living Safely in A Science Fictional Universe. The stories are divided into collections. "Sorry," primarily about unhappy situations, the best (or worst) of which is a world where unhappy experiences and the associated emotions of sadness/grief/guilt/anger/shame can be outsourced for the right price. "Please" stories are less painfully sad, and explore a bit more about what it is like to be human. "Thank you" stories are more...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Laura Pearlman rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was in the mood for short stories, and I'd liked How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, so I thought this book might be a good choice. I was right.

Most of Charles Yu's characters have lives that are, in some way, unreal. Technically, I guess that's true of any fictional character, but these characters are aware that their lives are unreal.

My favorite stories in this collection are Standard Loneliness Package (a touching story about an unusual call center), First Person Shooter (an...more

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Nov 14, 2012 Chihoe Ho rated it 2 of 5 stars

"Sorry Please Thank You" is a mixed bag of post-modern short stories. Even with its contemporary influences of pop culture and science fiction, Charles Yu does a good job in capturing the humanistic aspects of society. A handful of stories, shall we file them under the "thank you (they were brilliant)" folder, were the ones that even the publisher/editor must have felt were the stronger ones, because they were highlighted on the book jacket - "a big-box store employee is confronted by a zombie d...more

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Mar 24, 2013 Jonathan rated it 5 of 5 stars

It's rare for me to find a short story collection that I thoroughly enjoy. All too often, I'll tell myself, "This is going to be the time that I actually enjoy a short story collection," and then mid-way through, I give up because I haven't felt any connection with what I'm reading. Yu's book was a rare and welcome exception; the only other one from my recent reading has been Kevin Wilson's Tunneling to the Center of the Earth.

Yu's stories take a mix of sci-fi or philosophical premises and play...more

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Feb 20, 2013 Jorge rated it 4 of 5 stars

Rather than tackling every story in this collection from Charles Yu, I’d say that what matters most about them is their luminous style, a strangely plain way to tell things happening far out there in a surrealistic universe—the same lucid insanity that pervades Yu’s novel “How to live safely in a science fictional universe.” Some of the stories are better than others (of course) and other readers would surely pick different favorites.

Mr. Yu’s style goes beyond post-modernism (open endings, undef...more Rather than tackling every story in this collection from Charles Yu, I’d say that what matters most about them is their luminous style, a strangely plain way to tell things happening far out there in a surrealistic universe—the same lucid insanity that pervades Yu’s novel “How to live safely in a science fictional universe.” Some of the stories are better than others (of course) and other readers would surely pick different favorites.

Mr. Yu’s style goes beyond post-modernism (open endings, undefined plots and mysterious character’s goals) to reach an exciting island of clarity. His prose is more thoughtful than gimmicky, and anything but stuffy. Beyond the stories’ unusual structures and formats, and the perhaps-all-too-frequent mocking of sci-fi and Twilight Zone stereotypes (an odd connection with Junot Diaz’s famous novel about Oscar Wao’s life), Yu gets away with a lot of philosophizing in the mix—like when saying “..maybe a hole had opened up in the world, and movies and poems were coming through into reality. Or maybe we were the movie, or the poem, and this was our chance to go into the real world.”

Some of the stories have a sad, overcast tone. It’s as if when we finally get everything we hope for in a virtually-simulated future—where one’s never sure what’s real—it won’t be as bright and awesome as we’d hoped for.

The collection is a pleasant experience for readers that have turned jaded after attempting to tackle more heady (and confusing) storytelling by modern masters. If you like it, perhaps should try to jump back in time, into the depths of Yu’s early ‘science fictional’ novel.

There’s been a whole body of experimental literature in the lines of Yu’s world—giants like Julio Cortázar and his Rubik’s cube-like novels—but recently most of what passes as experiment (“A visit from the good squad” comes to mind) doesn’t seem genuine enough and pales in comparison with those early explorers. In this new world of false bravado, where every writer needs to show off being a genius, Mr. Yu is a real new talent, exploring so well and so naturally the boundaries of story-telling.
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Jul 06, 2012 Kendra rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: dystopia-science-fiction

This is the first book by Charles Yu that I have read. He is fairly well known for his debut novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, which received accolades from respectable places, peoples, and institutions. I know nothing about this first book, but I hear The New York Times and Wired magazine seemed to like it.

Sorry Please Thank You: Stories is a different kind of animal. This is a book you'll either love or hate or feel absolutely nothing while reading. The individual st

...more

Sorry Please Thank You: Stories is a different kind of animal. This is a book you'll either love or hate or feel absolutely nothing while reading. The individual stories are a mixed bag, a mélange of speculative, introspective, and straight-out science fiction. Some of the premises are highly original.

Consider "Open," a tale which defies explanation but nevertheless manages to be both touching and thought-provoking--and others are less so--I'm thinking of "Yeoman" here, a tale which tips its hat to both Star Trek and satire--and still others fall somewhere in between.

"First Person Shooter" mixes standard blue-collar disillusionment with zombies and WorldMart (no allusions there, at all ...).

"Hero Absorbs Major Damage" blurs the boundary between multiplayer gaming and the real world, but mostly serves as a vehicle to explore notions of selflessness and heroism.

"Note to Self" is a trippy journey through one man's discussion with himself (or himselves) in the multiverse.

"Standard Loneliness Package," on the other hand, explores the ramifications of out-sourcing our feelings to others, and the problems with distancing ourselves from our own experiences.

The only two stories that slipped the hook were, in my opinion, "Designer Emotion 67" and "Sorry Please Thank You," the final and titular short story. "Designer Emotion 67" is humorous, but fell flat mostly because it goes boldly where so many others have gone before--and unlike "Yeoman," which is similarly unoriginal, it doesn't give us a central character to empathize with. "Sorry Please Thank You" is a suicide note left in a bar, blurring the line between the character-as-narrator and Yu-as-narrator. I didn't not like it because it wasn't deep, or because it didn't bring up important questions about identity and experience, but because it was a dissonant note amongst the other stories--a humorless way to conclude a series that is generally upbeat.

In general, I enjoyed this collection of short stories. I'll be bookmarking a couple of them for use in future syllabi. At his best, Yu shares a love of absurdity with Douglass Adams, and an affinity for blunt irony with Philip K Dick. At his worst, Yu is still far from being a poor writer. I recommend Sorry Please Thank You: Stories to the casual science fiction lover--given its internal diversity, this book may serve as a good litmus test for the varieties of science fiction literature out there.

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Aug 01, 2012 Sam rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories, sci-fi, fantasy

I was lent an advanced copy of this book, and was fairly excited. The cover was nicely textured as was the book itself and the stories discussed on the book jacket intrigued me.

Little did I know that those stories were in the first section and the rest just would not be up to par.

The "Sorry"section is full of stories that are unique, intriguing, and attractive to anyone who likes sci-fi. I quickly read the whole section when I meant to only read one sorry.

"Please"starts out with a good pen and...more

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Mar 24, 2013 Kaitlyn rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: library, literary

I'm still not sure how I feel about this collection, as a whole. If you've read Yu's novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, what he serves up here won't surprise: surreal, experimental, with pop-culture and scifi influences. And yet.

Most of these stories seem to be riffing off the same chords: living in reality, mediated and/or sanitized experiences. I feel like, in writing the first story "Standard Loneliness Package," Yu has said pretty much everything, and the rest of the...more

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Jun 11, 2012 John rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-story-collection, science-fiction, fiction

A Brilliant Short Story Collection from Charles Yu

One of the most celebrated emerging writers of literary science fiction of our time, Charles Yu’s magnificent “Sorry Please Thank You” is yet another remarkable literary achievement, demonstrating both the ample originality and vitality of his writing. Yu has breathed astonishingly new life into such time-honored fantasy, science fiction and horror tropes as zombies, space opera and Artificial Intelligence into his latest short story collection;...more A Brilliant Short Story Collection from Charles Yu

One of the most celebrated emerging writers of literary science fiction of our time, Charles Yu’s magnificent “Sorry Please Thank You” is yet another remarkable literary achievement, demonstrating both the ample originality and vitality of his writing. Yu has breathed astonishingly new life into such time-honored fantasy, science fiction and horror tropes as zombies, space opera and Artificial Intelligence into his latest short story collection; one which will resonate strongly with fellow admirers of science fiction and fantasy as well as a more mainstream literary audience which recognizes just how astute and humorous Charles Yu is as an observer of modern society and its emphasis on science and technology. The opening story, “Standard Loneliness Package”, is a witty post-cyberpunk tale of sharing one’s emotions that reads as a hilarious cross between Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash” and Gary Shteyngart’s “Super Sad True Love Story”. It’s followed by the irresistibly funny “First Person Shooter” about a department store clerk thinking how he’ll win the affections of a fellow employee while contending with a zombie obsessed in making her own “fashion statement”; Yu’s zombie tale is the most original one I have stumbled upon in years. “Hero Absorbs Major Damage” chronicles the epic quest of one noble warrior leading a ragtag band of warriors across a desolate, often dangerous, computer-generated landscape. “Yeoman” is a hysterically humorous send-up of “Star Trek”, describing a lowly crewmember’s feelings as he finds himself tempting fate as the “expendable” member of a starship’s “away team” as the starship hurls deeper into the “final frontier”. “Designer Emotion 67” is a gung-ho market research “report” of a new drug developed in the middle of the 21st Century, and one replete with ample wit of some futuristic Madison Avenue advertising executive. While others have compared him with the likes of Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Yu is making a most persuasive case as the greatest living satirist in modern American fiction not named Gary Shteyngart; he is most certainly the finest writing in science fiction today.
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Jul 26, 2012 Kim rated it 4 of 5 stars

I received this book as an advanced copy from Goodreads to review.

I wasn't sure how I'd like a book of short stories, but I'm glad I read this book. The author takes the reader into various zany impossible situations or alternate realities that mostly were pretty humorous and thought provoking. There are zombies that are no match for the fear of asking a coworker out, a guilt & emotion transfer consultant taking the place of people in their tricky ordeals, the trials and choices of a video...more

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Mar 12, 2013 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Yu's "Sorry Please Thank You" is quite good, and is a very, very quick read - I read the entire thing on a single flight. I think the most profound story is "troubleshooting".

The jacket compares Yu's writing to Douglas Adams and Philip Dick, but I think the better comparison is to a less fluid Ted Chiang- I think that as Yu gains more experience, he will really grow into into a fantastic writer.

Many of his stories play with traditional story structure, and most succeed (eg "troubleshooting"), b...more

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Aug 29, 2012 Bill Breedlove rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a great, great collection of "stories" and some items that may or may not fit one's definition of a "story." The first story in the collection, "Standard Loneliness Package" was my favorite. It is somewhat similar to the satire of S.G. Browne in following an idea to its absurd--and heartbreaking--conclusion. These pieces carefully tread the mash-up line of "metafiction," science-fiction, and ruminations, loaded with pop culture terms and references--without, as lesser writers do--seeming...more

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Aug 22, 2012 Kevin Cosgrove rated it 3 of 5 stars

Most of these stories are entertaining and fairly clever. Charles Yu employs a meta-narrative approach that seems to derive from an intense fascination with words and language as living phenomena that inhabit a universe of their own that is both parallel and conjoined by the effects and creations of the universe in which we live.
The best stories illustrate the adverse effects of conflating corporate speak and marketing lingo with actual human lives and emotions (this works especially well in the...more

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About Charles Yu

Charles Yu lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Michelle, and their two children.

He has received the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award for his story collection Third Class Superhero, and he has also received the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award. His work has been published in the Harvard Review, The Gettysburg Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Mississippi Review, and Mid-American Review, am...more

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How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury

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Quotes from Sorry Please Thank You...

“For a while, I thought I might be in a love story, but I hardly ever wake up next to anyone anymore. It still happens once in a while. When it does, the first thing I do, doesn't matter where I am, in the ocean, on the moon of some minor distant planet, doesn't matter where, doesn't matter if she knows who I am of if I know who she is or how strong gravity is or if I feel terrible or if the world is logically impossible, the first thing I do if she's there, is I tell her how nice it is to see her.” — 2 people liked it

“All anyone is to anyone is a series of days.” — 2 people liked it

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