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How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
by
National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award winner Charles Yu delivers his debut novel, a razor-sharp, ridiculously funny, and utterly touching story of a son searching for his father . . . through quantum space–time.
Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists ...more
Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists ...more
Hardcover, 233 pages
Published
September 7th 2010
by Pantheon
(first published July 23rd 2010)
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Community Reviews
Showing 1-30


Another example of high concept literary fiction costuming itself in the tropes, set designs and jargon of genre fiction, while striving to create something unique, penetrating and memorable.
And, in this case, succeeding brilliantly. Bravo, Mr. Yu.
While not an untrammeled success and a bit murky, at times, with its message delivery, I thought this was, overall, an exceptional achievement. I certainly thought it was a terrific contrast to what I found to be the glossy, soulless disingenuousne ...more

If anyone is ever crazy enough to make a movie version of this, they better hire Charlie Kaufman to do the adapted screenplay. Even he would probably be left scratching his head and saying, “What the hell??”
Trying to summarize this is going to be like trying to explain Inception to someone who has never had a dream or seen a movie. Essentially, it’s a science fictional universe where time travel is possible. Fiction and reality have blended together so that you may run into Luke Skywalker’s son ...more
Trying to summarize this is going to be like trying to explain Inception to someone who has never had a dream or seen a movie. Essentially, it’s a science fictional universe where time travel is possible. Fiction and reality have blended together so that you may run into Luke Skywalker’s son ...more

Rating: 0.125* of five
The Publisher Says: National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award winner Charles Yu delivers his debut novel, a razor-sharp, ridiculously funny, and utterly touching story of a son searching for his father . . . through quantum space–time.
Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and ...more
The Publisher Says: National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award winner Charles Yu delivers his debut novel, a razor-sharp, ridiculously funny, and utterly touching story of a son searching for his father . . . through quantum space–time.
Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and ...more

I wanted to like this book a great deal more than I did. I wanted to be moved. But in the end, it left me a little cold.
I enjoyed the premise, the set up, the notion of living already in a science fictional universe where, at certain points, the reality ratio went up, but at others, significantly down. I liked the idea of born Protagonists, and what happens to all the poor Joes in a science fictional universe who live in the background of the stories, and keep things running. Except these things ...more
I enjoyed the premise, the set up, the notion of living already in a science fictional universe where, at certain points, the reality ratio went up, but at others, significantly down. I liked the idea of born Protagonists, and what happens to all the poor Joes in a science fictional universe who live in the background of the stories, and keep things running. Except these things ...more

Enter the following data:
META (search for definition)
SCIENCE FICTION (search for definition)
TIME TRAVEL (search for definition)
Computing...
Trajectory locked.
To find the only way to exit a time loop, please refer to Appendix A of this manual (How To Live Safely Inside a Science Fictional Universe)
+++
When it happens, this is what happens: By reading Charles Yu's incomparably original work of fiction, I'm realizing, have realized and will have realized that I've lived and I am still living inside a ...more

This book, which I misunderstood as something I might enjoy as light bedtime reading, is perhaps the most original work I've read in the last year. It has the same new-ground-is-broken-here feel that Abigail Thomas's "Safekeeping" or Dinty Moore's "Between Panic and Desire" have; not only is the story good, but the prose is new and changes the way it's possible for us to think about narrative itself.
It's experimental, but it's also a very accessible book. And, at it's heart, it's a very human, v ...more
It's experimental, but it's also a very accessible book. And, at it's heart, it's a very human, v ...more

There went 237 pages of my life that I'll never get back. Luckily, I don't live in a science fictional universe. I was really expecting something great with all the hype. And the premise of the book surely had promise.
Unfortunately, this is mainly a book where nothing much happens... *SPOILERS (to the THREE things that happen in the book) to follow!* Even the girl he never marries and his time-traveling dog companion aren't real. In fact, the only thing that happens to the time machine repairma ...more
Unfortunately, this is mainly a book where nothing much happens... *SPOILERS (to the THREE things that happen in the book) to follow!* Even the girl he never marries and his time-traveling dog companion aren't real. In fact, the only thing that happens to the time machine repairma ...more

Nope. Sorry, Charles Yu. But just -- nope. This doesn't work.
The world in which this novel takes place differs from ours in two key respects:
1) Humanity has discovered (though it is not made clear when this discovery was made, or by whom) that the fundamental laws of physics are actually the laws of narrative -- specifically, of science fictional narrative. The book's reality is a vast multiverse in which individual universes, and parts of universes, behave like stories from different sub-genres ...more
The world in which this novel takes place differs from ours in two key respects:
1) Humanity has discovered (though it is not made clear when this discovery was made, or by whom) that the fundamental laws of physics are actually the laws of narrative -- specifically, of science fictional narrative. The book's reality is a vast multiverse in which individual universes, and parts of universes, behave like stories from different sub-genres ...more

Feb 28, 2012
Kevin
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
science-fiction,
post-modern-literary-fiction
The NYTimes blurb compares Yu to Douglas Adams and Philip K. Dick, which is like telling me the book is made of chocolate that cures cancer. So far I think Yu hovers closer to the Dick pole than the Adams (yes, I just wrote "Dick pole"), and his use of himself as a fictional character attempting to sort his human identity from his fictive one reminds me of Martin Amis or Paul Auster. Yet I think the pomo fiction conceit works better here than with those more "realistic" authors; science fiction
...more

Apr 11, 2011
Aldrin
rated it
it was amazing
Recommends it for:
Humans and Vogons alike
Recommended to Aldrin by:
Ander Monson
With his nonexistent canine sidekick, his clinically depressed personal digital assistant, and his daddy issues constantly in tow, time machine repairman Charles Yu attempts to navigate the future meta-science-fictional Minor Universe 31 in this dizzingly crafty novel written by present-day, happily-married-with-two-kids Charles Yu. Naturally, along the way the fictional Charles Yu stumbles upon a guide book titled “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.” Don't panic: “How to Live S
...more

You will notice that I do not have this book on my sci-fi shelf. It's quite clear from the beginning that How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is not science fiction. Rather, it's a book about literature, life and the blurring between them. It kind of reminds me of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series without the wacky humor.
To be honest, this book made my head hurt. It uses big invented words. Your first clue that Yu's time machine is literature because it uses grammatical somethi ...more
To be honest, this book made my head hurt. It uses big invented words. Your first clue that Yu's time machine is literature because it uses grammatical somethi ...more

When I first heard of this book and even after the first couple pages, I thought, don't we already have The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Not so, not so.
I'm really glad my first impressions were wrong because How to Live Safely Blah Blah Blah is a book that's much different and entirely it's own awesome experience. Hilarious at times, nerdy at others, fun, entertaining, with some clever ideas, How to Live Safely is a book of introspection and introduces the serious theme of making something ...more
I'm really glad my first impressions were wrong because How to Live Safely Blah Blah Blah is a book that's much different and entirely it's own awesome experience. Hilarious at times, nerdy at others, fun, entertaining, with some clever ideas, How to Live Safely is a book of introspection and introduces the serious theme of making something ...more

I've no longer any idea what I expected of this book when I added it to 'to-read' back in January 2012, a few months after joining GR. But I can say that it's way out of place on the lists of SF comedy novels where I saw it recently. And perhaps that's why the book has comparatively low ratings: it's been marketed all wrong and quite a lot of readers are disappointed.
It does have a few funny/silly moments, but overall this is a melancholic book, and one that has most context among films, rather ...more
It does have a few funny/silly moments, but overall this is a melancholic book, and one that has most context among films, rather ...more

4.5
This is very close to amazing. The only thing that fell off, was the story. The depressed time traveler is after his father. That is the point of the book, but the point changes to the narrative. I wouldn't have enjoyed it, but the narrative was pretty good. It points out crazy ideas and thoughts all of us have had when intoxicated. You know that moment where you think you are so smart? Yep, there are a lot of those, and I enjoy those.
It is also funny. Mentions of Star Wars had me laughing. ...more
This is very close to amazing. The only thing that fell off, was the story. The depressed time traveler is after his father. That is the point of the book, but the point changes to the narrative. I wouldn't have enjoyed it, but the narrative was pretty good. It points out crazy ideas and thoughts all of us have had when intoxicated. You know that moment where you think you are so smart? Yep, there are a lot of those, and I enjoy those.
It is also funny. Mentions of Star Wars had me laughing. ...more

An interesting premise begins the tale of Charles Yu (yes, the author) doing a bit of meta-writing about a Charles who time travels. Yu uses time traveling as scaffolding to discuss a sadness, reality, and perception. It's only 240ish pages but I stopped cold on p. 183 when CY (the author) lost the period key on his keyboard and wrote a sentence longer than 1.5 pages.
I read a lot of books (no duh, I'm on Goodreads) and I think I'm pretty permissible when authors pull tricks because I'm typicall ...more
I read a lot of books (no duh, I'm on Goodreads) and I think I'm pretty permissible when authors pull tricks because I'm typicall ...more

I'm always a little skeptical when a literary prodigy does genre fiction. Science fiction is bad enough enough, without the literary ball of neuroses that is the Iowa Writer's Workshop sliding in. So let me say that How to Live Safely In a Science Fictional Universe is slick and brilliant, and so gloriously clever that my concerns are washed out in a trillion degree flash of light.
Charles Yu is a time machine repairman is a science-fictional universe. Glamorously described, his job involves shut ...more
Charles Yu is a time machine repairman is a science-fictional universe. Glamorously described, his job involves shut ...more

I am now in love with Charles Yu, this bright new young author. I feel like Yu was onto something *so* big here. Everything about the book excited me. I read it in just a couple of days. The cover excited me. The plot description excited me. Every page I read excited me a little more.
The first time that I predicted that this was going to be my new favorite book was on page 17:
(Yu is a time machine repairman...and these machines only break down when people try to break the rules---change the pas ...more
The first time that I predicted that this was going to be my new favorite book was on page 17:
(Yu is a time machine repairman...and these machines only break down when people try to break the rules---change the pas ...more

It starts like this. We have a book in our hands and we're looking at it thinking: the summary on this jacket cover is funny and sort of cute, what with its self-deprecating asides to depressed software and ontologically-valid domestic pets, and with its blurbs from famous authors saying stuff like "This book is cool as hell" - well, this is at the creeping onset of the winter crankiness, so we say to ourselves, we could use a book that is cool as hell! And we take it home.
It sits on our nights ...more
It sits on our nights ...more

What did I think? You know, I don't really know. I mean it's hard to know what to think. I know it wasn't great. Well, in fact, it wasn't even good. It was a very laborious read. Mr. Yu would go on long-winded multi-page introspective narratives, telling us the same thing in four hundred different ways. "This was it. This was the end. It was no longer the beginning. It was not the middle, and not after the end, but it was that point that comes at the finale of any event. Sometimes people call it
...more

An interesting conceit, this book posits that time travel is a combination of technology, verb tense, and personal perspective. But it's also not primarily a book about time travel. It's one of these science fiction books that Larry Niven famously scorned, in which the science is not really necessary for the plot. It's much more a story of personal discovery, a young man wrestling with a sense of insignificance and the general meaninglessness of his life. The book is both charmingly absurd and r
...more

This book has all the same problems that every time travel story has, those moments when you're going "Wait, but..." and then a little later, you're like, "But...?" until you finally end up glossing over the paradoxes/improbablities/undefinable-in-words so that you can appreciate the narrative, which, in this case was a little thin. This is, I think, in part, due to an attempt to circumvent the reader's delving too deep and realizing it's all a fancy magic trick, a bunch of glittering streamers
...more

The book dips in and out of real life. The author is in his 30s; he grew up in California; he is Asian-American (that's clear from the book), and his family is Taiwanese (that's mentioned only in the acknowledgments at the end). The version of the author who narrates the book has the author's real name, and is also in his 30s, and also grew up in California. But he has a white-collar job as a repairman for time travel devices.
The book opens as pure science fiction, but elements of Yu's childhoo ...more
The book opens as pure science fiction, but elements of Yu's childhoo ...more

Time travel: tricky stuff. Meta-fiction: tricky stuff. Combining time travel and meta-fiction? Extremely tricky stuff. Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe aims high by doing just this. I read it at a time when I was precisely in the mood for this kind of timey-wimey, universe-bending confusion of a narrative, so that was a point in its favour. And by and large I think Yu manages to pull it off, though it’s lacking a certain something that might have pushed it to the n
...more

I'm giving this five stars ONLY because I can't give it six.
I started reading this while sitting on the floor at Books Inc in Mountain View, bought it, and despite having a full weekend - I managed to squeeze in reading this book whenever and wherever possible.
Have just finished it and can I just say it was the most fun I've had reading a book ever -- ok, maybe not ever, but definitely in a LONG time. It twists your head -- not too much, but just enough to be clever. Lots of really funny parts ...more
I started reading this while sitting on the floor at Books Inc in Mountain View, bought it, and despite having a full weekend - I managed to squeeze in reading this book whenever and wherever possible.
Have just finished it and can I just say it was the most fun I've had reading a book ever -- ok, maybe not ever, but definitely in a LONG time. It twists your head -- not too much, but just enough to be clever. Lots of really funny parts ...more

Too clever for its own good, I found Yu's book [title too long to type] very self-indulgent, written by a writer too aware of his own cleverness. Wait I sort of already said that.
I'm sure this book will find an audience. It's the kind of thing I might have liked in my early 20s, when I'd read a book and force myself to enjoy it, if only because to do so would increase my own sense of satisfaction. I was just a boy then, insecure, who liked to accomplish things, like reading literary fiction, tha ...more
I'm sure this book will find an audience. It's the kind of thing I might have liked in my early 20s, when I'd read a book and force myself to enjoy it, if only because to do so would increase my own sense of satisfaction. I was just a boy then, insecure, who liked to accomplish things, like reading literary fiction, tha ...more

A killer premise with some very meta-potential that loses itself in its own oh-so-quirky structure.
Charles Yu takes readers along for a ride with...Charles Yu (!), as his fictional self (a time travel machine repairman) zooms through space and time (and quantum physics 101) in search of his father in this fun little adventure which turns out to be more "exercise in logic" than narrative.
The brilliance ends at the premise as we are dragged through the same old scenarios, the same old questions of ...more
Charles Yu takes readers along for a ride with...Charles Yu (!), as his fictional self (a time travel machine repairman) zooms through space and time (and quantum physics 101) in search of his father in this fun little adventure which turns out to be more "exercise in logic" than narrative.
The brilliance ends at the premise as we are dragged through the same old scenarios, the same old questions of ...more

When I read 53 pages of a 231 page book, and I'm still not hooked, it's time to stop. I say this because so many people seem to have raved about how good this book is that I wonder if I've completely missed the point. Charles Yu owes a great deal of his artistic voice to Sherman Alexie; the similarities of style, of dumping a sudden and potent image in your lap in an unexpected and sweetly ironic way, should titillate me, as I find Alexie brilliant.
What I feel that is lacking in Yu's work is a s ...more
What I feel that is lacking in Yu's work is a s ...more

This is a great book for your inner geek, your outer geek, or the version of yourself that is a geek in another dimension of space-time. It has what appears to be an anecdotal, amusing plot which, at about the mid point of the book, becomes a head scrambler. It goes chrono-nuts. You get this with time travel. You might say it’s an occupational hazard, especially for our protagonist, Charles Yu, who also happens to be the author.
Aside from the title, this is the clue that the story is more metafi ...more
Aside from the title, this is the clue that the story is more metafi ...more

Normally I stop reading books like Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe after about 50 pages because if I don’t know what’s going in the story by then I figure I never will. I’m sure I’ve missed out on a lot of good books in my time but that’s the breaks, life is short and the list of books is long.
I didn’t quit How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe because despite not knowing what was happening for much of those first 50 pages, Charles Yu’s writing was to ...more
I didn’t quit How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe because despite not knowing what was happening for much of those first 50 pages, Charles Yu’s writing was to ...more

This is a story about a man who lives inside a small time travelling cubicle and travels around the universe and tells people that everything they've hoped and dreamed for is impossible.
The world that this man lives in is unfinished science fiction, with lumpy protagonists and sidekicks, and people like Our Protagonist in the background trying to keep everything running. This man is very sorry for his life and everything that hasn't happened in it. His boss is a Microsoft computer program. The A ...more
The world that this man lives in is unfinished science fiction, with lumpy protagonists and sidekicks, and people like Our Protagonist in the background trying to keep everything running. This man is very sorry for his life and everything that hasn't happened in it. His boss is a Microsoft computer program. The A ...more
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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
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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“...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.”
—
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“If I could be half the person my dog is, I'd be twice the human I am.”
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More quotes…