How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
-
- $14.99
Publisher 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.
“In this debut novel, Charles Yu continues his ambitious exploration of the fantastic with a whimsical yet sincere tribute to old-school science fiction and quantum physics. … A fascinating, philosophical and disorienting thriller about life and the context that gives it meaning.”—Kirkus, starred review
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Funny, brainy, and unexpectedly tender, this story turns time travel into something beautifully human. Charles Yu, a weary repairman in a universe where people keep trying to rewrite their pasts, spends his days fixing broken timelines—and his nights searching for the father who vanished into one. His only companions are TAMMY, an anxious operating system, and Ed, a dog who may not exist but still feels real. The result is a looping, self-aware adventure that plays with science-fiction tropes while quietly breaking your heart. Author Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown) turns paradox into poetry, exploring how regret and memory make us all our own time machines. The mix of humor and melancholy feels closer to Kurt Vonnegut than Robert Heinlein, and James Yaegashi’s performance captures all of Yu’s dry wit, quiet sadness, and flashes of wonder. As soulful as it is inventive, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is a time-travel story about what it means to finally arrive in your own life.
