Yu, Charles: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (2010)
Written by: Charles Yu
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 256 (Kindle)
Why I Read It: Ever since this book came out, I've had a hankering to read it. The title was simply too captivating for me to ignore, and when I first received my Kindle, this was one of the first samples I downloaded. I didn't get it right away because I knew I could wait to read it, but the voice of the narrator had me hooked right away. It was an easy choice to put this book in the Genre in the Mainstream poll, but when you all selected it, I feared it would actually be too science fictional to fit the theme. I should have never feared. Welcome to 2012's Book Club, Theme Park. How to Live in a Science Fictional Universe is our very first selection, so let's talk!
The premise: ganked from BN.com: From a 5 Under 35 winner, 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.
Spoilers, yay or nay?: Yay. Book club reviews will always have spoilers, so if you read the book, you're good to go. If you haven't read the book, this is oddly a difficult book to spoil, but use your own judgement. If you're worried about said spoilers, just skip to "My Rating" and you'll be just fine.
What inspired this "Genre in the Mainstream" was Ryan Britt's feature on Tor.com called -- you guessed it -- "Genre in the Mainstream." By chance, Britt posted an article in January entitled "What is Genre in the Mainstream? Why Should You Care?" It's a great article, and a timely one, and I'll let you read it in full here.
But there's a particular quote from this article I want to pull for the sake of this review:
Literary fiction (or “the mainstream”) is often voice-driven. The notion of an author/character voice sometimes is the story, particularly with short fiction. Etgar Keret’s story “Fatso” is a good example here. In the story (which is maybe two pages long) a man discovers his girlfriend transforms into an ugly fat man when the sun goes down every night. He describes their adventures briefly, and then the story ends, quickly. If Keret’s story were written by Harlan Ellison, or even Asimov, the shape shifting gender-crossing woman/fatso would likely be fleshed out a little more, if you can forgive the intended pun. A science fiction version of this story would linger more and explore through plot mechanics how everything is going down. Is this to say Asimov’s or Tor.com or any other market for short science fiction and fantasy wouldn’t have published “Fatso” if Keret had sent it there initially, instead of a mainstream literary journal? No! In fact, I’m saying just the opposite; that it’s not quite clear anymore because while literary fiction has developed an appetite for more high concept writing, SFF has developed a taste for more voice-driven or “literary” work.
To me, this sums up exactly what I was hoping for when selecting books for this theme. What we read is still science fiction or fantasy, but the focus isn't on the traditional narrative structure. Rather, it's the focus on voice and how voice is the story.
Now, some of you might read that and cry bullshit. Fine, that's your prerogative. But when I think of past books I've read that fit in "Genre in the Mainstream," I think of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake. I think of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Books that have been published on the "literary" side of things that happen to have genre elements. And those genre elements may or may not be the most original things in the world, but what makes them slightly different than those books marketed and published as science fiction and fantasy is one major distinction: voice.
Britt's article goes on to talk about the day when no such distinctions will be made, nor will they need to be made. After all, it's all fiction, right? But looking at it in terms of voice, making voice the primary focus on the tale, can give a reader a new way into a story that they previous thought was just another piece of science fiction or fantasy.
Hence, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.
I think it was the dog that did it. I mentioned that I'd read a sample long before I downloaded the whole kit and caboodle, and really, what hooked me good wasn't the fun title, but it was the discovery of the dog that made me realize this would so be my kind of book. And because I'm quoting for a Kindle, you get no page numbers.
At least I have a dog, sort of. He was retconned out of some space western. It was the usual deal: hero, on his way up, has a trusty canine sidekick, then hero gets famous and important and all that and by the time season two rolls around, hero doesn't feel like sharing the spotlight anymore, not with a scruffy-looking mutt. So they put the little guy in a trash pod and send him off.
I found him just as he was about to drift into a black hole. He had a face like soft clay, with haunches that were bald in spots where he'd been chewing off his own fur. I don't think anyone has ever been as happy to see anything as this dog was to see me. He licked my face and that was that. I asked him what he wanted his name to be. He didn't say anything so I named him Ed.
The smell of Ed is pretty powerful in here, but I'm okay with that. He's a good dog, sleeps a lot, sometimes licks his paw to comfort himself. Doesn't need food or water. I'm pretty sure he doesn't even know that he doesn't exist. Ed is just this weird ontological entity that produces unconditional slobbery loyal affection. Superfluous. Gratuitous. He must violate some kind of conservation law. Something from nothing: all of this saliva. And, I guess, love. Love from the abandoned heart of a nonexistent dog.
There are so many reasons this book worked for me. That's the first and foremost, but it's the voice, the writing, that grabbed me and had me highlighting passages every few (Kindle) pages. I won't quote all of them here, but let's quote a few more before getting to the meat of the review, because these quotes show why I loved this book more than anything I can explain will. That said, if the quotes don't do it for you, it's a matter of not clicking with the book, and that's okay.
Or, as Mom used to say: it's a box. You get into it. You push some buttons. It takes you to other places, different times. Hit this switch for the past, pull up that lever for the future. You get out and hope the world has changed. Or at least maybe you have.
I think this book resonates with me on such a deep level is one of the recurring themes through the whole book: change. The idea that even if you can't go to the past and change things to make your life better (despite the use of time machines), the humanity's desire to do so will never cease, and let's face it, who hasn't wanted to change at least something, to take a different route through life and see what happens (this is one reason why parallel world stories engage me so).
One of the first things I picked up on was how the book was a metaphor for writing a book (and then later, became the literal writing of a book, as the narrator was writing the very book his future self game him, the very book we're reading). At first, I thought this whole time machine stuff was metaphor, that perhaps the father referenced so early in the book was a writer, and that the universe itself was an abandoned fictional universe created by either the narrator or the father of the narrator. Consider:
At the moment work was halted, physics was only 93% percent installed, and thus you may find that it can be a bit unpredictable in places. For the most part, however, while here travlers should be fine relying on any off-the-shelf causal processor based on quantum general relativity.
The technology left behind by the MU31 engineering team, despite being only partially developed, is first-rate, although the same can't be said of its human inhabitants, who seem to have been left with a lingering sense of incompleteness.
For those of you who, like me, are writers: does that not sound like a scientific way of describing a writer abandoning a novel before completion?
Then there's this:
Out my window I can see the edges of stories as we pass by. Some of them, the space operas, are grand circuses of light. Others are smaller systems, lonesome clusters, dim and muted and private little stories. I had no idea Universe 31 was so big. Bigger than I'd imagined.
Really, though, while the pop culture term "meta" sometimes alludes me as to its actual meaning, I realized while reading that if this book wasn't meta, I'd never figure it out. Because it's a fictional book about fictional universes, but it's also a fictional book that's probably rather close to a memoir of the author (given the narrator's name is Charles Yu, and there's pictures of where Charles Yu grew up, how can you help but make that assumption?), and there's just so many layers upon layers here that it's easy to get lost in them and not be certain what you're reading or why.
But if I had to take a gander, I'd say that it's possible (though I could totally be wrong, it's dangerous to make these kinds of assumptions) that this book is a memoir for Charles Yu's life, but it's set in a fictional universe where time machines exist, but I suspect that if there is a true parallel to the real world (meaning our real world), I wouldn't be surprised to learn the father was some kind of writer. But again, I could be off-base. But at least there's humor to be found:
My cousin is in accounts receivable on the Death Star, and whenever we talk he always says how nice it'd be if I joined him. He says they have a good cafeteria. So that's an option. And there's an opening for a caseworker at the social services bureau for noninteresting aliens. Government pension.
And speaking of funny: if you read this as a book, you probably got the illustrative graphics as you turned the pages, but I had to click a link at it took me to a "job ad" for a position on the Death Star, and it was hysterical!
Here's more funny:
This isn't the TM-31. I'm in some other kind of vehicle. Larger. More room and air and light. The interior is clean, all white and black ceramic. Like Apple designed a spaceship.
Or this:
"Holy Heinlein."
Or this:
Holy Mother of Ursula K. Le Guin
Clearly, the author is a fan of science fiction and geeky things. I love how this shows in the humor of this book.
Let's do some more quotes:
Within a science fictional space, memory and regret are, when taken together, the set of necessary and sufficient elements required to produce a time machine.
And there's this:
My father sometimes said that his life was two-thirds disappointment. This was when he was in a good mood.
At one point, I was convinced this book was going to zag by the end, that in order to find his father, the narrator would have to realize he's actually living inside his head (not a time machine) and get out to discover that his father is lost, but not findable, because his father has passed away. Reading the book with that theory in mind makes interpretation of things very interesting. I'm not saying it's right either: I'm saying it's very interesting.
Here's this tidbit:
Life is, to some extent, an extended dialogue with your future self about how exactly you are going to let yourself down over the coming years.
And a big kahuna:
Everyone has a time machine. Everyone is a time machine. It's just that most people's machines are broken. The strangest and hardest kind of time travel is the unaided kind. People get stuck, people get looped. People get trapped. But we are all time machines. We are all perfectly engineered time machines, technologically equipped to allow the inside user, the traveler riding inside each of us, to experience time travel, and loss, and understanding. We are universal time machines manufactured to the most exacting specifications possible. Every single one of us.
This book is such a mind-bender because the quote above it both metaphorical and literal. To get the literal, you've got to read the book. But metaphorically, think about the one rule: you can't go back and change your past. Sure, Yu uses all kinds of physics talk to explain why it can't happen, how creating alternate universes with you in them will get you in trouble and so forth, but think of it literally: the memory as a time machine. You can try and change the past, perhaps by reconstructing your memory of it. But it won't work. The past cannot be changed.
At some point in your life, this statement will be true: Tomorrow you will lose everything forever.
Is it any wonder I had death on the brain while reading this?
Is this a perfect book? No. I had some trouble trying to keep the loop straight in my head, trying to figure out how his future self came back if his future self never time-traveled, so my brain's a little mushy in that regard. That being said, it's the kind of book that so engages me, so resonates with me, that I can see myself reading this again and again, and coming back with a different meaning each time.
My Rating: Excellent
This book is not for everyone. I'll say that first and foremost. And because most of my review is quoting, really, all you have to do is sample the book, look at the quotes, to see if they resonate with you at all. The book is so many different things at once: a fictional memoir of what I bet is a somewhat factual story; a time-travel loop brain-melter; a humorous piece; a story about memory and regret and family; a love letter to science fictional geekery everywhere. This book is META, and it's a fascinating and fast read, but I will say it's best read in big chunks. Not only does that allow the voice to hook you and stick with you, but it helps when the narrator goes on the tangents comparing time travel to memory and all that wonderful fun stuff. This is the kind of book that resonates with me deeply on an emotional level, because it touches on so many things I can relate to, and yet the science and geekery makes the book fun to read. This is a book I can see myself coming back to again and again, because there's so much to get out of it. So glad this ended up being our book club pick for January!
Cover Commentary: I prefer the cover to the trade paperback, featured at the top of the review. I can't resist Ed in a space suit! Though the narrator doesn't look anything like I pictured him. But the red really catches my eye! The hardcover art is okay, showing lots of ray guns, which works when you consider the title alone, but not so well when you pair it with the book.
I will say this: I wish I'd gotten a physical copy. There are illustrations in the book that Kindle gives you links for, and then the way the book is constructed, sometimes I wondered if I was reading something out of sequence, because let's face it, I wasn't looking at physical pages. I suspect I may be buying another copy of this book one day, but I'm cool with that. :)
More Reviews: Check out the reviews book club participants have posted! If you reviewed this book but are not featured here, please comment below with a link to your review and I'll add it below.
burgandyice: Review Here
celestialgldfsh: Review Here
intoyourlungs: Review Here
jennielf: Review Here
starmetal_oak: Review Here
Tethyan Books: Review Here
temporaryworlds: Review Here
Under My Apple Tree: Review Here
Book Club Poll: Just so you know, I'm not tracking participation points, but I do want to have some idea of how popular or unpopular a book club selection is, hence, the poll. If you're not on Live Journal, you can still vote using OpenID! Just go to Live Journal's home page and in the upper right-hand corner, log in using said OpenID address, and then you can vote on this page!
Poll January Participation
If you started the book but couldn't finish it, please comment and talk about the reasons why. What turned you off from the book? How far did you go before throwing in the towel?
And as you already know, the February Book Club selection is Karen Lord's Redemption in Indigo. Some of you may have started it already, but if need additional details on the title, just click here.