Certainly a weirdly good read. Charles Yu first came to my attention with Thrid Class Superhero, his collection of short stories. Now, he’s on the radar with How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe, his debut novel.
Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space with interconnected yet separate universes. It’s a time when time travel is something anyone can do, like microwaving food. People have a personal time travel device, which they mostly use to visit moments in the past that they want to relive–usually bad moments that they are hoping to change or from which they hope to gain insights.
Quote: The base model TM-31 [TM-31 Recreational Time Travel Device] runs on state-of-the-art chronodiegetical technology: a six-cylinder grammar drive built on a quad-core physic engine, which features an applied temporalinguistics architecture allowing for free-form navigation within a rendered environment, such as, for instance, a story space and, in particular, a science fictional universe.
A box. Get in. Push some buttons. Visit different times. The operating system is called TAMMY (or TIM–depending on what you chose at start up).
Charles Yu, time travel technician, saves people from themselves. Or rather, he fixes their time travel machines that break due to human tampering. But ultimately he ends up trapping himself in a time loop.
If you’re not a fan of science fiction, then this is a good literary spin on that genre. If you are a science fiction fan, I think you’ll enjoy the science and philosophy described in the novel.
1-line summary: This novel is The Big Bang Theory meets a dysfunctional Family Ties, without the laugh track, although there are some funny moments.
Clever. Geeky. Nostalgic. (Can you be nostalgic for the future? In a science fictional universe, I think you can be.)
Related Links
Charles Yu in the Huffington Post before finishing the novel.
Lev Grossman’s review of Science Fictional Universe on Amazon.com
Pantheon: US publisher
Pantheon: CDN publisher