How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
By Charles Yu
“When it happens, this is what happens: I shoot myself.
Not, you know, my self self. I shoot my future self. He steps out of a time machine, introduces himself as Charles Yu. What else am I supposed to do? I kill him. I kill my own future.” are the first lines of the book How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. This is not the case for the book Charles Yu gives himself as he is shot by himself, though that may be true, you never really get to read it in full. And it’s not Charles Yu the author of the book that shoots himself, but Charles Yu the time machine repairman, whose father became lost in time when he invented his own time machine and disappeared. The two Charleses may be the same person, but that’s essentially true about all our identical selves from alternate universes.
This playful loopy way of understanding the situation is how much of the book reads, only smarter. Something Charles Yu excels at is writing around an impossible idea so that it can be seen in an impossible way. Very early on he describes the woman he never married and it is such a fun way of introducing that concept, I was bought in for whatever else he wanted to do. The way he describes landing the time machine not in space, but in actual time. How his AI and retconned dog exist as the two characters we see more than anyone else real or alive. It is an understatement to compare him to Douglas Adams, but The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe is as close a book I can think that hits these ideas this clever.
I read this book in an audio format, by Recorded Books, Inc. James Yaegashi was an excellent Charles Yu, playing up the handyman living through science fiction who was raised on stories of Star Wars. There were a few times when reading the physical book would have been better. Certain chapters have diagrams and there is a moment with footnotes that fell flat both when the footnote was inserted and later when it was read. On the other hand, some of the book was divided up by Greek letters and hearing them pronounced was much easier than if I had come across them on my own. I’d probably still be calling them “section squiggle”. In the end, I recommend the audio book, but if you happen to have a physical copy on hand, it may benefit you to leaf through every couple of chapters.
While he starts the book shooting himself, it’s not until halfway through that the reader actually gets to that moment in the story. Charles Yu divides the book in half, setting up the dramatic tension, shooting himself, and then dealing with it. I kept thinking I would be disappointed by how compact it was, how it was clear what the flow was going to be and that the end was approaching faster than satisfaction. In the end, I got everything I wanted. Yu wrote a compelling story that he twisted and played with the rules of every chance he got. Outside of his talent as a science-fictional writer, I think there is something in his writing that reflects the experience of poor, minority, or immigrant families trying to work their way towards success in a society that will do everything it can to stop them. Fictional Yu’s father’s attempt at dreaming his way into what other families receive as birthright is a crushing reminder of what it’s like in our very real universe when you try to rise above your class. His dream just happens to be a time machine.