How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe ~Charles Yu

–published 2010
–Pantheon Books
–239 pages
–8/10

“You had me at ‘Han Solo'”.

If I ever was to meet real-life author Charles Yu, who lent his name to the protagonist in his debut novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, I would unleash my best Tom Cruise imitation and ply him with those words.

You can travel down the lanes of the World Wide Web and find well-known authors, armchair critics and professional reviewers alike unleashing a litany of $5 words praising the literary merit and science fictional prowess of Charles Yu.

And they are right.

If there need be such an animal as “Literary Science Fiction”, Charles Yu’s novel could be the zoo’s most recent prized exhibit.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I enjoyed those aspects of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.

But you had me at Han Solo.

Charles Yu–the character, not the author–spends the majority of his time (pardon the pun) traveling outside of the life’s linear chronology in his TM-31 Recreational Time Travel Device. You see, Charles Yu is a time travel repairman. And why not? It is a stable job, as he himself points out: “…the reason I have job security is that people have no idea how to make themselves happy. Even with a time machine. I have job security because what the customer wants, when you get right down to it, is to relive his very worst moments over and over and over again”.

His place of residence is Minor Universe 31, MU31 for short, a science fictional universe that “was slightly damaged during its construction and, as a result, the builder-developer who owns the rights abandoned the original plans for the space”. Over the past decade Yu has spent the majority of his “time” in the TM-31, a cramped time travel device that he shares with a dog that really doesn’t exist and a female computer program with “chestnut-colored hair and dark brown eyes behind pixilated librarian glasses and a voice like a cartoon princess”. When he unexpectedly runs into his future self, he pulls out a gun and shoots, in essence killing his future. He has learned from experience that you cannot change the past. All he can do is read How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, a book his future self left for him indicating that the book is the key.

It is unusual for me to quote so heavily from an author’s own work, particularly this early in a review. With How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe it is hard not to. It is a novel that resonates with the kind of lines, paragraphs and descriptions that make you want to sit up and take notes. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is a novel of literary merit marinated in the popular geek culture. It is a work of sometimes-hard-to-follow scientific pontification and engineering diatribes, heavy on metaphor, that brilliantly addresses relationships, particularly those between father and son. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is funny, whimsical and charming coupled with moments of melancholic clarity. It takes a well-worn science fictional concept, time travel, and uses the voice of a seasoned science layman to explain it in a manner that sometimes makes perfect sense, at least when my eyes weren’t glazed over waiting for the story proper to continue.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is not without its problems, at least as seen through the eyes of a science fiction fan who mostly prefers his SF light on the science and heavy on fiction. As the narrator unveils the story, his thought train drifts off into scientific/philosophical examinations of the nature of time, time travel, and also the nature of relationships. There are times when these are extremely interesting and others where I was thankful that the moment had come and gone. What interests me about the opinion of others who have a more scientific or literary mindset is how well they feel various elements of the story work. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is sure to be seen on nominations lists, and short lists, of SFF-related awards, and I for one think it deserves that acclaim. If I had a vote I suspect that Charles Yu would be high on my list for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

Charles Yu’s occasionally imperfect novel succeeds most for this reader when his eponymous protagonist is reliving, often through stream-of-conscious contemplation, moments with his father.

“I keep going. Not to hurt him, no, I keep going just because, for the first time in my young life, it feels like my father is here, in the car, with me, listening to me, that for the first time ever I have his attention not as a boy, his son, but as a person, as a future man, as someone who is just starting to go out into the world and bring parts of it back, parts that can remind him that I won’t always be his to teach, parts that may remind him how small our family is.”

The harsh clinical examination of an unsuccessful family is softened through the lens of time and Charles Yu packs such genuine pathos in those moments that the reader cannot help but bond with father and son while also contemplating the thinly veiled message of using time wisely and having no regrets. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe never strays over the line of sentiment into sentimentality but cannot help but being a sweet story set in the midst of sometimes wacky Hitchhiker’s Guide-esque world building and scientific gobbledygook.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe does get past the 200 page mark, but with pages that are ostensibly out of the protagonist’s copy of the same book, with little or no writing on them, coupled with a smaller hardback format and average-sized font, it goes by quickly. I could have spent more time learning about news clouds and lonely sexbots and computer programs that believed they were real people. But these were just the trappings of Charles Yu’s eccentric Minor Universe. In the end what sold me on the story and kept me reading through moments that were not as exciting for me were the brilliant portrayals of familial relationships.

That and a couple of paragraphs on page 30 regarding childhood make-believe and Han Solo that marked Charles Yu as a kindred spirit.
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For those of you who entered the contest for a giveaway copy of Jo Walton’s new book, Among Others, I would like to take this moment to announce the winner.

The Random Number Generator, better known as the electronic Fickle Hand of Fate, chose:

Deslily!

Congratulations. I wish I had a copy to give everyone who entered. It is a wonderful book.