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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. Read more
Publisher : Vintage
Publication date : June 28, 2011
Language : English
Print length : 256 pages
ISBN-10 : 0307739457
ISBN-13 : 52
Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
Dimensions : 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #152,087 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #520 in Humorous Science Fiction (Books) #524 in Humorous American Literature #1,184 in Science Fiction Short Stories
#520 in Humorous Science Fiction (Books):
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Top Amazon Reviews
(Partly read in Kindle, partly heard in audiobook. This review reflects both.) Story Flavor: Post-modern psycho-social technological sci-fi (think "Raw Shark Texts" has a baby with "Psychohistorical Crisis" that gets adopted and raised by "Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse"). Audio Narration Flavor: Ascerbic, all-knowing humor reminiscent of noir tough-guy, blended with the tentative consideration of a philosophy student. ...and, believe it or not, that was the perfect voice to narrate this book. Many kudos to the audiobook narrator, and the producer who seems to have carefully read the book before choosing him. The story follows a main character through a bildungsroman event with the unlikely catalyst of getting stuck in a time loop. As is typical, the reader will not necessarily like the main character in the beginning, but will inevitably be pulling for him (partially facilitated by the fact that he is quite literally confronting his own mortality; partially facilitated by the considerable and constant self-referential/fourth-wall-eclipsing nature of the book that gives the distinct notion that the whole thing may not be the main character's fault and perhaps the author is a meta-villain) and the supporting characters around him (for having to deal with him). The flavor text of the book is rife with partially scientific theories and considerations of what disciplines would have to develop in a universe wherein time travel is common and a recreational commodity. It also dabbles in geography, literature, and a numerical view of sociology. Very interesting, and each tidbit discussed in just enough detail to leave the reader wanting more. This is also one of the more sensible methods of handling the concept of a loop in time travel. Anyone who wants to explore the loop concept without getting dizzy should enjoy this book. There is one character that was severely underdeveloped throughout the book, and that was Ed the dog. Do not expect the dog to be a source of humor or non-vocal comment for the storyline, as he serves more to demonstrate the nature of the world the author is telling. Overall summary: Five out of five. Excellent read. One of the rare Post-moderns that gives the reader plenty to consider without regretting the reading and getting depressed.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2017 by SRunner
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The premise seemed wonderfully nutty: Take a universe populated with the standard sci-fi tropes and concepts, then set a story inside it, fully self-aware of its genre trappings. I also noted the metafictional conceit of the main character being one Charles Yu (the author of this novel). As it turns out, the meta goes even deeper with that, as "How to Live Safely..." is also a book which exists in the narrative itself - specifically, one that is being created/written by the author/protagonist by the very act of, and at the same time as, his reading of it. This is the kind of thing you'd better be prepared for: Seriously, totally nuts. What's even better is that this mind-bending and often hilarious approach is only one side to the novel. The other side, as it turns out, is much more introspective and even slightly morose; we discover that time machines, for instance, are fueled not by some made-up radioactive isotope - but by the extraordinarily powerful elements of memory and regret. We're told that 99% of people who use a time machine never visit the far-flung future or the historical past - but instead return to the scene of their worst mistake, again and again. Knowing human nature, this immediately rang as profoundly, instinctively true. The main plot of the book concerns not a time-space battle between warring factions or any other overplayed, meaningless trope - but rather the protagonist's search for his father (whom he only ever connected with when they were trying to were trying to build that first time machine in their garage), and what was lost. Most of us, we are told, are trapped in our own time loops, and they're ones of our own making. It's not a perfect book; after introducing richly funny bits in the beginning like meeting Luke Skywalker's kid son, bratty and resentful, the author seemingly forgets this element - the idea of a universe which casually contains not just sci-fi concepts like time-travel, but also sci-fi characters such as those from the Star Wars franchise. Granted, an overabundance of such would have devolved the novel into yet another goofy SF parody, and the novel that we have is one I much prefer, but it would have been nice to see that delicious concept used just a little bit more than it is. That said, this was an incredibly engaging, incredibly compelling novel. I can't wait to see what Yu does next.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2012 by Don
Format: Paperback
I enjoyed the prose. The author is skilled at engaging the reader and writing compelling scenes. However, I feel the novel has some shortcomings that are more and more frequently found in "post-modern literature". The plot is actually just a classic divorce story. Young boy is devastated by his parents fighting and eventually splitting up -- so that this sends him to growing up in conflict with himself. His psychological alienation is embodied in his profession as a time traveler who lives in a coffin-like shuttle for years on end, with no company but his operating system and other such devices. So the manifest content of the novel is merely a repetition of the emotional devastation on the child due to the divorce of the parents. This brings me to the points I want to make about this type of writing: There is no attempt made in the novel to actually imagine new possibilities for the individual or for society. Therefore, this is clearly not a science fiction novel. Instead, it is an allegory where science fiction plays the role of extended metaphor to the protagonist's emotional ordeal In fact, the novel is at its strongest when engaging in the serious (yet trite) emotional exchanges in the family: between the son and the mother, or the son's memories of his father. This expresses the melodrama of the nuclear family. For this reason it is "truer" than the intellectual masturbation that envelops the emotional story -- with all its pseudo-witty banter of time travel and fictional universes, and the universe being a subsidiary of a corporation called "Time Warner Time" (haha). My main problem with this emotional core, is that I am rather bored with nuclear family dramas. I do not agree with the Freudian view that Oedipus is at the core of what it means to be human. I believe humans can exist happily (and with other dramas) in different contexts. I would rather a literature that envisions these new possibilities and explores them -- rather than the rehashing of old formulas in the guise of the new. The fact that the science fiction setting of the story totally reproduces the class structure and family dynamics (the protagonist is really the standard schmuck-anti-hero) suggests that at its ideological root, this novel views the dynamics of present society as inevitable. In this way, even an alternate universe obeys the same rules of class, and the same necessity of the nuclear family. The rest of this review on my blog: [...]
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Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2012 by Jordan G. Trevino
Format: Paperback
In How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu explores a variety of themes to include pop culture and the role of language in creating our reality, but his main focus is the exploration of regret. The main character, Charles Yu (yes, that's the author as well) is a technician who contracts for Time Warner Time, who owns Minor Universe 31. Charles' companion is a dog who doesn't exist in any classical sense and his AI who has self-esteem issues. Charles spends his days trying to save people from themselves, because you see, in a world where time travel is possible, people (both real and fictional), at the end of the day, wind up re-living the worst moments of their lives. Why would they do this? Charles gets to explore this tendency when he is accidentally thrown into the dreaded temporal paradox where he accidentally kills his future self. Along the way, we learn that Charles deals with the fact that his father who arguably invented time travel has been missing for years while he visits his mom who voluntarily chose to live in a 90 minute a time loop. Yu wrote an engaging and often humorous story about man's almost masochistic yearning to relive the past. As we are locked in a one-way one dimension of time, we are somewhat spared from reliving our past. Yu explores the the idea of what humanity really would do if they had the freedom to move in time. We are always drawn to the what ifs and the might have beens in our lives. Interestingly, the vehicle that transports people is a grammar driven machine. It is at once hilarious and fascinating as Yu explains the notion about language forming our reality, enlightening me to post-modern concepts without having to deal with drab French post-structuralists like Foucault or Bourdieu. Beyond his humor, Yu is honest about our deep-seeded weaknesses, our regrets and is fearless in bringing us from hope to dreams that are crushed. Quite simply, Yu demonstrates how science fiction can be the highest form of literature in exploring the human condition.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2011 by Michael Juge
Format: Paperback
I want to say I remember seeing this in the New Yorker when it first came out. I looked for it again when I read a newer release on theories of time travel that cited this book a lot. Pretty sure it was “Time Travel: A History” by James Gleick. It’s not really a story. Well, it kind of is. The narrator having the same name as the author and it tells the story of his father inventing time travel and a kid looking up to his father. But if you’re in this for the plot, you might be let down a bit. There is a blurb on the cover of my edition calling this a “A great Calvino-esque thrill ride of a book”. That really directed me how to read this book. It turns out that it is not science fiction. It science metafiction or metascience fiction. I’m not sure which one fits better. It’s a book about science fiction and time travel and paradoxes. It is an interesting text if you approach it in that sort of manner. I hated Invisible Cities, but loved If on a winter’s night a traveler, so I can image there are some mixed reactions here. In any manner, it is worth the read you just have to know to come at it obliquely.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2017 by J. Edgar
Format: Paperback
Maybe I expected too much, but I found it mostly depressing, pointless and tediously rambling. Before I bought the book, I conversed with the Grok AI asking for a fun and exciting sciFi adventure, maybe with some time travel, but it definitely missed the mark. No excitement or fun, nothing happening and the same nothing re-happening; again and again. The techno-babble words and names the author chose or invented for the rambling pseudo-philosophy seemed reasonably scientific; so there’s that. And there was one interesting part where the author broke the 4th wall (6th wall in 3D?) by writing about pages of the book as you were reading them. But overall I was disappointed. It was the type of book I couldn’t wait to put down. Sorry.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2026 by David Guidos
Format: Hardcover
I have a limited tolerance for science fiction. I loved Lethem's Gun, with Occasional Music (crime noir in sci-fi setting) and liked his As She Climbed Across the Table (sci-fi relationship story, maybe). I enjoyed Gibson's Neuromancer. At the high risk of sounding pretentious, I like "literary science fiction"; Yu, in his interview at the end of the book, describes his inspiration, a book that "handled actual science...without watering it down, and yet it was clearly Serious Fiction, ... the kind that was in the Sunday book review sections." This book definitely falls in that category. The main character, Charles Yu, is a time machine technician in a science fictional universe. He has spent the last decade living in his time machine (a little bigger than a telephone booth), racing around and saving clients who get stuck. For example, Linus Skywalker going back in time to try and kill his father Luke: "You have no idea what it's like, man. To grow up with the freaking savior of the universe as your dad" (p13). Or a woman who wants to have been there when her grandmother died. (But while you can visit the past, you can't change it or you risk splitting off into a parallel universe in which the past was as you have changed it...or something.) I loved two things about this book. First, the science fiction is so fun. I laughed out loud several times. From running into Luke Skywalker's patricidal son to making out with some alien ("Not human exactly. Humanish. Close enough that she looked awesome... She was a good kisser. I just hope that was her mouth" p52) to Charles's manager, "an old copy of Microsoft Middle Manager 3.0 ... The only thing is, and this isn't really that big a deal, is that Phil thinks he's a real person" (p40). Lots of managerial "yo dog" and "I'm still your homie?" ensues. Second, so much of the book resonated emotionally. In the margins of my copy, I over and over have jotted down notes of empathy. "My thoughts, normally bunched together, wrapped in gauze, insistent, urgent, impatient, one moment to the next, living in what I realize is, in essence, a constant state of emergency" (p122). "I bet there's a secret door! This is so cool! I'm so smart! It's like my very own adventure story. ... The only problem is that the TM-31 [where the book is] is nowhere to be found. I guess I'm not so smart. I am kind of an idiot" (p128). While I didn't love the main character, I feel him. Occasionally, early in the book, I wished for more action. And I don't really understand what happened at the end. But it was still totally worth the ride, and I'll check out Yu's earlier short story collection, as well as Saunders' Civil War Land in Bad Decline, which Yu cites as an inspiration in his interview at the end. Finally, one of my favorite passages: "I modified it slightly to pry open really tiny temporary quantum windows into other universes, through which I am able to spy on my alternate selves. I've seen thirty-nine of them, these varieties of me, and about thirty-fave of them seem like total jerks. I guess I've come to terms with that, with what it probably means. If 89.7 percent of the other versions of you are [jerks], chances are you aren't exactly mister personality yourself" (p10). Note on objectionable content: Some reference to the existence of sex with robots but not explicit. A smattering of strong language.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2010 by David Evans
Format: Paperback
‘How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe’ (HLSSU) introduces us to Charlie. Charlie is a time machine repairman. If your time machine is having issues, Charlie is your ma.n. Charlie lives in Minor Universe 31. He stays in his time machine, seeming to hide from his world/life. Charlie companions are his dog Ed, the ships AI TAMMY, and his boss Phill. We learn that Charlie’s family life was not great. His father an amateur scientist is fully absorbed with developing a time machine. He spends hours, months, and years on this work. He also pulls a young Charlie into this work which takes away any chance of Charlie having a ‘normal’ childhood. As Charlie grows up, the family dynamics are poor. A lot of unhappiness. Eventually, Charlie’s father disappears and is believed to be lost in time traveling. Charlie’s mother lives alone and spends most of her life in a time loop reliving a Sunday evening meal. Sad. There is a lot of regret and sadness in Charlie’s life. He seems to be hiding from the world and his current conditions. The dynamics with Charlie and his companions is enjoyable. They were some of the highlights in the book. The book also contains some hard science, which I like and enjoy. Most of this hard science is in quantum mechanics. Time travel is a very tricky topic to tackle. While I enjoyed the book, the ending was a little abrupt and somewhat unsatisfying. After being forced to return to the active world for time machine maintenance, Charlie runs into a future version of himself and this triggers a time loop. While in this time loop Charlie needs to figure out how to get out of the loop, find his father, and relives his life. Good events and bad. I was glad I read this book, but with the hard science this may not be everyone’s cup of tea. I would say give it a chance, you may like it. Enjoy.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2026 by Randy Cook