How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
Author(s): Charles Yu
National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award winner Charles Yu delivers his debut novel, a razor-sharp, ridiculously funny, and utterly touching story of a son searching for his father . . . through quantum space-time.
Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and try to do the one thing they should never do: change the past. That's where Charles Yu, time travel technician--part counselor, part gadget repair man--steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally. When he's not taking client calls or consoling his boss, Phil, who could really use an upgrade, Yu visits his mother (stuck in a one-hour cycle of time, she makes dinner over and over and over) and searches for his father, who invented time travel and then vanished. Accompanied by TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and Ed, a nonexistent but ontologically valid dog, Yu sets out, and back, and beyond, in order to find the one day where he and his father can meet in memory. He learns that the key may be found in a book he got from his future self. It's called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and he's the author. And somewhere inside it is the information that could help him--in fact it may even save his life.
Wildly new and adventurous, Yu's debut is certain to send shock waves of wonder through literary space-time.
Product Information
'Charles Yu is a tremendously clever writer, and How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is marvellously written, sweetly geeky, good clean time-bending fun.' AUDREY NIFFENEGGER A complex, brainy, genre-hopping joyride of a story - New York Times Brimming with alternative universes, futuristic landscapes and gleeful metaphysics - Yu's spirit of invention is infectious. - Sunday Times A man with a time machine shoots a future version of himself... The old time-travel paradox becomes a witty and plangent enquiry into the nature of memory. It's SF - but not as we know it. - Financial Times If sci-fi is the literature of ideas, Charles Yu is already a master of the form: there are more fascinating, bizarre and clever concepts per page than most writers manage in an entire novel. - Time Out A fantastic time travel story, one that blends fiction and reality, a sharp style of storytelling that blew my mind... this is one of the most important books of the genre to be published this year - SF Signal Highly inventive and hilarious - The Times pretty superb: involving, clever, perky, properly science fictional and above all funny... a most excellent debut - The Guardian A complex, brainy, genre-hopping joyride of a story, far more than the sum of its part, and smart and tragic enough to engage all regions of the brain and body - International Herald Tribune Buzzes with ideas, takes stylistic risks successfully, and is tightly focussed on the emotional impact of the story... Yu's enthralling debut makes me yearn for his next one - Scotland on Sunday 'A small wonder of a novel.' - Time Magazine, 'Top 10 Books of the Year 2010'
Charles Yu was born in Los Angeles. His fiction has been published in a number of magazines and literary journals. In 2007, he was selected by the National Book Foundation as one of its '5 Under 35' a program which asks five previous National Book Award fiction Winners and Finalists to select one fiction under 35 writer whose work they find particularly exciting. Yu was selected for the honour by Richard Powers. This is his first novel.
General Fields
- :
- : Atlantic Books, Limited
- : Corvus
- : 243.0
- : 01 May 2011
- : 198mm X 129mm
- : United Kingdom
- : 01 October 2011
- : books
Special Fields
- : Charles Yu
- : Paperback
- : 1
- : English
- : FIC
- : 256
- : FL
