How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

Name: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
Brand: Recorded Books
Availability: InStock
Rating: 2 (1 reviews)
Author: Charles Yu
ISBN: 9781449867287

Author: Charles Yu

Narrator: James Yaegashi

Unabridged: 6 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 03/04/2011

Categories: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Science Fiction

Synopsis

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. “In this debut novel, Charles Yu continues his ambitious exploration of the fantastic with a whimsical yet sincere tribute to old-school science fiction and quantum physics. … A fascinating, philosophical and disorienting thriller about life and the context that gives it meaning.”—Kirkus, starred review

About Charles Yu

Charles Yu is the author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, which was named one of the best books of the year by Time magazine. He received the National Book Foundationâ€™s 5 Under 35 Award for his story collection Third Class Superhero and was a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award. His work has been published in the New York Times, Playboy, and Slate, among other periodicals.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Kemper

If anyone is ever crazy enough to make a movie version of this, they better hire Charlie Kaufman to do the adapted screenplay. Even he would probably be left scratching his head and saying, “What the hell??” Trying to summarize this is going to be like trying to explain Inception to someone who has n......more

Goodreads review by Amy

There went 237 pages of my life that I'll never get back. Luckily, I don't live in a science fictional universe. I was really expecting something great with all the hype. And the premise of the book surely had promise. Unfortunately, this is mainly a book where nothing much happens... *SPOILERS (to......more

Goodreads review by Megan

I wanted to like this book a great deal more than I did. I wanted to be moved. But in the end, it left me a little cold. I enjoyed the premise, the set up, the notion of living already in a science fictional universe where, at certain points, the reality ratio went up, but at others, significantly do......more

Goodreads review by Tom

This book is a five-star idea with a three-star execution, so I've decided to average it out to 4 stars overall. Despite the plot's faults (it rushes a bit here, it drags a bit there, it's sometimes metaphorical and sometimes technical and can't seem to decide if it wants to be hyper-detailed or glo......more