Book Review: New in Print

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: A Novel

It's telling that the protagonist in Charles Yu's debut novel is named Charles Yu – it's one of the first clues we get in this parallel narrative, one that defies the tenses of past, present, and future. Yu is a time machine repairman living in Minor Universe 31, a time corridor that used to be New York City before New York City and Los Angeles abruptly merged and created wormholes to alternate fictional realities. Douglas Adams and Philip K. Dick are touchstones, but Yu's sense of humor and narrative splashes of color – especially when dealing with a pretty solitary life and the bittersweet search for his father, a time travel pioneer who disappeared – set him apart within the narrative spaces of his own horizontal design. He has a dog, Ed; the company of Tammy, his perpetually worried operating system; and occasional interaction with his boss, Phil, "an old copy of Microsoft Middle Manager 3.0." There are also sexbots for purchase. The title's emphasis on "fictional" doesn't lessen the sorrow of life on the infinite plane. "Time is a machine: it will convert your pain into experience," Yu says by way of explaining his career. He's heavy on metaphor maintenance and there's a conversational tone, but the book is also a field guide, and Yu is never short on factoids, diagrams, and futuristic lingo. Can you kill your future self? How do you get unstuck from a time loop? This is reality in Yu's fictional universe, where you can purchase False Memories of Home chewing gum, among other things. The way he smartly balances emotional narrative with engineer-speak reflects the story's half-finished landscapes and ruptured lives, and he does it so often you literally feel like you're there in the shower-sized interior of his floating residence. Not all of his logic is linear, and sometimes his tangents get clunky, but ultimately you empathize. It's a clever little story that will be looped in your head for days. No doubt it will be made into a movie, but let's hope that doesn't take away the heart.