With IBM’s supercomputer Watson winning Jeopardy a few weeks ago, we humans have a right to be a little concerned. Charles Yu’s debut meta novel, How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, imagines a world in which we are the minority, and it’s up to a time machine repairman (named Charles Yu) to define life in the space-time continuum. According to Yu, who is also a full-time lawyer, the Watson uprising is in full swing.
Austin Chronicle: Why did you decide to call the protagonist Charles Yu?
Charles Yu: I was stuck for a name, and I put it in there as a space filler until I could come up with a better name. Before I knew it, it had turned into this self-referential meta thing, and I couldn’t just yank the name out at that point without causing a bunch of other pieces to fall out, sort of like Jenga. I used certain emotional experiences from my childhood and adolescence to seed the story during the writing process, but from there they grew into very fictional things, so although much of the book has, at its core, a connection to something that started off from a place very dear to me, where it ended up isn’t really all that close to anything in my real life or my family’s lives.
AC: Do you have a background in engineering?
CY: My background in engineering is that I took two engineering classes my first year in college and found out that I would not be a good engineer! My father has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and worked in the field for 30 years and, even now that he’s retired, is still making and designing things, receiving patents for his inventions. I have the highest admiration for engineers, and if I’d been smart enough to be one, I wouldn’t have to write about fake engineering in my books.
AC: Does the thought of being trapped in time with just a piece of machinery like Tammy comfort or terrify you?
CY: The idea of being trapped in time with Tammy, the neurotic and beautiful operating system, seems comforting to me, but in a really depressing way. It probably wouldn’t be all that different from being trapped with my television, which I do all the time on purpose. The character Charles Yu has definitely adapted to this kind of living, but he knows it’s not a healthy thing, because Tammy is, in effect, a kind of psychologically absorbent material, taking what Charles gives her, mixing it up a bit, and giving it back to him. He’s interacting with himself in a way, and all of the emotions – regret, anxiety, fear of failure, missing his family, knowing he hasn’t exactly risked much in his life – all of that is swirling around inside his little TM-31 unit, like recirculated air. It’s a closed system, and he knows it’s not a healthy environment. That’s what the book is about, really: Charles breaking out of a succession of boxes that he has put himself in.
AC: Some of the supporting components – like the time loop your mother lives in – do you see that as reality one day? I mean, sexbots are pretty much a reality ….
CY: Some of it’s pretty far-fetched, but I could see versions of some of that tech becoming real in the near … wait a minute, did you say sexbots are a reality?
AC: Well, yeah. Don’t you foresee a robot takeover in your lifetime?
CY: I think the robot takeover has already happened. I have no idea how my phone works. Or an iPod. Or, really, my refrigerator. I think computers have done all the hard work already, which is making us completely reliant and at their mercy. All it’s going to take is for some massively parallel processor at Bell Labs or IBM or someplace like that to boot up one morning and be like, “Oh hello, sentience.” On the one hand, I feel like we’re about this close to being in a fight with our appliances and technology. We’ll be the ones bringing rocks to a gunfight. On the other hand: “What is leg?” That on Jeopardy? It cracks me up, although I shouldn’t admit that, because Watson is probably crawling the Internet for all mentions of its name and now I’m on its “humans to kill” list.
Related Event
How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
Sunday, March 13, 12:30pm, ACC Ballroom G
This article appears in March 4 • 2011.