Book Review: “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe” by Charles Yu
To Be Read?
I — like probably just about every reader out there — have a mountain of books that I have not read. This is frequently referred to in publishing circles as a To Be Read pile. These are books that I have bought, either on my Kindle or in physical form, that have been purchased with the intent of being more than just eyeballed, only to have something happen — most likely, a newer, shinier book comes along to capture my enthusiasm — that causes it to fall by the wayside and land on a growing pile of unread books. If it’s a physical copy of a book that I have, its pages will likely yellow and it will sit on my bookshelf in my living room unread until I somehow magically have the time and inclination as a book reviewer who writes not only for my enjoyment here on Medium, but now for a major American trade publication, too, to sit down and read the thing. Well, I thought it would be fun to start going through these books and start reading them, if not start talking about them. This leads me to Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, a book that was originally published in 2010 in hardcover. I still have the hardcover edition (now out of print, of course, but the novel has since been picked up for print by Vintage as a trade paperback) and, yes, its pages are yellowed. Being a science-fiction nerd, I thought I would have had more interest in this short novel, but, for some reason, I left the cover closed on this one for more than a dozen years.
It’s a bit of a shame because Charles Yu is a big deal. He won the National Book Award for fiction for his follow-up novel, 2020’s Interior Chinatown. Going back to How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, the book was highly acclaimed — among its accolades are being listed in Time magazine’s Top 10 Fiction Books of 2010, The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2010, and it was one of Amazon.com’s Top 10 science fiction and fantasy books for 2010. It was also optioned for a movie. (Thanks, Wikipedia!) Additionally, it seems to have become something of a cult classic as I keep tripping over it figurately in my travels as a book critic: one of my so-called friends I had on Goodreads.com when I was a more active participant over there happened to review the book last year. So, yes, people are still talking about How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe well beyond its initial print run. While the book is a little teeny-tiny bit dated in how it portrays technology, it still holds up remarkably well. But it’s not an easy read, even if it is a slim volume that uses a generous amount of white space on its pages.
It’s hard to describe what this book is about because there has probably been no other novel written quite like this one. It involves a thirtysomething Asian man who is the co-inventor of time travel with his father, and who is now a time machine repair man. He travels across time and space with his trusted canine companion, Ed. He meets his mother, who is stuck of her own volition in a time loop where she prepares the same meal for her small family again and again and again. He is ultimately searching for his father, though, who has gone missing. The novel is told in the form of a series of interconnected vignettes, along with interspersed selections from the appendix of a time-traveling manual (shades of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy there.). However, outside of the time-travel trope that this “science-fiction novel that is masquerading as literary fiction” (or is it the other way around?) uses, this is particularly a book that’s concerned with memory and childhood. About not being able to redo the past, but being blessed or cursed to constantly relive it again and again, no matter how pleasant or unpleasant that past might be.
I’m actually — having come this far — of the opinion that I have no opinion about this book. I would agree, though, that it is very cleverly written and important. After all, science-fiction, as a genre, tended to be ghettoized as space opera junk until writers such as Yu came along, so this is a work that attempts to elevate SF to something a lot more high-brow in nature. On that front, I think the novel succeeds. However, this is not a pleasurable novel to read. This isn’t a “park your brain at the door” type of book that is akin to gobbling down junk food. That said, for a novel that is about living life as fully as you can — as old of a message as that might be — its brevity works in its favour. And, come to think of it, that brevity might be a commentary on our lives as we know them to begin with. So, by all means, if you’re curious about what it was like to be an intellectual 30-year-old man who was writing this very self-reflexive book and what it means to truly live, then read this. You are guaranteed to be challenged. For everyone else, I suppose there’s the Star Wars universe. Still, I’m glad to have tackled, in some small but significant way, my seemingly never-ending To Be Read pile, and I’ve heard it said somewhere that all books are meant to be read on that pile at a certain time of a person’s life. To that end, I guess How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe — being a book mostly about familial relationships — was a very apropos pick for the first book that I tackled on that pile. I don’t know about you, but this was likely a book that I needed to read right now. It says something about me, even if I’m well beyond the target age range for the group this was written for. An interesting curio, to be sure, and worth checking out.
Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe was published by Vintage on June 28, 2011.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
