Charles
Yu’s debut novel, How
to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe begins with the
conceit of a time travel repairman who lives outside the normal bounds
of time and space, specifically tasked with working in Universe TM-31.
As the title implies, the protagonist, also named Charles Yu, is
aware of the tropes of science fiction, as is the author, and both are
happy to make use of them in frequently nonsensical ways reminiscent of
a Kurt Vonnegut novel.
In
many ways an experimental book, the novel has very little of many of the
traditional aspects of the novel. The plot is practically non-existent,
characters and relationships exist, but generally are shown second hand,
with Yu, the character, relating his relationships with his AI (TAMMY),
his computer-created boss (Phil), his absentee inventor father, his
time-looped mother, and his “ontologically valid” dog, Ed. Instead,
the book is more a focus on Yu’s somewhat lackluster search for his
father and his odd use of science fictional conceits.
Although
at times, Yu’s depictions of science fiction are clever, and even
satirical, he misses his targets as often as he hits them.
His over-reliance of science fictional terms that could best be
described as technobabble are not only repetitive, but stand in the way
of both the narrative and the underlying themes as the reader must
decide if it is worthwhile to attempt to decipher what Yu means by
phrases such as “coefficient of ironic detachment,” or if they
should simply be skipped over to a more meaningful phraseology.
How
to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
is
perhaps read best as a complete metaphor for life, with a healthy dose
of existentialism. Yu, the
character, lives and interacts with a manufactured universe, and the
very non-linearity of the book contributes to the sense that Yu, the
character, is an unreliable narrator, describing things that he senses
but may not have any bearing on the reality of his manufactured world.
While this may make for an interesting philosophical debate, it
works less well in this book, which purports to be a novel.
The
metafictional aspects of the novel come across as almost superfluous.
Perhaps if it were the only non-traditional aspect of Yu’s
novel, his references to the book itself, notably blank pages within the
book wouldn’t jar. As it is, on top of the various experimental
aspects of the novel, these sections of the book don’t really seem to
add anything to the novel as a whole.
Yu
demonstrates a great deal of imagination in How
to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, although most of it
seems to be in ways to circumvent the expectations of the form he has
(notionally) elected to write in. The
plot of the story is anemic, stretched out to novel length by the
inclusion of random thoughts and philosophical speculations which seem
tangential to the work rather than its impetus.
On the whole, How
to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe doesn’t succeed.
Yu seems to be attempts at cleverness come off as being a little
too self congratulatory. His
experimentation hangs on a light frame that doesn’t provide any real
support and his characters, such as they are, don’t provide the reader
with anyone sympathetic enough to hang a novel on in lieu of a strong
plot.
