There is just enough space inside here for one person to live indefinitely, or at least that’s what the operations manual says.
So begins Charles Yu’s debut novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe ($10.17). Yu is the recipient of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” Award. As Lev Grossman wrote in review:
The hero of this story, also named Charles Yu, ekes out a living there as a time travel repairman–“a certified network technician for T-class personal-use chronogramattical vehicles, and an approved independent affiliate contractor for Time Warner Time, which owns and operates this universe as a spatio-temporal structural and entertainment complex zoned for retail, commercial, and residential use.” (Time Warner Time — that’s the kind of three-pointer Yu never misses.) Charles is a high-tech sad sack, whose only companions are a dog, who’s mostly hypothetical, and a computer with a sexy feminine AI interface that Yu has a crush on.
This sounds like the perfect new read for Douglas Adams and H.G. Wells fans alike. Just watch out for wormholes–you might just get sucked into this novel.
