science fictional universe

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu was pretty popular when it came out in 2010 if I remember correctly. I added to my reading list then, but I haven't gotten around to it until now. I get a kick out of the cover art, which appears to be a study in old school ray gun design, along with a Star Trek font for the text. A closer look at the ray guns shows that they aren't all different--which is slightly disappointing--and one of them isn't a ray gun at all.

What is great about this story is that it reads a little like an autobiography (written in first person, and the protagonist's name is Charles Yu) and a little like the diary of an emotionally damaged man, and a little like the service manual for a futuristic device that isn't really well explained, and a little like a letter to one's future self about how to be better, and a little like wholly metaphoric construct created to path to reckoning with regret and time wasted.

I think that amorphous quality of the story may be what makes it so popular. It has the ability, like a good fortune teller does, to spin a tale charged enough to latch onto our shared experiences, and vague enough to allow us to bring more of ourselves to the story as readers. In the end, it looks like Yu has told us a story of himself, and ourselves, and maybe hasn't told a science fiction story at all.

Read this book.