How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: A Novel

Summary

From the National Book Award–⁠winning author of Interior Chinatown comes a razor-sharp, hilarious, and touching story of a son searching for his father … through quantum space-time.

Every day in Minor Universe 31 people get into time machines and try to change the past. That’s where Charles Yu, time travel technician, steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally. When he’s not taking client calls, Yu visits his mother and searches for his father, who invented time travel and then vanished. The key to locating his father may be found in a book. It’s called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and somewhere inside it is information that will help him. It may even save his life.

“In this debut novel, Charles Yu continues his ambitious exploration of the fantastic with a whimsical yet sincere tribute to old-school science fiction and quantum physics. … A fascinating, philosophical and disorienting thriller about life and the context that gives it meaning.”—Kirkus, starred review