How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (2010) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

• Phil: Software Boss (Microsoft Middle Manager 3.0)
• Marie: The Woman I Never Married
• Charles Yu: A time machine repairman certified for all T-class chronogrammatical vehicles and employed by Time Warner Time.
• TAMMY: A chronically depressed TM-31 operating system
• Ed: An imaginary dog.

Quotes edit see section history

• “The question is, which I was I? Which I am I? Am I the decider-I or the realizer-I? Both? Neither?”

  Charles Yu

• “There really aren't even any bad guys anymore. Everyone's always questioning themselves. Am I doing this right, is this how I'm supposed to look? Am I good enough to be a good guy, am I bad enough to be a bad guy?”

• “I wish I could freeze time right then and there forever, wish I could hold that knowledge forever, the realization that, even in the gut-turningly horrible awkwardness of that situation, the absolute low of all lows, in the most desperate minute of this hour of his greatest embarrassment and unexplained bad luck and, yes, failure, even though he could be absent and fuzzy and unlocatable and clench his jaw at me and always be disappointed in me and use silence as a form of cruelty to me and my mother, despite all of that, my father would always protect me against the world, would always stand between the world and me, would always be a buffer, a protective covering, a box for me to hide in.”

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• time does heal. It will do so whether you like it or not, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. If you’re not careful, time will take away everything that ever hurt you, everything you have ever lost, and replace it with knowledge.

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• Most people I know live their lives moving in a constant forward direction, the whole time looking backward.

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• Time is a machine: it will convert your pain into experience. Raw data will be compiled, will be translated into a more comprehensible language. The individual events of your life will be transmuted into another substance called memory and in the mechanism something will be lost and you will never be able to reverse it, you will never again have the original moment back in its uncategorized, preprocessed state. It will force you to move on and you will not have a choice in the matter.

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• Life is, to some extent, an extended dialogue with your future self about how exactly you are going to let yourself down over the coming years.

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• At some point in your life, this statement will be true: Tomorrow you will lose everything forever.

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• If I could be half the person my dog is, I would be twice the human I am.

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• The workweek was a structure, a grid, a matrix that held him in place, a path through time, the shortest distance between birth and death.

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• Maybe we spend most of our decades being someone else, avoiding ourselves, maybe a man is only himself, his true self, for a few days in his entire life.

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• Sometimes when I’m brushing my teeth, I’ll look in the mirror and I swear my reflection seems kind of disappointed. I realized a couple of years ago that not only am I not super-skilled at anything, I’m not even particularly good at being myself.

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• Step out into the world of time and risk and loss again. Move forward, into the empty plane. Find the book you wrote, and read it until the end, but don’t turn the last page yet, keep stalling, see how long you can keep expanding the infinitely expandable moment. Enjoy the elastic present, which can accommodate as little or as much as you want to put in there. Stretch it out, live inside of it.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• New Angeles/Lost Tokyo-2: Capital city of Universe 31

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Charles Yu (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Amazon.com's Best Books (2010: Science Fiction & Fantasy, #2)
• John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (Finalist, 2011, #2)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3625.U15h68 2010
• Dewey: 813.6

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Science Fiction
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary

More Books Like This edit see section history