Charles Yu: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (Pantheon)

Charles Yu's sweeter-spirited vision of how vintage science fiction can be used to imagine our world. Caught in a computer game, the hero seeks to escape his chronic melancholy. It just so happens that our hero's name is the same as the author's. In our conversation, the writing Yu works his creativity to a frenzy, bringing fiction, physics, math and philosophy to a happy meeting point: safe life in a universe controlled by the imagination.

Read an excerpt from How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.

Charles Yu's bookshelf:

The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker

The Fermata by Nicholson Baker

Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders

Pastoralia by George Saunders

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

by Douglas Hofstadter

Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

As She Climbed Across the Table by Jonathan Lethem

Foundation by Isaac Asimov