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