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

Title: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
Author: Charles Yu
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 234
Genre: Science Fiction, Time Travel
Publication Date: September 7th, 201
Publisher: Pantheon
Rating: 6

Summary:
From Goodreads: National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award winner Charles Yu delivers his debut novel, a razor-sharp, ridiculously funny, and utterly touching story of a son searching for his father . . . through quantum space–time.

Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and try to do the one thing they should never do: change the past. That’s where Charles Yu, time travel technician—part counselor, part gadget repair man—steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally. When he’s not taking client calls or consoling his boss, Phil, who could really use an upgrade, Yu visits his mother (stuck in a one-hour cycle of time, she makes dinner over and over and over) and searches for his father, who invented time travel and then vanished. Accompanied by TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and Ed, a nonexistent but ontologically valid dog, Yu sets out, and back, and beyond, in order to find the one day where he and his father can meet in memory. He learns that the key may be found in a book he got from his future self. It’s called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and he’s the author. And somewhere inside it is the information that could help him—in fact it may even save his life.

Wildly new and adventurous, Yu’s debut is certain to send shock waves of wonder through literary space–time.

Why did I read this book? It's the very first selection for Calico Reaction's Theme Park book club!

Source: Library

My Review
This is such a weird book. I don't even know how to write a review for this because I still don't know what I was reading. I'll try my best to explain. Charles Yu is the main protagonist in the book, who sort of rescues people who get lost in their time travelling adventures. One day, he runs into his future self and shoots him and creates a time loop. He spends part of that loop reading/writing a book called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe which also happens to be the book YOUR reading. Brain 'splode.

Meanwhile, the book has another major plot: Yu and his relationship with his parents, in particular, his father. His father is lost in time and he's trying to find him while also trying to come to terms with their past together.

To be honest, for the first 80 pages or so, I wanted to quit. I think every 3 pages I thought seriously about putting the book down. It was just because it was so dense, so introspective and lacking in any action that I couldn't find myself interested in the story. While I enjoyed Yu's science fictional universe and his clever concepts, I just didn't care. Then the time loop occurs and it gets more interesting. Charles tells so much about his past that I just got lost in it all. It was hard to grab onto any character, except maybe TAMMY, the computer program.

There is some great stuff here though. The writing shows a lot of skill and the time traveling quite fabulous. I loved the interaction of reading the same book that the character is reading inside the story. At one point Charles flips to the back of the book to see what happens and then I did as well. We had the same result and it was pretty awesome.I just wish there was more to the plot than Charles finding his father and working out his thoughts and memories. When characters (even if they were computers) conversed, it really set off for me, but unfortunately there wasn't a lot of that.

Rating: 6
I’m sorry if this doesn’t seem like much of a review, but it’s a tough book to qualify. All I can say is, if you’re looking for out-of-the-box science fiction, funky time travel and/or a story about a boy and his father, then give this a shot.

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Review: Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Title: Doomsday Book

Author: Connie Willis
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Pages: 578
Genre: Science Fiction, Time Travel
Publication Date: August 1st, 1993
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Rating: B+

This book is part of the 2011 Women of Science Fiction book club hosted by Dreams and Speculation.



From Goodreads: For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.

But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin — barely of age herself — finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours.

Five years in the writing by one of science fiction's most honored authors, Doomsday Book is a storytelling triumph. Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering and the indomitable will of the human spirit.

My first experience with Connie Willis' time travel adventures was with To Say Nothing of the Dog (review) which I enjoyed very much. Doomsday Book is quite different in that the plot is a lot heavier, but there are still a lot of the qualities that I loved in Dog. For example, Willis never fails to amuse me with her clever and discreet humor and her always smart time travel plots.

Doomsday Book is split between the stories of Kivrin, who is visiting the middle ages, and Mr. Dunworthy, who's back at Oxford dealing with a virus outbreak. From the beginning I always enjoyed Kivrin's story more, probably because I love history and the idea of a young woman going back to that time always interested me. What didn't help Mr. Dunworthy's story was that I found it spent too much time having him run around trying to figure out if Kivrin was all right while simultaneously dealing with an outbreak that went on for an extreme amount of pages to the point I felt like it was redundant. Also, perhaps to make Mr. Dunworthy's story interesting or hilarious, a lot of the events in the present day were preventing him from finding out or helping Kivrin and I felt that these events were exhasperating and sometimes convoluted. For example, whenever he had to call someone important he couldn't get ahold of them because they weren't by the phone. Doesn't anyone have cell phones or interenet in 2050-something? I know this book was written in 1992, but I felt this was a bit of a stretch.

While you can probably tell I was annoyed with some parts of the book, I really liked it overall. Willis' time travel is just so fascinating and so well done I can't help but be absorbed into the story. I wanted to see the Middle Ages as envisioned by Willis and she doesn't let you down. Kivrin is shocked to see that the time period is not exactly what she pictured, to say the least. The time is not glorified but gritty, real and populated with very human characters such as young Agnes or Father Roche.

Overall I recommend this book to anyone interested in time travel, history or just great science fiction. This wasn't my first Connie Willis book and it certainly won't be my last. B+

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Review: A Wish After Midnight by Zetta Elliott

Title: A Wish After Midnight
Author: Zetta Elliott
Pages: 258
Genre: YA, Time Travel, Historical Fiction
Publication Date: March 5, 2009
Rating: A
Challenge: Calico Reaction's Book Club - September Challenge (Alternate)

A Wish After Midnight is the story of 15 year old Genna Colon and her turbulent life in Brooklyn, New York. Her days are filled with school (which she is very good at), taking care of her younger brother, Tyjuan, and dealing with her older brother and sister. Her father left the family when they were little; their tiny apartment is crowded with five people. Then Genna meets Judah, a Jamaican boy who teaches her about her African roots and who is also there to support her. Suddenly, she is thrown into a new time: the year of 1863. There she learns about America during the civil war the hard way and exposes us to the daily life of African-Americans, the Irish and American people of Brooklyn 1863.

This book is divided into three parts; the first being about Genna's life in Brooklyn. It is a struggle to say the least. Her family is financially drained, there is the threat of drugs and violence around her, and there are still racial undertones in the city. Genna doesn't fit it as much as she would want to. I thought that this first part of the book was a good way to introduce us to Genna and her life. It also creates and interesting parallel to 1863: there is, surprisingly, still a lot of changes to be made in society. Genna gets an after-school job babysitting for a white woman and ironically, that's the same job she gets in 1863.

The second part is based on Genna's life in 1863 Brooklyn. I personally was more interested in the past part of the story. This is probably because I like historical fiction so much and anything set in the past is attractive to me. I really was fascinated by all the information Elliott crams into one book without info dumping. She not only explores the lives of African-Americans of the time but also the racism against the Irish and the mistreatment of women as well.

I really felt immersed in this story and I think this has to do with the fact that it is told in first person by Genna. I thought it was very emotional and raw and real despite the fantastical premise.

Overall, I really liked this novel and I cannot wait for a sequel! The ending left in a pretty big cliffhanger and I'm really interested to see what happens in the present and the past. Also, I thought Elliott was just expert at creating a world where different characters have different opinions on everything and it serves to teach the reader about issues such as race in the present day and the past. I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a gritty novel, a smart young adult read, or even just a great historical tale.

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Review: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

Title: To Say Nothing of the Dog
Author: Connie Willis
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Pages: 493
Genre: Science Fiction, Romance, Comedy, Historical Fiction
Publication Date: November 18th, 2009
Publisher: Bantam
Rating: 9

Summary:
From Goodreads: From Connie Willis, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, comes a comedic romp through an unpredictable world of mystery, love, and time travel...

Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest. He's been shuttling between the 21st century and the 1940s searching for a Victorian atrocity called the bishop's bird stump. It's part of a project to restore the famed Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a Nazi air raid over a hundred years earlier.

But then Verity Kindle, a fellow time traveler, inadvertently brings back something from the past. Now Ned must jump back to the Victorian era to help Verity put things right--not only to save the project but to prevent altering history itself.

Why did I read this book? This is the March Challenge in Calico Reactions Book Club!

Source: Bought

My Review
This is my first time participating in calico-reaction's book club, and I have to say what a great start! I decided to participate even though I have limited time to read because I wanted to read more scifi and having a community to discuss it after just made it more appealing.

To be honest, when I started the book, I thought it was definitely funny and entertaining, but I really couldn't get into the actual story. I had trouble reading more than one chapter at a time (which is unusual for me). Ironically, the first part of the book which mimics Willis' inspiration, Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome in which there are in fact about 100 pages about three men in a boat - to say nothing of the dog - was in my opinion the most boring part of the book. Nonetheless I was held by Willis' talent in writing passages that evoked visions of the past and present. For instance, one of my favorites was: "She was a delicate blossom, capable of growing only in a single time, adapted only to the select hothouse environment of the late Victorian era: the untouched flower, the blooming English rose, the angel in the house. She would be extinct in only a handful of years, replaced by the bicycling bloomer girl, the cigarette-smoking flapper and the suffragette." (p.94)

I noticed my attention piqued when the plot moved into the mystery aspect, and also when Ned Henry and Verity Kindle began to have scenes together. I thought the mystery was so well done, although I did catch some hints and guessed right on a couple things, nothing prepared me for the ending in which Willis reveals a very thought out and masterminded conclusion. As for Ned Henry, I can't really describe Willis' skill in creating and maintaining such a distinct narrative voice through that character. I feel like I know the guy. Some of my favorite parts were when Ned was time-lagged and had the tendency to sentimentalize, which was quite charming and hilarious.

Rating: 9
I think this book is great fun and also contains an impressive plot and that it could be good for fledgling scifi readers (like me). Also, anyone who is interested in Victorian history should read this too as most of it takes place in that time. I hope to read more of Connie Willis in the future.

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