How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
I recently read How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: A Novel by Charles Yu. I actually read it on my iPad, which I will discuss a bit more about below.
The book itself is a novel, loosely, in that it is fictional and has a story. However, it’s not a very traditional novel, even for science fiction. It’s pretty much an excuse to play around with the ‘what ifs’ that we’ve all thought about time travel. The sort of things that made Fry immune to the Brain Spawn on Futurama. But also what happens if you do something to your future self – that will also get done to you when you are that future self.
The point is, it’s a novel, but it’s more of a bunch of musings on time travel, encased in a novel and world that are crystalized enough to contain it. It’s a very funny book, and I enjoyed its humor almost as much as the philosophical musings.
As I mentioned above, I read this on my iPad, using the kindle reader application. This is the first time I used the iPad for that purpose, and I’ve found that its pretty great for reading in bed, and also for taking on a plane trip (save for the no reading until 10,000 feet and during landing). The version of the book for the iPad reader in particular had additional content (color pictures and a link to a pretty sweet youtube video about the apparent lack of free will).