How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

James Yaegashi narrates the story of emotionally stunted Charles Yu, who has the same name as the author and who in the novel is a time-travel technician who lives in Minor Universe 31. Sounding enthusiastic and engaging, Yaegashi adds emphasis to the author's sharp wit and irony. Yaegashi finds unique voices for characters such as the sarcastic TAMMY, the operating system who has low self-esteem, and sexbots, who come up with hilarious one-liners. However, the heart of the story is Yu's search for his father, who invented time travel and then disappeared. Yaegashi delivers the playful and inventive language, which tweaks our expectations with shifts in cadence and timbre. This unique first novel and its skilled narrator present a nifty listening experience. S.C.A. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

July 5, 2010
Yu uses futuristic ideas to explore a mundane theme: writing about the self and the moment in Tristram Shandy–esque digressions. The protagonist, who shares the author's name, spends most of the story interacting with entities that either mirror him (TAMMY, an operating system who reflects his personality) or don't exist (Ed, a "weird ontological entity" in the shape of a dog; Phil, a programmed supervisor who thinks he's human). The conclusion tries to mitigate character-Yu's risk-averse solipsism, but is too quick and abstract to really counter the rest of the book's emotional weight. Mainstream readers will be baffled by the highly nonlinear Oedipal time travel plot, but the passive, self-obsessed protagonist is straight out of the mainstream fiction that many SF fans love to hate, leaving this book without an audience.