Just finished : How To Survive In A Science Fictional Universe

Bought this one as the last in a 3 for £x in Waterstones a while ago ...

A while ago ? Guess it's taken that long to read it ! This one is by a relatively new author called Charles Yu who certainly has a style I've not come across while reading for a while.

It's fairly free form and dips very heavily into the world of metaphysics and a certain amount of philosophy. I'll say right here that I'm not the most cerebral person, my brain tends to deal better with the absolutes of engineering and science. I can deal with the fluffier descriptions of an Iain M Banks Culture novel, as it makes sense within itself and stays consistent. This book tends to a making it up as it goes along style.

What's it about ?

How To Survive In A Science Fictional Universe is all about Time Travel, with a hefty dose of metaphysics thrown in. It's broken up into Modules with chapters making up the modules. There's usually a bit of third wall breaking extra narration/explanation thrown in between the chapters.

I hate to say it but in my first days/weeks of reading this one, I was getting a hefty sense of Wanted style deja vu with regards the utter self loathing the main character seemed to have. That turned Wanted into a not particularly pleasant film and it's similar here too. It does liven up though when the Main Event of the novel kicks off.

Main Event - guy returns to his time machine, only to find himself exiting his time machine. Guy shoots future self, time loop is initiated. The rest of the book has the protagonist figuring out how to get himself out of the time loop.

Can't say I enjoyed this book, although a person more into metaphysics or philosophy may love it. It took me a couple of months to read a 233 page book and there's something wrong about that. The author's style and readability leave something to be desired, like can we please have paragraphs less than 2 pages long ?

Hopefully he'll keep on writing, because there's the nucleus of a good author here. But I won't be rushing out to buy the next Charles Yu book. Next on the list is a book full of mindless explosions, courtesy of Space Marines.