When Charles Yu did me the inexplicable kindness of writing a blurb for my first novel, Notes from the Internet Apocalypse, I’m ashamed to say I had not yet read his How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe. That’s OK. I had a good excuse, I was working on my novel when it came out, and, besides, lots of other more important people had read it. According to Mr. Yu’s blurb, my book was “witty, profane, and entertaining” and, most notably, a “thought experiment.” I wondered how this stranger could so graciously itemize my literary ambitions as if he knew me.
And then I read How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe, and it became obvious. Charles Yu had already achieved what I’d set out to do: he’d written a book best described as a “witty, profane, and entertaining thought experiment.”
