It's been a week, and I've pretty much decided that Charles Yu never meant for
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe to be taken at face value as a time travel novel. It is, instead, a novel on memory and loss in which the tropes of science fictional time travel, and especially world-building, are referenced but never truly centered. Yu's ultimate theme is the son's longing for his father, which he evokes elegiacally and unashamedly.
Science fiction fans may be disappointed because Yu has written an allegory which exploits science fiction conventions, not a science fiction novel. Those steeped in said conventions who are open to explorations of the chasms between parent and child will be rewarded.
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