![]() Less abstruse but similarly labyrinthine is “Note to Self,” which is, as the title suggests, the transcript of a conversation taking place between a multiverse of selves, “correspondents corresponding in our corresponding universes.” In these stories as others, Yu reconsiders how time and choice fluxes with identity through a sometimes telescopic, sometimes microscopic narrative lens. In other words, the not-quite-Charles Yu knows something but next to nothing about Charles Yu, and the story is much like a neuro-philosophic exercise in which a shell is searching for its hermit crab, instead of the other way around. ![]() “Human for Beginners” is an alternate self’s autobiographical account of trying to find any kind of entry point to the actual self. Yu experiments in ways that are deeply meta to the point that his infinite regress begins to clamp down – in some cases, too hard. About to launch is something called the “meaning pill,” the apex of PharmaLife’s “pharmaconarrative” product line, and this is what happens when we ask people to play God: they do. An aggressively funny parody of a big pharma shareholder’s meeting, “Designer Emotion 67” takes aim at the unchecked self-aggrandizement of high level execs and society’s pronounced commitment to building a better, chemically enhanced self. Some of the selections springboard off of contemporary sociopolitical issues: “Standard Loneliness Package,” the first entry in the “Sorry” section, imagines the capitalism of an emotions-economy in which the experience of pain – everything from grieving the loss of a parent to confessing an affair to dental surgery – is assigned monetary value and can be outsourced (or insourced?) to a third party sufferer-for-hire. “I hate everything about her except for the fact that I love everything about her,” he laments, and it appears that the zombie is not the thing that’s eating his brain. There’s a zombie in the store, and while a clerk is cautiously trying to help the undead pick out a flattering shade of lipstick, the panic he feels has more to do with the coworker on shift he wants to ask out on a date. “First Person Shooter” begins with the discovery of a finger on the floor of a mega-mart’s housewares section. Sorry Please Thank You, Yu’s new collection of 13 short stories, elucidates human hopes and frailties within extra-human narratives. As in any universe, the limitlessness is breathtaking and yet how easy it is to feel a little… lost. There is space exploration for sure, but Yu is more interested in the expanse of the interior, the science fiction of the self. He doesn’t, in that the kind of science fiction he writes is a little different than the stuff on your dad’s bedside bookshelf, the books populated with tentacled creatures and Martian terrain. He does, in that his debut novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, was voted as a runner-up for the Campbell Memorial Award, the prize that is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction. Charles Yu does and doesn’t write science fiction.
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