Survival Strategies for a Time Machine Restorer [First Printed and Signed by National Book Award Winner Yu Chaokai]

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

[Author Yu Chaokai's signature + Taiwan exclusive new edition preface]

He walked out of the time machine and told me he was You Chaokai. What could I do?
I killed him, and ended my own future...

Yu Chaokai, screenwriter of "Westworld" and winner of the US National Book Award, finally returns with his first full-length novel. It's ranked alongside "The Three-Body Problem" and "Dune" as one of the top 50 science fiction novels of all time. It's also one of Time Magazine's top ten science fiction/fantasy novels of the year, and one of the top ten on the Amazon online bookstore list. It's also one of the New York Times' top 100 books of the year, and winner of the UK's John Campbell Memorial Award.

(Lin Xinhui, Dan Tangmo, Dong Yang, Tan Jian, Gao Yongquan, Ye Lihua recommend "Across Time and Space")))

First Rule of Time Travel: If you see your clone, run away. The faster you run, the better.

I work in the time travel industry, repairing time machines for a living.
Many of my colleagues are actually novelists. Some have just broken up or divorced and decided to enter the industry after encountering misfortune.
What about me? I just like quiet.

And here's what happened: I shot my future self...

About the story

Time will eventually take away the ones you love. Can going back to the past make up for the shortcomings of life?

In the unfinished Microcosm 31, time travel is commonplace, and people enter time machines daily to return to their worst day in an attempt to reverse the situation. Despite their efforts, they find nothing—they cannot change the past.

The protagonist, You Chaokai, shares the same name as the author and works as a time machine repairman. He lives with a dog and a conversational AI computer. He helps people solve their time travel problems. Besides answering calls from clients, he also visits his mother. His father, after a series of setbacks trying to invent a time machine, finally succeeds, but decides to abandon his wife and disappear without a trace.

One day, while delivering a time machine for repair, the protagonist, You Chaokai, encounters his future self. He shoots him, and as a result, is trapped in a time loop. The key to escaping the loop and finding his father lies in a book that the future You Chaokai has given him: "Survival Strategies for Time Machine Repairers"...

"This is the most inspiring time-travel novel I've read in recent years." -- James Grayke, one of the world's leading science writers

“The science fiction elements made the writing fun, adding a sense of otherworldliness and reducing the tension in the father-son relationship.
When I think back to my childhood, I also feel that it is not real.
Through science fiction, we can reach that realm and subvert our understanding of reality." - You Chaokai

Author Yu Chaokai is known for his conciseness with words, yet each of his works creates a significant impact. His first collection of novels, "Third-Rate Superheroes," released in 2006, received rave reviews and critical acclaim. In 2007, renowned literary figure Richard Bowers selected him as one of the National Library Foundation's "Five Most Anticipated Writers Under 35," inspiring him to write his first novel, "The Time Machine Repairer's Survival Strategy."

"The Time Machine Repairman's Survival Strategy" not only showcases Yu Chaokai's professional background, spanning the humanities and sciences, but also established his distinctive and innovative style even before "Interior Chinatown." Incorporating classic sci-fi elements such as time travel, the grandfather paradox, and the quantum universe, the film employs first-person narration, metafictional techniques, stream of consciousness, and book-within-a-book, immersing the reader in the characters' unique psychological states.

The book features gender-specific AI, sex robots, a news cloud for people to access information, and music memes. It also uses different language tenses to create a sci-fi universe, cleverly overturning the human limitation of "only being able to perceive the present and remember the past," and directly suggests that memory is everyone's time machine. "The Time Machine Repairer's Survival Strategy" is a son's bizarre adventure in search of his father. Yu Chaokai also uses sci-fi narratives to directly explore the plight of Asian immigrants. In an interview, he said:

“While writing this novel, it suddenly struck me that the immigrant experience, the outsider experience, was a perfect parallel – immigrants are like people arriving in another universe.”

※This book is a new translation of "The Time Machine and the Vanishing Father"

The cover design shows the protagonist searching for his father in a self-contradictory cycle. Perhaps a part of our lives has already been erased by ourselves, or perhaps a part of us has been erased long ago, as if our present self has killed our future self.

But no matter what, we should move forward, break out of the cycle, and find ourselves. The upper and lower parts of the book cover are metaphors for an infinite cycle, and the protagonist is constantly shuttling and reincarnating within it.

Art Design: Wan Xiangxin

Positive reviews from all walks of life

"A post-fiction novel wrapped in a garb of brilliantly whimsical flourishes... Like Douglas Adams, Yu Chaokai's writing is remarkably witty, often in direct proportion to the unconventional elements of his work. Yet, beneath the vibrant energy of Yu Chaokai's writing, a dense, tragic, and deeply human heart is concealed... This book is complex, intellectual, and cross-genre, captivating, and written with such mastery and pathos that it touches every part of the human mind and body." -- The New York Times Book Review

"It's a book you can't put down... You Chaokai writes with a lucid style that manages both mathematics and lyricism, switching seamlessly between enchanting metafiction and deadpan itemized prose... The book itself feels like one of Jobs's greatest obsessions, a dreamlike marriage of function and design." - Los Angeles Times

"A brilliant idea, involving sex robots, laser guns, time travel, and Buddhist zombie mothers... and filled with clever emotional portrayals." - The Economist

"Had 'Science Fiction World Survival Guide' simply explored the classic sci-fi theme of time paradox, it might have been enough to create a delightful story. However, Yu Chaokai has far-reaching ambitions and ultimately writes a story that is doubly satisfying." - National Public Radio

"This book is likely to spark debate within science fiction circles and beyond, angering some readers and making others nervous." - San Francisco Chronicle

"One of the best science fiction novels of the year... This is a stunning and outstanding work of science fiction that deals with the propositions of self-realization, happiness, and connection with others... You Chaokai cleverly blends the science fiction universe with his own fictional life, allowing readers to be directly immersed in the story... Even compared with H.G. Wells's "The Time Machine" or the TV series "The Chronicles of Time", it remains one of the best time travel stories." - SF Signal

"Within just a few pages, I was hooked... Sometimes he'll talk about 'chronarratives,' and it sounds like pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo to fill the word count. But then you realize he's got something really interesting going on, that he's really figured out something fascinating about how time works, how fiction works, and suddenly a switch flips on in your brain. I had that experience more than once. The book is filled with passages I just can't help but share." - GeekDad, Wired magazine

"In this debut novel, You Chaokai continues his ambitious exploration of science fiction with a whimsical yet earnest nostalgia, paying homage to both old-school sci-fi and quantum physics... a captivating, philosophical, and mind-bending suspense novel concerned with the meaning of life." — Kirkus Reviews starred review

"Yu Chaokai skillfully utilizes Star Wars allusions, insights into the future, time travel into the past, and a humorous and touching 'time narrative' to construct a clever and smooth metaphorical story. It is about the archetypes of fathers and sons, the mysteries of time and memory, and the emotions. It is interesting, thought-provoking, and wise." - Bibliographic Magazine

"This book is so cool. If I could go back in time and read it sooner, I would." -- Colson Whitehead, author of "Underground Railroad"

"Yu Chaokai is a brilliant writer. 'Science Fiction World Survival Guide' is wittily written, sweetly nerdy, and neatly manipulates time."—Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife

"Science Fiction Survival Guide is that rare kind of original fiction. Yu Chaokai has built a strange, beautiful, and ingenious machine that pulses with both blood and electricity." — Kevin Brockmire, author of A Brief History of the Dead

"Emotional, witty, and blisteringly original, it rewrites the meaning of time, mind, and style."—David Eagleman, author of Forty Lives After Death

2024-06-03

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