Chapters 1-2 Summary

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Yu, is a novel told by a young man with the author's name who travels through time for his job as a time machine repairman. The narrator is also in search of his father, who disappeared, and the concept of time travel in the novel functions as a vehicle for the character to explore his own life. The book begins with three quotes from different authors about the nature of perception and time, followed by what appears to be a theoretical diagram of time and the character's life, but which later proves to be a kind of table of contents. Next comes a statement from the protagonist that he met himself in the future and shot himself, killing his own future. The first section is called "(module ά)" and Chapter 1 begins...