>> Female Announcer: Hi everyone and thanks
for coming to today's Authors@Google event
with Charles Yu.
It's really my pleasure to introduce him and
as I just discovered we are from the same
hometown, really small world.
But Charles is the author of How to Live Safely
in a Science Fictional Universe, which was
actually named one of the best books of the
year by both Time Magazine and the San Francisco
Chronicle.
His novel has been described as a complex,
brainy, genre-hoping joy ride of a story,
far more than the sum of its component parts.
And Yu is also the author of a short story,
a story collection, Third Class Superhero.
And is 2007, I believe, he won the National
Book Foundations Five Under Thirty-five Fiction
Writers to Watch.
So besides being a writer Charlie is also
a full-time lawyer at a visual effects company
in Southern California.
So without further ado, please join me in
welcoming Charles Yu to Google.
[applause]
>> Charles: Thanks Erica.
Thanks very much for having me and thanks
for coming.
I think I am going to read little bits and
talk in between, try to keep it from getting
too much of my voice.
Well I guess it will be all of my voice [laughs]
so, I'll try to keep from just reading large
chunks, I will read little bits.
So I guess to set it up a little bit, this
is a novel about a guy named Charles Yu and
he lives in a place called Minor Universe
31, which is described as a damaged universe.
It was in the process of its construction,
it was abandoned.
So it is now an unfinished universe that is
93% complete.
And the inhabitants of this universe are basically
science fictional characters who have been
kicked out of their own stories.
So you have got a lot of people that are sort
of, people and other entities that are sort
of floating around looking for a story to
be in.
Charles's job in this universe is that he
is a time machine repair man and so that's,
you are going to hear a bit about.
The first part I will read is him describing
his job.
[reading from book] When it happens, this
is what happens, I shoot myself.
Not, you know, myself self, I shoot my future
self.
He steps out of a time machine, introduces
himself as Charles Yu, what else am I supposed
to do?
I kill him.
I kill my own future.
There is just enough space inside here for
one person to live indefinitely, or at least
that's what the operation manual says.
User can survive inside the TM31 Recreational
Time Travel device in isolation for an indefinite
period of time.
I'm not totally sure what that means.
Maybe it doesn't actually mean anything, which
would be fine, which would be OK by me.
Because that's what I have been doing, living
here indefinitely.
The tense operator has been set to present/indefinite
for I don't know how long, some time now.
And although I still pick up the occasional
job from dispatch, they seem to come less
frequently these days.
And so, when I am not working I like to wedge
the gear shift in p/i and just sort of cruise.
My gums hurt, it's hard to focus.
There much be some kind of internal time distortion
effect in here because when I look at myself
in the little mirror above my sink, what I
see is my father's face.
My face turning into his.
I am beginning to feel how the man looked.
Especially how he looked on those nights he
came home so tired he couldn't even make it
through dinner without nodding off.
Sitting there with his bowl of soup cooling
in from of him.
A rich pork and winter melon saturated broth
that moment by moment was losing or giving
up its tiny quantum of heat into the vast
average temperature of the universe.
The base model TM31 runs on state-of-the-art
chronodiegetical technology.
A six-cylinder grammar drive built on a quad-core
physics engine which features an implied temporalinguistics
architecture allowing for free-form navigation
within a rendered environment, such as, for
instance, a story space.
And in particular a science fictional universe.
Or as Mom used to say, it's a box, you get
into it, you push some buttons, it takes you
to other places, different times, hit this
switch for the past, pull up that lever for
the future, you get out and hope that world
has changed, or at least maybe you have.
I don't get out much these days, at least
I have a dog, sort of.
He was retconned out of some space western.
It was the usual deal: hero on his way up
has a trusty canine sidekick, then hero gets
famous and important and all of that and by
the time season two rolls around, hero doesn't
feel like sharing the spotlight anymore.
Not with a scruffy-looking mutt, so they put
the little guy in a trash pod and sent him
off.
I found him just as he was about to drift
into a black hole.
He had a face like soft clay and haunches
that were bald in spots where he'd been chewing
off his own fur.
I don't think anyone has ever been as happy
to see anything as this dog was to see me.
He licked my face and that was that.
I asked him what he wanted his name to be,
he didn't say anything so I named him Ed.
The smell of Ed is pretty powerful in here
but I'm OK with that.
He is a good dog, sleeps a lot, sometimes
licks his paw to comfort himself.
Doesn't need food or water, I'm pretty sure
he doesn't even know that he doesn't even
exist.
Ed is just this weird ontological entity that
produces unconditional slobbery, loyal affection.
Superfluous.
Gratuitous.
He must violate some kind of conservation
law.
Something from nothing: all of this saliva
and, I guess, love.
Love from the abandoned heart of a non-existent
dog.
Because I work in the time travel industry
everyone assumes I must be a scientist, which
is sort of correct.
I was studying for my Masters in Applied Science
fiction, I wanted to be a structural engineer
like my father.
And then the whole situation with Mom got
worse and then with my dad missing I had to
do what made sense.
And then things got even worse and this job
came along and I took it.
Now I fix time machines for a living.
To be more specific I am a Certified Network
Technician for TClass Personal-Use Chronogrammatic
Vehicles and an Approved Independent Affiliate
Contractor for Time Warner Time, which owns
and operates this Universe as a spatio-temporal
structure and an entertainment complex zoned
for retail, commercial and residential use.
The job is pretty chill for the most part,
although right at this moment I am not loving
it because I think my tense operator might
be breaking down.
It's happening now, or maybe not, maybe it
was earlier today, or yesterday.
Maybe it broke down a long time ago, maybe
that's the point.
If it is broken and my transmission has been
shifting randomly in and out of gears, then
how would I ever know when it happened.
Maybe I am the one who broke it, trying to
fool myself, thinking I could live like this,
thinking I could stay out here forever.
[ends reading]
>>Charles Yu: So that's Charles, he lives
in this kind of lonely box, just this time
machine.
It's like his repair vehicle that he gets.
And he goes around taking client calls and
visiting people that have gotten themselves
in trouble with their time machines.
The rules of this universe though are that
you can't, in Minor Universe 31, are that
you can't change the past.
You can go back and look at it.
So now, whether or not that makes perfect
sense, I am not sure but that's the rules.
[laughs] So this is Charles taking a client
call and mostly what he does is he explains
to people that they are trying to use their
machine in a way that they are not allowed
to.
[reads from book] Client call: Screen says
Skywalker, L and my first thought is "Oh may,
wow!"
But when I get there it's not you know who
with the man-blouse and the soft boots and
the proficiency at wielding light-based weapons.
It's his son Linus.
We are on a pretty standard-looking Ice Planet,
19-20 years in the past.
A few huts are off in the distance.
It's so cold everything is blue; it hurts
to breathe.
Even the air is blue.
The crash site is maybe two hundred yards
up the hill to the north.
I park the unit, pop the hatch, listen to
it go "Shhhhhh" that hydraulic hatch-popping
sound.
I love that sound.
I hike up to the sight with my service pack
to an outcropping of frozen rock.
And as I am catching my breath, I notice a
small amount of smoke seeping out of a side
panel on Linus' rental unit.
I pop it open and see a small fire burning
in his wave function collapser.
I get my clipboard out, tap my knuckles on
the hatch.
I have never met Linus Skywalker before but
I have heard stories from other techs so I
feel like I have a good idea what to expect.
What I don't expect is a kid.
A boy opens the hatch and climbs out, pushes
the hair out of his eyes, can't be a day older
than nine.
I ask him what he was doing when the machine
failed and he mumbles something about how
I would never understand.
I say "Try me."
He looks down at his anti-gravity boots, which
appear to be a couple of sizes too big, then
gives me a look like "I'm a fourth grader,
what do you want from me?"
Dude, I say, you know you can't change the
past.
And he says "Then what the hell is a time
machine for?"
"Not for trying to kill your father when he
was your age."
I say.
He closes his eyes, tilts his head back, pushes
air out through his nostrils in a super-dramatic
way.
"You have no idea what it is like man, to
grow up with a freaking Savior of the Universe
as your dad."
I tell him that doesn't have to be his whole
story.
That he can have a new beginning.
"For starters" I say "change your name."
He opens his eyes, looks at me as seriously
as a nine-year old can and says "Yeah, maybe."
But I know he doesn’t mean it.
He is trapped in this whole dark-father-lost-son
galactic mono-myth thing and he doesn’t
know any other way.
[ends reading]
So, skip ahead a little bit here.
[pause]
[begins reading again] When you were a kid
playing with the other kids on your street
and everyone is fighting over who they are
going to be, you have to call dibs early.
As soon as you see one another, pretty much
as soon as you step outside of your house.
Even if you are halfway down the block, first
dibs gets Han Solo, everyone knows that.
You almost don’t even have to say it, if
you are first, you are Han Solo period, end
of story.
There was one time Donny, the kid from two
blocks over, the other side of the freeway,
got first dibs and said he was going to be
Buck Rogers.
And everyone laughed at Donny so hard and
for so long that he looked like he was going
to cry.
He begged to change his answer but by then
it was too late.
Justin, who had second dibs, got to be Solo
that day.
Which was like winning the lottery with a
ticket he didn’t even buy, and he milked
it for all it was worth.
Donny was in agony, he was in hell, really.
And everyone called his Suck Rogers until
he peed his pants and then got on his blue
Huffy bike and rode away never to return.
I was never totally sure why everyone wanted
to be Han Solo.
Maybe it was because he wasn't born into it
like Luke, with the birth-right, natural talent
for the force and the premade stories.
Solo had to make his own story, he was a freelance
protagonist, a relatively ordinary guy that
got to the major leagues by being quick with
a gun and a joke.
He was basically a hero because he was funny.
Whatever the reason, first place was always
Solo, always, always, always.
And second place was usually Chewbacca because
if you weren't the one saving the galaxy,
you might have well be eight feet tall and
covered with hair.
[ends reading]
>>Charles: Here is a bit that I actually don't
usually read when I am reading but I am going
to read here.
And so , I don't know why but [laughs] because
it's the bit of fake science that I made up
for this book called 'chronodiegetics'.
And it's probably a bad idea that I am reading
it because you'll all realize how little science
I actually know, but maybe you already know
that.
So, OK, let's just try it.
[reads from book] Chronodiegetics is the branch
of science fictional science focusing on the
physical and metaphysical properties of time,
given a finite and bounded diegesis . It is
currently the best theory of the nature and
the function of time within a narrative space.
A man, as the theory goes, falling through
time at a constant rate of acceleration will
not, absent in any visual or other contextual
clues, be able to distinguish between one,
acceleration caused by a force that is diegetical
in nature and two, an extradiegetical force.
Which is to say, from the point of view of
this man being pulled into the past, it is
impossible to know if he is at rest, in an
narrated frame pulled by gravitational memory
or an accelerated frame of narrative reference.
The man experiences what is termed past tense/memory
equivalence.
In other words the character within the story
or even the narrator has, in general, no way
of knowing whether or not he is in the past
tense narration of a story or is instead in
the present tense or some other tense, state
of affairs and merely reflecting upon the
past.
This equivalence forms a theoretical basis
for an entire field summarized as follows.
The foundational theory of chronodiegetics:
within a science fictional space, memory and
regret, are when taken together the set of
necessary and sufficient elements required
to produce a time machine.
I.e.
It is possible in principle to construct a
universal time machine from no other components
than one: a piece of paper that is moved in
two directions through a recording element,
backward and forward, which, two: performs
only two basic operations: narration and the
straight forward application of the past tense.
I remember there were Sunday afternoons in
our house when it felt as if the only sound
of the world was the ticking of the clock
in our kitchen.
Our house was a collection of silences.
Each room a mute, empty frame.
Each of us three oscillating bodies, Mom,
Dad and Me, moving around in our own curved
functions from space to space, not making
any noise, just waiting.
Waiting to wait, trying for some reason not
to disrupt the field of silence.
Not to perturb the delicate equilibrium of
the system.
We wandered from room to room just missing
one other.
On paths neither chosen by us nor random,
but determined by our own particular characteristics.
Our own properties, unable to deviate, to
break from our orbital loops.
Unable to do something as simple as walking
into the next room, where our beloved, our
father, our mother, our child, our wife, our
husband was sitting, silent, waiting but not
realizing it.
Waiting for someone to say something, anything.
Wanting to do it, yearning to do it, physically
unable to bring ourselves to change our velocities.
[ends reading] [pause]
How much time do I have?
A little bit, OK.
A couple of more sections here.
[pause]
[reading from book] The earliest memory I
have of my own dad is the two of us, sitting
on my bed as he reads me a book we have checked
out from the local library.
I am three.
I don't remember what the story is or even
the title of the book.
I don't remember what he is wearing or if
my room is messy.
What I do remember is the way I fit between
his right arm and his body and the way his
neck and the underside of his chin look.
And the soft yellow light of my lamp, which
has a cloth lampshade, light blue, covered
by an alternating pattern of robots and spaceships.
This is what I remember: one, the little pocket
of space he creates for me.
Two, how it is enough.
Three, the sound of his voice.
Four, the way those space ships look shot
through from behind with light so that every
stitch in the fabric of the surface is a whole
in a source, a point in an absence, a coordinate
in a ship's celestial navigation.
Five, how the bed feels like a little spaceship,
itself.
People rent time machines, they think they
can change the past.
Then they get there and find out causality
isn't worked the way they thought it did.
They get stuck, stuck in places they didn't
mean to go.
In places they did mean to go, in places they
should not have tried to go.
They get into trouble, logical, metaphysical,
etc.
That's where I come in, I go and get them
out.
I tell people I have a job and I have job
security.
I have a job because I know how to fix the
cooling module on the quantum decoherence
engine of the TM31.
That's the reason I have a job.
But the reason I have job security is because
people have no idea how to make themselves
happy, even with a time machine.
I have job security because what the customer
wants, when you get right down to it, is to
relive his very worst moment over and over
and over again.
Willing to pay a lot of money to do it, too.
I mean look, my father built a sort of semi-working
proto-time machine years before pretty much
anyone else had even thought of it.
He was one of the first people to work out
the basic math and the parameters, and the
limitations of live and the various canonical
time travel scenarios.
He was gifted or cursed, depending upon how
you looked at it.
With a deep intuition of time, an ability
to feel it inside, viscerally and he still
spent his whole life trying to figure out
how to minimize lose and entropy and logical
impossibility.
How to tease out the calculus underlying cause
and effect.
He still spent the better part of four decades
trying to come to terms with just how screwed
up and unfair it is that we only get to do
this once.
With the intractability and general awfulness
of trying to parse the idea of 'once'.
Trying to get any kind of handle of it, trying
to put it into the equations, isolate into
a variable the slippery concept of 'once-ness'.
[ends reading]
>>Charles Yu: One more section and then maybe
talk a little bit about stuff.
[chuckles] OK, alright.
–[pause]
[reading from book] My personal clock shows
that I have been in here more or less for
almost ten years.
Nine years, nine months and twenty-nine days
according to the sub-dermal biochronometric
chip inserted just under the skin on my left
wrist.
That's how much time has passed for me, for
my body and my head.
A rough measure of how many breaths I have
taken, how many times I have closed and opened
my eyes.
How many lunches I have had in here, how many
memories I have formed.
I guess that makes me thirty, thirty-one-ish.
Probably goes without saying but time machine
repair guys don’t get a lot of action.
I had a one night stand with something cute
a couple of years ago.
Not human exactly, human-ish.
We hung out a few times, tried messing around
but the end couldn't figure out her anatomy.
Or maybe it was the other way around, in the
end it wasn't going to work.
I don't think she had the brain chemistry
for love, or maybe that was me.
I don't even get much sexbot these days.
When you are thirteen you spend all your time
imagining what it would be like to live in
a world where you could pay a robot for sex,
and that sex would cost a dollar.
And the only obstacle to getting sex would
be making sure you had four quarters.
Then you grow up and it turns out you do live
in the kind of world, a world with coin-operated
sexbots.
And it's not really as great as you thought
it would be.
Partly because it doesn't make you any less
lonely in the perpetual dark of total vacuum.
And partly because well, it's gross.
Your friends, your neighbors, your family,
they know what you are doing in the kiosk.
They know, cause they do it themselves.
Partly because sexbot technology hasn't really
improved much since the first generation consoles.
No one cares enough.
For a dollar it is pretty hard to complain.
Living like this means the year stops making
sense and the month and the week.
The dates fall away from the days like glass
punched out of window frames, or ice cubes
out of a tray into a sink.
Identical, dateless, nameless durational blobs
melting into an undifferentiated puddle.
Is that a Saturday, a Friday, a Monday?
Is that an April 13th or a November 2nd.
Living like this means you don't have a container
anymore for the different days, can hold in
a little twenty-four hour-sized box a set
of events that constitutes a unit.
Something you can compartmentalize, something
with a beginning and an end, something to
fill with a to-do list.
Living like this means that it all runs together.
A cold and bright December morning with your
father, or a lazy evening in late August.
One of those sunsets seemed to take longer
than is possible.
Where the sun just refuses to go down, where
the hour seems to elongate to the point that
it doesn't seem like it can stretch any farther
without detaching completely from the hour
before it.
Like a piece of taffy.
Like undersea molten lava forming a new island,
a piece of time detaching from the sea floor
and floating up to the surface.
It's not comfortable in here, but it's not
not-comfortable either.
Its neutral, the null point on the comfort
discomfort/ access.
The exact fulcrum, the precise coordinate
located to the half infinity of positive comfort
value to the right and the half infinity of
negative values on the left.
To live in here is to live at the origin,
at zero.
Neither present nor absent, a denial of self
and creature-hood to an arbitrary small epsilon-delta
limit.
Can you live your whole life at zero?
Can you live your entire life in the exact
point between comfort and discomfort?
You can in this device, my father designed
it that way.
Don't ask me why, if I knew the answer to
that I would know a whole lot of other things,
too.
Things like why he left, where he is, what
he is doing, when he is coming back, if he
is coming back.
Where has he been all these years, I am guess
that is where he is now.
I don't miss him anymore, most of the time
anyway.
I want to, I wish I could, but unfortunately
it's true.
Time does heal.
It will do so whether you like it or not.
And there is nothing anyone can do about it.
If you're not careful, time will take away
everything that ever hurt you, everything
that you have ever lost and replace it with
knowledge.
Time is a machine, it will convert your pain
into experience.
Raw data will be compiled, will be translated
into a more comprehensible language.
The individual events of your life will be
transmuted into another substance called memory,
and in the mechanism something will be lost
and you will never be able to reverse it.
You will never again have the original moment
back, in it's uncategorized, preprocessed
state.
It will force you to move on and you will
not have a choice in the matter.
[ends reading]
>> Charles: So that's all I am going to read.
I guess I will talk a little bit about writing
this book.
[pause]
I started out really wanting to tell a father-son
story, and that's, that's, um.
I didn't read much from the father-son story
cause it's, it takes a bit of context, I guess,
to understand what's happening.
Basically what happens is Charles Yu is living
in this sort of a-chronological way, he's
just drifting.
And he goes and does his job to repair someone's
time machine and then pops back sort of into
his little pocket of space where he lives
and he doesn't really interact with anybody.
He is just a really sad dude and so he, at
the very beginning he shoots his future self
and he realizes that that's going to have
to happen to him in the future.
So he decides to go back and say "well, maybe
I can figure out a way to get out of this."
Even though he knows he can't, it's going
to happen to him.
But in the course of going back he goes to
visit his father and really he is not visiting,
he is looking at his own memories.
And so that forms most of the second half
of the book is Charles visiting his own childhood
and watching, sort of, his parents' marriage
dissolve and watching his father and himself,
his younger self, build a time machine together
in the garage.
So what happened is it was started as sort
of a father-son story and I was writing the
father-son story sort of straight, without
any sort of science fictional aspect to it.
And then I had sort of another file, I had
this story about a guy who wakes up every
day in a different universe.
That story really wasn't going anywhere because
one, it's hard to make a story about a guy
who wakes up every day in a different universe
and two, it just didn't have any engine to
it.
I couldn't figure out how to care about that
story and the father-son story was also not
going anywhere either because it was just
this sort of emotionally raw story about a
guy who really misses his father.
It didn't, for some reason it didn't occur
to me for several months to combine the two
stories and then I had this sort of like chocolate
and peanut butter moment and I was like, "Oh,
I should just smash them together."
And partly it was just like "why not?", just
out of desperation and partly because once
I did it I realized 'Oh it's fun to write
about he emotional story through this sort
of fake technical language.
And it's also sort of fun to write about this
universe where people and characters sort
of drift around and can be a kind of larger,
sort of, canvas for Charles' internal landscape.
Which is, as you have probably gathered it
is, sort of, kind of just a melancholy place.
So that, sort of, some of the first things
I wrote that actually ended up staying in
the book are these bits of fake science because
for whatever reason it was more interesting
to me to write about this.
Like taking the language of science and completely
distorting it and mangling it and using it
for, sort of, literary and emotional purposes.
That, sort of, was the impulse behind writing
it, at first, and then it turned out to be
a pretty good vehicle to explore Charles'
relationship with his father.
So that's sort of how the book came about.
I don't know if there is anything in particular,
I guess, I don't know if there is anything
else you want me to talk about in particular.
[pause]
>> Male #1: Actually, I read the book before
coming here and I thought it was great.
>> Charles: Thanks
>> Male #1: So I am just curious, I know you
said you are a full-time lawyer, I’m wondering
if, I think the book did pretty well based
on the amount of press, it was on a Best Seller
list, so I am wondering like are you able
to make the transition to a writer or if you
wanted to and you're just holding back because
you didn't want to immerse yourself fully
in that world?
Or do you really have to sell like, you know,
a gazillion number of copies to really become
a writer full-time?
>> Charles: That’s a very interesting questions.
Able, oh and thanks for reading it.
[laughs] Able, is kind of relative term I
guess right for anybody.
Well speaking to a room full of people that--
[laughs] So able for me is a relative term,
so I really like my job and I am not just
saying that cause it's going to be on the
internet forever.
[audience laughter] I do, and I also think
that this book is about work.
I mean, it's a big job obviously to be a time
machine repair man, as far as I know, it's
not a real job yet.
But it's about sort of what it is like to
be a work and have a boss and have to balance
that with other things and I don't know that
I could get that if I were not working.
I think I might, if I ever got to a place
where able was really like yes, there is no
question that I should pursue this full-time
then I think I would still miss that kind
of rhythm and interaction and just like the
conversation.
You know what I mean, the talking to people
and absorbing how they talk and how I talk
to them and that sort of thing.
I would have to then actually interact with
people voluntarily [laughs] which is harder
to do.
I guess the short answer to your question
is I'm not really able to but I am not, and
this could just be me rationalizing it, I'm
not sure I would even if I were completely
able to.
>> Male #2: Besides Star Wars, are there other
major Sci-Fi influences that sort of pushed
you in this direction?
>> Charles: Another major one would be Isaac
Asimov's foundation books, all of which I
read in a very short period of time in my
teens.
And [pause ] I don't know if you are familiar
with it but he invents psycho-history, which
is a rigorous social science which can basically
predict the course of human history down to
individual levels, and also on large levels.
I wasn't trying to anything nearly that ambitious
here but that was one of the fun things about
it, was making up something fake.
And the faker the better so that people wouldn't
actually think "Oh this is supposed to--"you
know what I mean.
Not using like some sort of form of physics
actually making up a literary science actually.
That was one of the first things that sort
of got me going on writing this.
>> Male #3: How you perceived something in
the book, for those who haven't read it I
won't spoil it, but he tells Phil probably
the cruelest thing you can, I've ever read.
[laughter] I wonder, but it was OK because
Phil is what he is?
You couldn't do that to a real person and
get away with it and I'm wondering if that
was as significant to you as it was to me?
>> Charles: It was.
I would probably be a very cruel person [laughs]
cause that was cruel.
I was, I won't spoil it either, well maybe
I will spoil it because I guess otherwise
it is not going to make any sense, I will
just be talking.
Phil is Charles Yu's boss and he is a software
program, but Phil doesn't know that he is
a software program.
So Charles is a pretty nice guy and he doesn't
burst Phil's bubble, now that I think about
it I don't know if Phil has other employee's
or not.
You would think that somebody would, [inaudible
audience] OK, thank-you, Phil's married.
Phil also has a wife who is a spreadsheet
program.
Phil is a program called Middle Manager 2.0
and he is a cool guy, he is the kind of boss,
and I apologize if there is any of this kind
of boss in this room, he is the kind of boss
that wants to pal around.
He's like that boss, and like, he just loves
Charles, he loves hanging out with him, he
always wants to get a beer with Charles.
Charles always has to say no because, you
know, for obvious reasons and so finally one
day Charles just was having a terrible day
and he was just like Phil, you know, just
kind of basically ruins Phil sort of whole
existence, right, because he tells him that
he is not a human.
And I think that that's the reason why, it
was incredibly cruel yes, and I think the
reason why that was an important moment for
Charles was that he's living in this completely
self-absorbed place, right.
He literally lives in a box and inside of
his own head and he doesn’t interact with
people anymore and he has to, that's a moment
where Charles remembers that you can still
hurt people.
But hurting people is a subset of interacting
with people, what he does still matters and
so it was a key moment for me that he had
to remember.
Charles thinks being a lonely guy is not hurting
anyone, but it is because he is not using
his time to help people that he could be helping.
And also just ignoring people in his life
that are wondering what he has been up to.
So yeah, it was intended to be cruel and to,
I have to say that if and when we get to the
point where software can have feelings, I
mean, I think it would be pretty cruel to
hurt their feelings, right.
Maybe not, I don’t know [laughs], I was
just talking about this with somebody, if
you would do the same, if you actually had
software that thought it was human.
I don't know, I wouldn't.
Oh, I will let my software live in a bubble
of delusion if that's what makes it happy.
>> Male #4: Why did you write a Charles Yu
that is so sad?
>> Charles: Um, that's a good question.
I think sad is sort of my default mode for
writing.
Not necessarily for being, but it's um, yeah,
for better or for worse, it is kind of like
my range – sad.
[laughs] I got a couple of degrees of sad,
trying to expand that range.
In this case though, this Charles Yu has lost
his father in time and so this book is about
memory and regret and how those things are
kind of tied up together.
And so exploring the idea of a time machine
where you can go back but not change anything,
the sad is inextricably kind of in there.
But I am trying to not make every protagonist
sad in the future [chuckles].
>> Male #4: inaudible
>> Charles: Yeah, I'm working on a collection
of short stories that some of which have some
sort of science fictional elements to them,
some of which don't.
That's probably not that entertaining of a
description so maybe I should describe some
of those stories [laughs].
I guess the longest story in that book, which
has been published, is the story called "Standard
Loneliness Package" and it's a story about
a guy who works at an, basically this is a
world where you can outsource bad parts of
your life.
So what you do, if you are rich in this world,
is you know that you like are going to go
to dentist so you, from eight to nine, so
you schedule with your emotional transference
broker that time and they will basically zap
out your consciousness.
You get to either feel something pre-recorded
like that you would enjoy or something in
the past that you liked.
And then during that time somebody else, in
this story it's in India, feels that for you.
And so there is a bunch of people in cubicles
in India in these huge warehouses that basically
they have tickets and they pull a service
ticket and they, it's like, "Oh, dentist appointment"
"Oh, funeral" or some other bad experience.
So you feel that, or these emotional, sort
of, outsource workers feel the crappy experience
and it's sort of told from the point of view
of the workers on the bad end of things.
>> Male #4: inaudible:
>> Charles: [laughs] Yeah, I guess, I'm really
going to make a note to write something happy.
I'm going to try really hard, I promise.
Anybody else?
[Pause]
Thanks again guys, thank you!
>> Female #1: inaudible
