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Charles Yu: How to Live Safely in the Fictional Universe

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Commonwealth Club of California

Commonwealth Club

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Partner:: Commonwealth Club
Location:: SF Club Office
San Francisco, CA
Event Date:: 07.26.12
Speakers:: Eli Horowitz,; Charles Yu
Tags:: Science Fiction; popular science; author; writers; fiction

Summary: Charles Yu discusses his acclaimed novel How to Live Safely in the Fictional Universe with editor Eli Horowitz. A big-box store employee is confronted by a zombie during the graveyard shift, a problem that pales in comparison to his inability to ask a co-worker out on a date. A fighter leads his band of virtual warriors, thieves and wizards across a deadly computer-generated landscape. A company outsources grief for profit with the tagline: "Don't feel like having a bad day? Let someone else have it for you." Named by the National Book Foundation as one of its "5 under 35" fiction writers to watch, Yu draws from both pop culture and science to transport his readers into an imaginative universe in his latest collection, Sorry Please Thank You: Stories. Join us and hear from this major new voice in American fiction as he discusses his latest foray into the heart of the human condition.

Bio

Eli Horowitz

Former Managing Editor and Publisher, McSweeneys; Co-author, Everything You Know Is Pong.

Charles Yu

Charles Yu (born in 1976 in Los Angeles) is an Asian American writer. He is the author of the novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and the short story collections Third Class Superhero and Sorry Please Thank You. How to Live Safely was ranked the year's second best science fiction novel by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas - runner up for the Campbell Memorial Award

Chapters

: Watch Full Program

01 hr 03 min 25 sec

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01.: Introduction

01 min 04 sec

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02.: Balancing Science Fiction and Personal Stories?

04 min 10 sec

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03.: Writing in First-Person?

01 min 23 sec

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04.: Interest in Science Fiction?

03 min 21 sec

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05.: Unexpected Influences?

01 min 06 sec

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06.: Feelings on Higgs-Boson?

04 min 05 sec

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07.: Aspirations as a Futurist?

02 min 06 sec

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08.: Writing Process?

01 min 14 sec

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09.: Sci-Fi/Fantasy and Existential Crisis?

02 min 12 sec

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10.: Are We Living in a More Science Fictional Universe?

02 min 21 sec

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11.: Relation Between Science Fiction and Science?

01 min 24 sec

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12.: Absence of Law in Work?

03 min 19 sec

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13.: Female Characters in Science Fiction and Video Games?

01 min 40 sec

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14.: Life-Work Balance?

03 min 06 sec

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15.: Aspiration to Be a Full Time Writer?

02 min 19 sec

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16.: Short Stories vs. Novels?

02 min 40 sec

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17.: Epigraphs in Sorry Please Thank You?

05 min 38 sec

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18.: Audience Awareness?

01 min 59 sec

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19.: Technology Never Doing Exactly What We Want?

02 min 30 sec

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20.: What Writers Do You Read?

02 min 24 sec

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21.: Putting Yourself in Your Work?

02 min 51 sec

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22.: Science Fiction as a Genre?

05 min 36 sec

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23.: What Can an iPad Do That a Book Can't Do?

02 min 07 sec

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24.: What Questions Are You Preoccupied With?

01 min 10 sec

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25.: Next Work?

01 min 41 sec

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: Watch Full Program

01 hr 03 min 25 sec

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Charles Yu: New Technology Creates Science Fiction World

02 min 21 sec

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Charles Yu, author, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and Eli Horowitz, former Managing Editor and publisher of McSweeneys, discuss how the speed of advancing technology makes us feel that we are living in a science fiction universe.
Watch Full Program

01 hr 03 min 25 sec

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