It’s Wednesday morning, oops, afternoon, and the deadline for this month’s column is sort of breathing down my neck, but I’m actually not that worried about writing this review of Charles Yu’s time-travel novel, “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe” (Pantheon: 240 pp., $24), because reading the book has made me understand that my review already exists in the future. It’s really not a problem! I just need to get the future Ed Park (the impossibly relaxed one, the one who’s completed the punishing labor of writing this column and is enjoying his traditional celebratory beverage) to step out of one of Yu’s weirdly convincing time machines and hand the piece to me. Or maybe he can just e-mail it. Because one thing I have to be careful not to do is panic at the sight of my future self and shoot him in the stomach, which is what Yu’s narrator does to his future self.
more from Ed Park at the LAT here.