01/24/2012 Now a proud member of PostApoc.net
Sadly, I have no idea how to add this icon onto the backdrop of my homepage. I’ll have to get with my developer on that. In the meantime, I will keep the member icon at the top of the homepage.
01/07/2012 “A Hard Rain:” Because I always wanted to put Neil Diamond’s “I am…I said” in a post apocalyptic backdrop.
01/01/2012 I admit that 2011 was better in some other timelines; however, this one was certainly better than the one where the earth is overrun by Nazi zombie ninjas. It’s all relative, you see.
Book of the Month
11/07/2011 Hey, the Indie Book Club on Goodreads.com has chosen Scourge of an Agnostic God as the book of the month to be read. Join the group to join the discussion.
http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/53792.Indie_Book_Club
5 stars! Thank you, Indie Book Blogger!
10/14/2011 Indie Book Blogger, an Indie reviewer with a large following and endowed with ninja, gansta critiquing skill and street cred, gave Scourge of an Agnostic God 5 stars in his review! That’s totally awesome! See? I told you the book kicks ass! And stop abusing the use of exclamation points, Mike!!
Free copies of Scourge and A Hard Rain
9/18/2011 Who am I kidding? I understand that people are reticent to spend money on some guy they’ve never heard of, or at least mistook as the guy who did Beavis and Butthead and were sorely disappointed to find out that he’s just some schmo with a similar name. But the Shift trilogy is truly an enthalling epic, and it deserves to be read as widely as possible. Therefore, I will forego my desire for a quick buck and provide it free to all who happen to stumble upon my webpage. Scourge of an Agnostic God and A Hard Rain are both available for free in pdf format with hyperlinks, and it is done exactly the way I always intended it to be. To download a free copy, just go to the Scourge and A Hard Rain pages and you will see the blue hyperlink of the titles at the top of the page to download it. At this point you really have nothing to lose except your pre-misconceptions about what a plucky apocalyptic tale is about. I hope this inspires you to buy it.
Review for: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
9/15/2011
In How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu explores a variety of themes to include pop culture and the role of language in creating our reality, but his main focus is the exploration of regret. The main character, Charles Yu (yes, that’s the author as well) is a technician who contracts for Time Warner Time, who owns Minor Universe 31. Charles’ companion is a dog who doesn’t exist in any classical sense and his AI who has self-esteem issues. Charles spends his days trying to save people from themselves, because you see, in a world where time travel is possible, people (both real and fictional), at the end of the day, wind up re-living the worst moments of their lives. Why would they do this? Charles gets to explore this tendency when he is accidentally thrown into the dreaded temporal paradox where he accidentally kills his future self. Along the way, we learn that Charles deals with the fact that his father who arguably invented time travel has been missing for years while he visits his mom who voluntarily chose to live in a 90 minute a time loop.
Yu wrote an engaging and often humorous story about man’s almost masochistic yearning to relive the past. As we are locked in a one-way one dimension of time, we are somewhat spared from reliving our past. Yu explores the the idea of what humanity really would do if they had the freedom to move in time. We are always drawn to the what ifs and the might have beens in our lives. Interestingly, the vehicle that transports people is a grammar driven machine. It is at once hilarious and fascinating as Yu explains the notion about language forming our reality, enlightening me to post-modern concepts without having to deal with drab French post-structuralists like Foucault or Bourdieu.
Beyond his humor, Yu is honest about our deep-seeded weaknesses, our regrets and is fearless in bringing us from hope to dreams that are crushed. Quite simply, Yu demonstrates how science fiction can be the highest form of literature in exploring the human condition.
In How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu explores a variety of themes to include pop culture and the role of language in creating our reality, but his main focus is the exploration of regret. The main character, Charles Yu (yes, that’s the author as well) is a technician who contracts for Time Warner Time, who owns Minor Universe 31. Charles’ companion is a dog who doesn’t exist in any classical sense and his AI who has self-esteem issues. Charles spends his days trying to save people from themselves, because you see, in a world where time travel is possible, people (both real and fictional), at the end of the day, wind up re-living the worst moments of their lives. Why would they do this? Charles gets to explore this tendency when he is accidentally thrown into the dreaded temporal paradox where he accidentally kills his future self. Along the way, we learn that Charles deals with the fact that his father who arguably invented time travel has been missing for years while he visits his mom who voluntarily chose to live in a 90 minute a time loop.
Yu wrote an engaging and often humorous story about man’s almost masochistic yearning to relive the past. As we are locked in a one-way one dimension of time, we are somewhat spared from reliving our past. Yu explores the the idea of what humanity really would do if they had the freedom to move in time. We are always drawn to the what ifs and the might have beens in our lives. Interestingly, the vehicle that transports people is a grammar driven machine. It is at once hilarious and fascinating as Yu explains the notion about language forming our reality, enlightening me to post-modern concepts without having to deal with drab French post-structuralists like Foucault or Bourdieu.
Beyond his humor, Yu is honest about our deep-seeded weaknesses, our regrets and is fearless in bringing us from hope to dreams that are crushed. Quite simply, Yu demonstrates how science fiction can be the highest form of literature in exploring the human condition.
A Hard Rain is out
9/9/2011 I am happy to say that at long last A Hard Rain is out and available in all eBook formats. It is also available in hard copy at Barnes and Noble.com (Amazon hopefully next week). I’d search by my name rather than the title alone.
09/06/2011 A Hard Rain will be out on Friday 09/09…at least in eBook format. Hopefully, it will also be available in hard copies that day; we’ll see. In any case, Friday 09/09…buy it!
A Hard Rain – The Trailer
8/15/2011 Okay folks, the trailer is up on Youtube. Hopefully with the edits sent to the publishers, the book will be out by the end of the months…inshallah.
