Charles Yu

His fiction has been published in a number of magazines and literary journals, including Oxford American, Playboy, Esquire.com, GeekDad on Wired.com and Wired, The Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, Mississippi Review, The New Yorker, Eclectica Magazine, The Malahat Review, 5 Trope, Sou'wester, Explosion-Proof and Alaska Quarterly Review, as well as cited for special mention in the Pushcart Prize Anthology XXVIII.

Yu also received the 2004 Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award from the Mid-American Review for his story, "Third Class Superhero".[3]

Many of these published short stories have been anthologized into two book collections: Third Class Superhero (2006, Harvest Books) and Sorry Please Thank You: Stories (2012, Pantheon Books, Random House). His short story "Hero Absorbs Major Damage" from Sorry Please Thank You has been re-mixed/re-presented with annotated commentary from the Hero's thief, navigator and chef (an elf named Fjoork), as a collaborative project between the annotation website Genius (behind Rap Genius) and Electric Literature.

Yu's uncollected short fiction has also appeared in The New Yorker ("Fable" in the May 30, 2016 Issue), VICE magazine's tech-oriented Motherboard website ("Re: re: Microwave in the break room doing weird things to fabric of spacetime"), Lightspeed Magazine and Wired.

Three of Yu's short stories initially published in Lightspeed Magazine have been anthologized in other books:

• "Bookkeeper, Narrator, Gunslinger" (originally published in the April 2017 issue), which has been anthologized in Dead Man's Hand: An Anthology of The Weird West, Ed. John Joseph Adams (Titan Books 2014).
• "America: The Ride" (originally published in the November 2018 issue), anthologized in Resist: Tales from a Future Worth Fighting Against, Eds. Gary Whitta, Hugh Howey, and Christie Yant (Broad Reach Publishing 2018).
• "NPC" (published in the September 2018 issue), anthologized in Press Start to Play, Eds. Daniel H. Wilson & John Joseph Adams (Vintage Books 2015).

Yu has also published two short stories in Wired: "The Future of Work, Placebo" (December 17, 2018) and "Subtext®:It Knows What You're Thinking Stop Thinking" (December 13, 2016, The Fiction Issue).[4][5]

He has also published a short story entitled "Bounty" (filed under "2069") in the Xprize ANA Avatar online anthology.[6]

As for editing anthologies, Yu served as the Guest Editor for the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 from The Best American Series and the publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.[7]

His first novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, was ranked the year's second-best science fiction novel by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas — and a runner up for the Campbell Memorial Award.[2] The book was also optioned by film director and writer Chris Columbus' production company, 1492 Pictures.[8][9] The novel was further listed in Time magazine's Top 10 Fiction Books of 2010, the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2010, and was one of Amazon.com's Top 10 SF/F Books for 2010.

In 2020, Yu released his second novel, Interior Chinatown, which uses the innovative narrative structure of the screenplay format to tell the tale of Willis Wu, the "Generic Asian Man" who is stuck playing "Background Oriental Male" and occasionally "Delivery Guy" in the fictional police procedural Black and White but who longs to be "Kung Fu Guy" on screens worldwide.[10] On January 27, 2020, Yu appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah to discuss the book, as well as the lack of on-screen representation for Asian Americans and the Asian American "model minority myth".[11] Yu further appeared on NPR's Weekend Edition with Scott Simon, January 25, 2020,[12] and on the Los Angeles Review of Books Radio Hour with Medaya Ocher and Kate Wolf on February 3, 2020[13] to further discuss the novel.

His forthcoming novel is tentatively entitled The Book of Wishing and will be published by Pantheon Books.[14][7]

In 2016, Yu was a story editor for ten episodes of the first season of the 2016 HBO series Westworld, and co-wrote the episode "Trace Decay". For his work on the show, he received two Writers Guild of America Award Nominations in 2017: Drama Series and New Series.[15]

In 2018, Yu served as an executive story editor for ten episodes of the HBO series Here and Now, with the episode "Dream Logic" being written by him.

That same year he also wrote the episode "The Mysteries" for the AMC series Lodge 49.

In 2019, Yu also co-wrote the episode "Chapter 23" for the FX series Legion and served as a co-producer for eight episodes of that series.

He also wrote the episode "Mr. Greer" in the Facebook Watch series Sorry for Your Loss starring Elizabeth Olsen that year, and also served as a producer for nine episodes of that show.

In 2020, Yu worked on the writing staff of the Adult Swim show Dream Corp, LLC.

Yu's non-fiction, essays, book reviews, journalism and other writing have also appeared online and in print in The Atlantic ("The Pre-pandemic Universe Was the Fiction"), Slate (various reviews and articles on video games such as L.A. Noire and Portal 2), The Wall Street Journal ("Novelist Charles Yu on St. George California Reserve Agricole Rum"), Time ("What It's Like to Never Ever See Yourself on TV"), The Offing ("Thirteen Ways of Looking at 45" about the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump), The New York Times Style Magazine ("George R. R. Martin, Fantasy's Reigning King"), McSweeney's Internet Tendency ("What Kind of World Is This?"), The Morning News ("Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar", a review) and Polygon ("What future artificial intelligence will think of our puny human video games").

He is interviewed by and also interviews Lev Grossman in The Believer (issue no. 112, "Conversation from the Shadow Lands. An Interview with Charles Yu") and comments on the work of Philip Roth (stating that he has "read more books by Roth than probably any other contemporary writer"), Don DeLillo, and Jonathan Lethem in installments of the "Influenced by" series published by Jaime Clarke in The Believer as well.[16][17][18][19]

He has also written reviews in The New York Times Book Review of books (novels or short story collections) from Neal Stephenson, Joe Hill, Jasper Fforde and John Wray.[20][21][22][23][24]

• How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (2010, Pantheon ISBN 0-307-37920-5)
  • Second Place, John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel[2]
  • Second Best Sci-Fi Novel, The John Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction, The University of Kansas
  • One of Time magazine's Top 10 Fiction Books of 2010
  • One of The New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2010
  • One of Amazon.com's Top 10 SF/F Books for 2010
• Interior Chinatown (2020, Pantheon Books. ISBN 9780307907196)[28]

• Third Class Superhero (2006, Harvest Books ISBN 0-15-603081-0)
  • "32.05864991%" originally appearing in The Malahat Review
  • "Autobiographical Raw Material Unsuitable for the Mining of Fiction" originally appearing in Alaska Quarterly Review, Vol. 21, Nos. 1 & 2, Fall/Winter 2003
  • "Third-Class Hero" originally appearing as "Class Three Superhero" in Mid-American Review, Vol. XXV, No. 2
    • The 2004 Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award from Mid-American Review
  • "Florence" originally appearing in Eclectica Magazine, July/August 2005
  • "My Last Days As Me" originally appearing in Sou'wester
    • Reprinted in the Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories 2004 and a 2005 Robert Olen Butler Prize Winner
  • "Problems for Self-Study" originally appearing in Harvard Review, Issue No. 23 (Fall 2002) (re-published at Harvard Review Online on April 18, 2011)
    • Yu's first published story[29][30]
  • "Realism" originally appearing in Mississippi Review, Vol. 33, No. 1/2, 2005 Prize Issue (Spring 2005), pp. 56-67 (12 pages)
  • "The Man Who Became Himself" originally appearing in The Gettysburg Review, Summer 2004 Issue
  • "Two-Player Infinitely Iterated Simultaneous Semi-Cooperative Game with Spite and Reputation" originally appearing in Eclectica Magazine, July/August 2004
• Sorry Please Thank You: Stories (2012, Pantheon Books, Random House. ISBN 0-307-90717-1)
  • "Sorry Please Thank You" originally appearing on Esquire.com
    • Originally featured as part of Esquire's "Napkin Fiction Project"
  • "Open" originally appearing in Explosion-Proof, Issue 2: Wither Exploration? (2011)
  • "Designer Emotion 67" originally appearing in The Oxford American, No. 70, Fall 2010
  • "Yeoman"" originally appearing in Playboy, July 2011
  • "First Person Shooter" originally appearing in Wired.com/GeekDad (as a "GeekDad Guest Writer" contribution), October 29, 2010
  • "Standard Loneliness Package" originally appearing in Lightspeed Magazine, November 2010, Issue 6 (reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy (2011 Edition), edited by Richard Horton (Gaithersburg, MD: Prime Books, 2011)
  • "The Book of Categories" originally appearing in The Thackeray T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, edited by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer (New York, Harper Voyager, 2011)
  • "Hero Absorbs Major Damage"
    • Presented with new annotated commentary from Fjoork, the Hero's thief, navigator and chef as a collaboration between Genius and Electric Literature
  • "Human for Beginners"
  • "Inventory"
  • "Note to Self"
  • "Adult Contemporary"

• "Bounty", Xprize ANA "Avatars.Inc" Anthology (eBook and also online), March 2020
• The Future of Work: Placebo", Wired, December 17, 2018
• "America, The Ride", Lightspeed, November 2018, Issue 102 (anthologized in Resist: Tales from a Future Worth Fighting Against, edited by Hugh Howey, Gary Whitta & Christie Yant (Broad Reach Publishing 2018))
• "NPC", Lightspeed, September 2018, Issue 100 (anthologized in Press Start to Play, edited by Daniel H. Wilson & John Joseph Adams (Vintage Books 2015))
• "Bookkeeper, Narrator, Gunslinger", Lightspeed, April 2017, Issue 83 (anthologized in Dead Man's Hand: An Anthology of the Weird West, edited by John Joseph Adams (Titan Books, 2014))
• "Subtext®: It Knows What You're Thinking Stop Thinking", Wired, December 13, 2016
• "Fable", The New Yorker, May 23, 2016, Fiction (May 30, 2016 Issue)
  • Charles Yu Reads "Fable"
• "Re: re: Microwave in the break room doing weird things to fabric of spacetime", Motherboard, Tech by VICE, November 12, 2015

• "The Pre-pandemic Universe Was the Fiction", The Atlantic, April 15, 2020
• "What It's Like to Never See Yourself on TV", TIME, January 21, 2020
• "George R. R. Martin, Fantasy's Reigning King", The New York Times Style Magazine, October 15, 2018
• "What Kind of World Is This?", McSweeney's Internet Tendency, September 7, 2018
• "What future artificial intelligence will think of our puny human video games", Polygon, January 9, 2018
• "Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar", The Morning News
• "Thirteen Ways of Looking at 45", The Offing, May 2, 2017
• "Novelist Charles Yu on St. George California Reserve Agricole Rum", The Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2014
• "Gaming Club 2011: I have seen the future, and it is full of noobs like me.", Slate, December 15, 2011
• "L.A. Noire: The characters in the most realistic video games are still basically puppets.", Slate, December 14, 2011
• "Portal 2: How playing a video game is like writing fiction.", Slate, December 13, 2011

• "Short Stories From Joe Hill, Spiked With Mayhem and Evil", NYT Book Review, October 1, 2019
• "Neal Stephenson's New Novel — Part Tech, Part Fantasy — Dazzles", NYT Book Review, June 14, 2019
• "A Brilliantly Funny and Slightly Bonkers New Novel From Jasper Fforde", NYT Book Review, February 28, 2019
• "‘The Lost Time Accidents,’ by John Wray", NYT Book Review, February 21, 2016
• "‘Seveneves,’ by Neal Stephenson", NYT Book Review, May 31, 2015

• "Trace Decay", Season 1, Episode 8, HBO's Westworld (co-written with Lisa Joy) (original airdate: Nov. 20, 2016)
• "The Mysteries", Season 1, Episode 6, AMC's Lodge 49 (original airdate: September 10, 2018)
• "Dream Logic", Season 1, Episode 9, HBO's Here and Now (original airdate: April 8, 2018)
• "Mr. Greer", Season 2, Episode 4, Facebook Watch's Sorry for Your Loss (original airdate: October 8, 2019)