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greaydean's review
3.0
Pretty good writing, but very difficult to read. Certainly tapped into all my midlife issues. Hurts in the void. Offers no hope or escape. A brutal hard look at life with a slightly geeky perspective.
eriynali's review
1.0
Disappointing statically written short stories that never get developed fully enough to be appreciated.
richardleis's review
5.0
Short, genre-defying stories that look at people and things—mothers, relationships, language, infidelity, etc.—in unexpected ways. A prospective superhero has to make a choice between hero and villain, and neither are especially promising choices. In the land of Marketing and Platitudes, a couple have to keep deciding "What now?" A man discovers himself, and himself doesn't discover a man. The mathematical precision of Janice's "maybe", a curious mother discovers the limits of language and storytelling, and an alien Florence swims in circles while time and space march on in escalating cosmicomics of the boring and mundane and lonely.
Third Class Superhero is a quick read full of surprising gimmicks and unexpected revelations, precise details and laments about how language and other disciplines aren't really all that precise in any particularly useful way, and characters that feel a little too close to home, even if home is a place you can't quite return to ever again.
Third Class Superhero is a quick read full of surprising gimmicks and unexpected revelations, precise details and laments about how language and other disciplines aren't really all that precise in any particularly useful way, and characters that feel a little too close to home, even if home is a place you can't quite return to ever again.
drewchebaggery's review
challenging
funny
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
rocketiza's review
2.0
There's a couple great, charming and weird stories, but then way too much just weird crap.
bahoulie's review
5.0
Some of these short stories made me so very happy. I didn't love every single one, but the ones I did love were just fantastic.
andrewliptak's review
4.0
A forthcoming book caught my eye last month: How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Yu. It had a slick cover, and I got my hands on a copy to review. While I was waiting, I did a bit of background research on the author, coming up with only one other work to his name, Third Class Superhero, a collection of short stories. Yu, who was selected by the National Book Foundation as one of the ’5 under 35′ authors to watch in 2007, and seems to be a promising writer to keep an eye on, demonstrates an exceptional skill throughout Third Class Superhero.
The book is a collection of eleven short stories, each of which covers a broad range of subjects, but each with a very poignant style that goes right to the heart of contemporary and speculative fiction. Reading over the book, there’s clearly an edge towards speculative fiction, but if anything, it’s the subtle touches and even the style of the prose that pushes the book over the genre edge, allowing Yu to tell a number of stories that are highly relatable in any setting.
The title story, Third Class Superhero, is by far my favorite, one that looks to a struggling superhero, something that would fit well in the worlds created for Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog or the UK show No Heroics. It’s a story that’s singularly human, demonstrating the temptations and dreams of the more average, overshadowed by others who are more skilled. A couple of other stories, such as 401k, and Man of Quiet Desperation Goes on Short Vacation look to some of the problems in a modern, commercial world, where we are so connected with everybody, but so alone at the same time.
What struck me far more, however, was not necessarily the content of the stories, but the style in which they were laid out. Thinking back to the stories that I read, the only word that can adequately sum up the books is ‘Surreal’, something that seems to be incredibly difficult to accomplish for any writer. Moreover, where it’s difficult to get subject matter across in such a fashion, the presentation itself is generally difficult to accomplish, and Yu manages to accomplish both excellently, using the stories, characters and content in most of the book to specific methods where tailored towards specific ways in which the story was written, by changing the tense and even physical appearance of the story to suit his needs. The result is content and the physical delivery of the content that go towards approaching specific themes that the writer is trying to convey to the reader.
What Yu does here is what every story, (long or short) should be doing: presenting a problem, in a fictional setting, that allows for someone to relate to and examine said problem outside of the regular contexts. This way, they can come across avenues of thought that might be different with the differing contexts. Allegory comes in any number of means, and I’ve often thought that the science or speculative fiction genres offer one of the more unique ways for people to address problems that they face, either with major, global events, of intensely personal ones that they might otherwise not see an answer to.
The result is a very good collection of short stories, and the praise that Yu has received for already, with only a Third Class Superhero under his belt is very noteworthy indeed. The stories themselves were very interesting – if a bit on the pretentious side of things – and go very much to the heart of critical and contemporary literature. In anything, the series of stories, plus Yu’s approach to speculative fiction (subtle, pointed elements, supporting the story, rather than the other way around) leave me very excited to see what’s in store for his upcoming How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe in September.
The book is a collection of eleven short stories, each of which covers a broad range of subjects, but each with a very poignant style that goes right to the heart of contemporary and speculative fiction. Reading over the book, there’s clearly an edge towards speculative fiction, but if anything, it’s the subtle touches and even the style of the prose that pushes the book over the genre edge, allowing Yu to tell a number of stories that are highly relatable in any setting.
The title story, Third Class Superhero, is by far my favorite, one that looks to a struggling superhero, something that would fit well in the worlds created for Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog or the UK show No Heroics. It’s a story that’s singularly human, demonstrating the temptations and dreams of the more average, overshadowed by others who are more skilled. A couple of other stories, such as 401k, and Man of Quiet Desperation Goes on Short Vacation look to some of the problems in a modern, commercial world, where we are so connected with everybody, but so alone at the same time.
What struck me far more, however, was not necessarily the content of the stories, but the style in which they were laid out. Thinking back to the stories that I read, the only word that can adequately sum up the books is ‘Surreal’, something that seems to be incredibly difficult to accomplish for any writer. Moreover, where it’s difficult to get subject matter across in such a fashion, the presentation itself is generally difficult to accomplish, and Yu manages to accomplish both excellently, using the stories, characters and content in most of the book to specific methods where tailored towards specific ways in which the story was written, by changing the tense and even physical appearance of the story to suit his needs. The result is content and the physical delivery of the content that go towards approaching specific themes that the writer is trying to convey to the reader.
What Yu does here is what every story, (long or short) should be doing: presenting a problem, in a fictional setting, that allows for someone to relate to and examine said problem outside of the regular contexts. This way, they can come across avenues of thought that might be different with the differing contexts. Allegory comes in any number of means, and I’ve often thought that the science or speculative fiction genres offer one of the more unique ways for people to address problems that they face, either with major, global events, of intensely personal ones that they might otherwise not see an answer to.
The result is a very good collection of short stories, and the praise that Yu has received for already, with only a Third Class Superhero under his belt is very noteworthy indeed. The stories themselves were very interesting – if a bit on the pretentious side of things – and go very much to the heart of critical and contemporary literature. In anything, the series of stories, plus Yu’s approach to speculative fiction (subtle, pointed elements, supporting the story, rather than the other way around) leave me very excited to see what’s in store for his upcoming How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe in September.
dfmjr's review
3.0
A nice one day read while at home recuperating.
Most of the stories in this collection are clever and fun. Some are more fun and some are too clever. Charles is bright, no doubt about it, but times it has echos of pretension. His one story, Realism, is written discussing realism in a meta-meta fiction way. I get it - your smart. On the other hand there are some that his intelligence pays dividends. Both 32.05864991% (the percentage that is a maybe) and 401(k) are both intellectual but clever and fun reads. My favorite is the first short, and the title of the collection, Third Class Superhero. If you have seen Dr. Horrible's Sing-along blog (you haven't --- go now - see!), you will see where the inspiration came from - maybe too much. (still wish we could give half stars - would be a 3.5)
Picked it up on Amazon for like $4.
Most of the stories in this collection are clever and fun. Some are more fun and some are too clever. Charles is bright, no doubt about it, but times it has echos of pretension. His one story, Realism, is written discussing realism in a meta-meta fiction way. I get it - your smart. On the other hand there are some that his intelligence pays dividends. Both 32.05864991% (the percentage that is a maybe) and 401(k) are both intellectual but clever and fun reads. My favorite is the first short, and the title of the collection, Third Class Superhero. If you have seen Dr. Horrible's Sing-along blog (you haven't --- go now - see!), you will see where the inspiration came from - maybe too much. (still wish we could give half stars - would be a 3.5)
Picked it up on Amazon for like $4.
emwilliams's review
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5