Charles Yu is the protagonist and narrator of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. The name Charles Yu points to the metafictional aspects of the novel, as Charles Yu is also the name of the book’s author. The novel’s use of metafiction deepens when Yu introduces the novel itself as an object in the narrative. Charles finds the book after impulsively shooting his future self. The future Charles urges him to trust in the book as a key.

Charles works as a time machine repairman, having taken science fictional studies in college. His job requires him to rescue clients from getting trapped in alternate universes, which usually occurs whenever they attempt to change the past. Because he has been working as a repairman for nearly 10 years, Charles is depicted as being insightful and reflective about the human motivation to change the past. Through Charles’s vocation, the novel suggests that the past can never be changed, though this is often people’s strongest desire.

Charles is stuck, emotionally and literally. He can’t move on from a past that he doesn’t want to face and lives in a kind of limbo.