“Sorry Please Thank You: Stories” by Charles Yu

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Rating: 3/5 Stars.

An interesting collection of stories, of various lengths, that seems to be on the borderline between SF, Fantasy and surrealism. Some of the stories seem to involve the author in them, making this reader wonder if the thoughts and emotional stress being experienced by the characters are actually those of the author or not.

• Standard Loneliness Package: a call centre in India handles ‘emotional transfers’ from clients who don’t want to deal with the pain and anguish from death and other situations. We get to see the toll of taking and handling these emotions have on the life of one of the call centre workers.
• First Person Shooter: two night workers at a megamart discover a zombie. But the zombie is after other things than their brains on this occasion.
• Troubleshooting: a device that grants wishes doesn’t seem to work as expected. Troubleshooting it reveals that the problem may lie with the person doing the wishing.
• Hero Absorbs Major Damage: the Hero leads his Dungeons and Dragons-like group across the land, fighting hordes of evil and pickup up a warrior or two. But when they get to the final battle and face unsurmountable odds, the Hero has a decision to make about the future he wants.
• Human for Beginners: Chapter 5: Extended Family Relations: a guide for aliens on how relationships outside the immediate family look like and are supposed to function.
• Inventory: a person wakes up in a different universe every day and wonders how he could lead his life in such a situation where everything changes.
• Open: a surreal story of a couple who discovers their world dissolving into ‘words’, and a search for a better one.
• Note to Self: Self writes a note to Alternate Self, speculating about the multiverse and where it could all lead to.
• Yeoman: the yeoman of a spaceship knows he will die on an expedition to a planet because that is what happens to previous yeomen. But maybe this time there may be a way out.
• Designer Emotion 67: the CEO of an emotional drugs company makes a company call praising his company and (maybe) leaking just what the latest product could do for their bottom line.
• The Book of Categories: on the passing around of an unusual book whose pages can be infinitely split apart into new pages for people to write down new categories as they see fit.
• Adult Contemporary: a person decides to sign up for a package. But it is only later do we discover that the package is a ‘lifestyle’ package that will completely change his life, including his thoughts and his relationships with others.

• Sorry Please Thank You: a note left on a napkin as the writer narrates the end. Book read from 2026/05/20 to 2026/05/22.

• ISFDB Title Record # 1452029