Pool With Planets? (Red Dwarf - Rob Grant, Doug Taylor)

Member Name: Frankingsteins

Product:	Red Dwarf - Rob Grant, Doug Taylor
Date:	10/06/04 (49 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Funny and interesting, Great characters and plots, Not just a TV adaptation or rip-off

Disadvantages: Not as inventive or entertaining as its predecessor, A little jumbled at times

Note: This is a review of the book 'Better Than Life,' which I wrote based on the image of this Dooyoo product rather than the title, as the first book is listed elsewhere. I should also point out that this was written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. Not Doug Taylor.


BACKGROUND


As most of you will doubtless know, Red Dwarf is a television series mixing science fiction and comedy produced by the BBC. The creators and writers Rob Grant and Doug Naylor went to great lengths to get the series commissioned throughout the eighties, and the show’s popularity increased with each series.

Rob and Doug, under the alias Grant Naylor, decided to write a Red Dwarf novel once the show really hit its stride in its third series. The limitations of television production and a very meagre budget had hindered their creative vision of the series in a large way, and their first novel (titled ‘Red Dwarf’ but often referred to as ‘Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers’) can clearly be read as a more definitive version of their original intentions and vision. Because it was.

Deeming itself “the not-very-long-awaited sequel to the internationally best-selling ‘Red Dwarf,’” Better Than Life continues the story threads left hanging at the end of the first novel and continues to incorporate successful ideas from the television show.


CHARACTERS


The five principal characters are the same as those in the television series, and although Rob and Doug had originally planned some of their major players as being very different – Lister, for example, was originally intended to be middle-aged and slightly demented – the characters here are very believable as those presented on screen. Already established as the essential backbone of the show, the character of Dave Lister takes on a much more primary role in the books than on the series, although there are still plenty of lines and events focusing on the others.

Dave Lister – The last human being alive, Lister held the lowest rank aboard the mining ship Red Dwarf and was sentenced to six months in suspended animation for smuggling a pregnant cat on board when the ship was docked at Titan. Sadly for Lister, he is not released for three million years due to a nuclear accident that wipes out the crew.

Arnold Judas Rimmer – The annoying, career-minded failure who was one rank Lister’s superior before failing to repair a drive plate properly and accidentally wiping out himself and 1,167 of the crew. Resurrected as a hologram of his former self to keep Lister sane, the antagonistic relationship at least gives them both something to do.

The Cat – When Lister’s pregnant cat was safely sealed in Red Dwarf’s ventilation system it became the mother of a new species, evolving over the millions of years into Felis Sapiens, a species resembling human but with the mannerisms of a feline. When these religious fanatics eventually wiped each other out or abandoned the ship they only left behind the lame and the stupid, and this self-obsessed moggie is the last survivor on board.

Kryten – A sanitation and service mechanoid who accidentally killed the all-female crew of the spaceship Nova 5 when washing the consoles with nice, soapy water. Kryten was stranded alone for millions of years before Red Dwarf chanced upon him on its long return to the solar system, and Kryten enjoys his ironing and sheet-folding chores on board despite Lister’s protests that he should break his programming.

Holly – The ship’s computer. He used to have an IQ of 6,000, but three million years alone in space have taken their toll on poor Hol, who is now suffering from computer senility. The provider of information and the occasional joke, when he’s a bit bored.


PLOT


At the end of the previous book, Lister, Rimmer and the Cat had all drunkenly plugged themselves into the illegal total immersion video game Better Than Life, a game that taps into the user’s subconscious desires and creates their perfect fantasy world without them even realising it. Thanks to the influence of Kryten, Lister eventually realised what was going on and he was prepared to leave, although he then got a feeling that he couldn’t abandon his life in the fictional town of Bedford Falls on Christmas Eve. Even though he knew it was always Christmas Eve.

‘Better Than Life’ begins with the crew still in the game, their bodies decaying and wasting away in the real world despite the efforts of Kryten and Holly. Lister lives a quiet life with Kristine Kochanski, the woman of his dreams, while Rimmer’s fantasies are quite the opposite: he is the richest and most successful businessman in the world and is married to a beautiful Brazilian bombshell. It’s only when this idyllic and self-absorbed lifestyle begins to fall apart that Rimmer realises his own subconscious mind can’t stand him being happy, and once he realises the truth about the game he is quite embarrassed about the very unsubtle way he has imagined the perfect life. The smeghead.

Cat, on the other hand, is inhabiting an island on Denmark where he is constantly attended to by scantily clad Valkyries and enjoys hunting dogs for sport in his milk-moated castle, and when Kryten enters in an attempt to rescue his friends he realises that he might as well wash the dishes and iron the clothes that are lying around in endless piles. It would only be polite.

Needless to say, this total immersion video game isn’t the only aspect of the novel. Some ideas from the episodes ‘Marooned’ and ‘White Hole’ are also used in the book, but are expanded to epic proportions. Lister ends up stranded on an ice planet that reveals itself to be the litter-covered remains of the Planet Earth, a planet that aeons ago was deemed the least important planet in the colonised solar system and which ended up quite literally “farting itself into the cosmos” due to the vast amounts of waste gases on its surface. As Red Dwarf is sucked through the time dilation effects of a black hole due to Holly’s attempt at increasing his IQ, Lister becomes and old man whose only companions are huge mutated cockroaches.


STYLE


The Red Dwarf books all sold incredibly well worldwide, especially this and its predecessor, and there are clear reasons for this. Firstly, these are not mere adaptations of episodes, despite containing some plot ideas and dialogue from the more successful shows, and are very solid books in their own right. This means that they can reward fans of the show as well as newcomers, and although Rob and Doug are arguably not the most talented writers they still have a great grasp of wordplay and clever or funny ideas.

Better Than Life is most commonly classified as a science fiction book and I agree with this classification; although the series is often more oriented towards comedy, even featuring a laughter track throughout, this book is based much more upon interesting ideas and theories, although it’s still a very funny read. Douglas Adams’ excellent ‘Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ series is more of a comedic take on a very daft but meaningful universe, and the Red Dwarf novels are more sci-fi efforts with humorous dialogue.


VERDICT


I really like this book, although mainly as a follow-up to the excellent ‘Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers.’ I had seen quite a few Red Dwarf episodes when I was young but I didn’t see the early episodes for quite some time, and as such I was granted a much more interesting version of the events in that first novel. The plot of Better Than Life is similarly disjointed like the original, but a little bit too much in places: it took me some time to realise that the Garbage World and the black hole were in the same book as the total immersion video game, but the effects of each occurrence do link together and have an overall impact on the ending.

Anyone who is a fan of Red Dwarf not only as a comedy, but as a funny sci-fi series should get hold of the books, although this isn’t just a guarantee of a hilarious read before bed-time. It’s still much more impressive than the later Red Dwarf books, which were written solely by Rob and Doug after they decided to end their writing partnership.

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Related products:

Red Dwarf (aka Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers) – the first novel that should be read as an introduction to this book. It’s also much better.

Better Than Life audiobook – My introduction to this novel was the abridged audio book from Laughing Stock, read by Chris Barrie (Rimmer in the TV series) whose impressions of the cast are all very skilled. The unabridged version costs a lot more.

Red Dwarf the TV series – Series 1 to 4 are available on DVD, and the rest will be released during the next few years. This book was written shortly before production of series 4, as shown by the dialogue and ideas based on some episodes.

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