Red Dwarf

Red Dwarf, 1992, by Grant Naylor is one of my favorite books of all time. This is the first science fiction/humor novel that I ever read that managed to capture the hyerbolic plots and fish-out-of-water humor of Douglass Adams, and the absurdity of Terry Pratchet, and actually makes sense.

Whereas with these other writers, I accept some loss of logic for the sake of satire, Grant Naylor does an exemplary job of writing a book with a plot I can believe. There are no random gods playing dice or sudden ability to fly by deciding to flip the bird at gravity. Everything that happens in this book actually makes sense within the context of the story.

It makes sense the Lister ended up on a self sustaining space ship travelling eternally in one straight line, three million years from when he started. It makes sense that even though he is the only human left on this enormous vessel, there are other human-ish characters; a hologram with an attitude, a moody computer, and a highly evolved cat.There is a logical explanation for everything, and I laughed out loud countless times while reading it.

The characters are well-developed and rich. The prose is interesting, witty, and professional.

Red Dwarf is on of my biggest inspiration for my book, Substitute Gods. Particularly in my efforts to make everything make sense, and not just be a flippantly random satire that excuses itself from logic now and then.

Red Dwarf went on to become a very popular (in England) sit com that lasted nearly a decade. I saw it one time, and it was very funny. It also had many characters on it that I did not know, and I have no idea how they plugged in the extras.

Grant Naylor is a pseudonym for two writers who wrote this collaboratively. They were contracted for two sequels, but could never agree with each other enough to pull it off. Eventually, they each wrote one sequel, each of which took a very different path than the other. I understand neither was well received, and I have never read either.
Red Dwarf gets 100 from me. It achieves in all the categories I analyze. It is the epitome of the kind of novels I mean to write.

The Light Fantastic

The Light Fantastic is Terry Pratchett’s second book in the Discworld series. Compared to The Color of Magic, TLF comes a lot closer to making sense to those of us with an IQ less than 170. The story continues with the main two characters of the first book. This is an interesting phenomenon because nowhere else in the Discworld series does Terry Pratchett write in serial. Any other books can be read in any order and yet they are all about the lives and tribulations of the people of Discworld, and Pratchett uses many recurring characters. The central character is Rincewind, the Wizard who never learned any magic. He did read a magic spell in a book once, and the spell invaded his head, and has been trying to get out ever since. And of course, he partner in confusion, Twoflower the traveler. Twoflower, the man on an endless vacation, and entirely oblivious to any hazards in the world.

The plot flows well, and humor is rich with hyperbole and absurdity. Absurdity and irony are Pratchett’s special gift. He also like to play with subtle, or sometimes not-so-subtle puns. I imagine he must be a hilarious person to have over to a cocktail party.

Where Pratchett grows weak is in character development. His main characters are interesting and quirky, and you want to see them fair well, but you don’t really learn as much about them as you would in a book by Jim Butcher or Carl Hiaasen, writers who develop characters with such depth I think they must be people the writers actually knew. His minor characters are even less well developed, and rely a little on the traditions of the fantasy genre for you to understand them.

But I do think that TLF accomplished what Pratchett intended. It is very funny. He uses his special brand of ludicrous to poke fun at humanity. I liked the book a great deal, and give it a 98. 2 points loss for lack of character depth.