Revisiting Better than Life (the novel)

[Rushy]

This book is much better than I’d remembered. I still have some issues: I don’t like the way the crew just get thrown from one situation to another without any break, without any status quo. And I’ve always felt that Grant Naylor get really carried away with the Better than Life environment. I love a great joke, but it’s so overstuffed with visual humour that it can get tiring to read. 
People say Tolkien can describe a branch for three pages. If Grant Naylor are describing a branch, you might be in for a whole chapter about how it grew up being bullied by all the other branches for not being knobbly enough. And then one day, it got a big birdhouse to compensate for its knobbly shortcomings.

But the character development of Rimmer and Lister is at its best here. And I mean best as in ‘better than any other Red Dwarf story ever written’. Garbage World is iconic. The Toaster steals the show. I like the way Red Dwarf subtly deteriorates throughout the book, setting up a Starbug-heavy third book. It’s a good time. 
Now hoping that Last Human is also better than I’d remembered. 

Topic

[Dave]

Now hoping that Last Human is also better than I’d remembered.

[Moonlight]

The last time I engaged with Last Human was the audiobook in 2018 (while on the job, so I had to) and I didn’t finish it.

[Paul Muller]

[Technopeasant]

I agree with you that Better Than Life needed room to breathe, and they could have escaped the game sooner.

[Rushy]

Reading Last Human. 

[Rushy]

I’m really fond of pulp sci-fi, so the new “trashy” tone and the idea of Starbug travelling to all these different planets on a quest works fine. It’s certainly better structured than the previous novel. 
My main issue so far is that the planets are boring as sin. If Doug replaced the sperm planet and the Kinitawowi with Legion and Rimmerworld, it’d be so much better. Rimmerworld especially would benefit massively from a book adaptation.

[Technopeasant]

It wouldn’t tie in as well with the setup later on, but that’s spoilers.

[International Debris]

Yeah, I don’t have an issue with the setting of Last Human, it’s just the actual writing that’s the problem. 

[Warbodog]

The sperm economy was one of the memorable things from reading the novel as a teenager, I think it’s good sci-fi-comedy world building for a (mult)iverse populated by genetically-engineered rejects and could have worked to expand a theoretical ‘Emohawk: Polymorph II’ episode that wasn’t about an Emohawk: Polymorph II.

[Rushy]

It’s rather surreal to read the heist section of the book. Lister running around with killer robots while Kryten and Kochanski drive a dune buggy feels like some Mad Max fever dream. 

[Moonlight]

while Kryten and Kochanski drive a dune buggy feels like some Mad Max fever dream. 

[Technopeasant]

“I won a judgment for fourteen million.”

[Rushy]

Kochanski is shockingly undeveloped. I wouldn’t mind so much, except I feel like I know George McIntyre and Ben Saunders more than her. You’d think there would be a wealth of material there – her thoughts on being resurrected, of having to spend 34 years with a guy that she clearly wasn’t that interested in. It’s just sort of a given that she loves Lister now. I do like how she and Rimmer are extremely formal with one another. That’s a neat touch. 
Evil Lister is much less interesting than Doug thinks he is. Or rather, he’s not used properly. The previous two novels focused heavily on Lister trying to cope with his situation and brooding about his role as the last human. An evil version of Lister could be used to explore that further, like maybe it’s revealed that he intentionally caused the radiation leak because he hated humanity and wanted to be free on his own. Or maybe he was just like our Lister originally, except Holly brought back Kochanski instead of Rimmer, and their relationship broke down and eventually he went insane. 
As is, Evil Lister is just a plot device in this, but also the entire book is about him, so it’s like… what’s the actual story? It’s all one massive detour from finding Red Dwarf, until they just give up at the end and retire on a planet. 

(Poor Holly)

[Warbodog]

I think you mean Frank Saunders.

[Warbodog]

(Poor Holly)

There’s a line in BTL foreboding something like the IQ experiment would cost Holly his electronic life, so they may have already considered writing out the character by 1990. (Then again, Lister dies in the same book and gets better).

[Rushy]

(Poor Holly)

There’s a line in BTL foreboding something like the IQ experiment would cost Holly his electronic life, so they may have already considered writing out the character by 1990. (Then again, Lister dies in the same book and gets better).

He spends the entire book being on the verge of death, I think this was a way to minimize his involvement.  

[Rushy]

I like that Doug mentions Lister having an artificial earlobe because of the acid rain in Better than Life. 

The Michael McGruder thing just about makes sense if we accept that it was always Holly’s intention to resurrect Rimmer, and the black box that he sent to Earth contained that information. Although the Mayflower and Starbug both randomly wandering into Evil Lister’s universe is too much. 

[Rushy]

Lmao at Doug writing the DNA scene with Rimmer getting transmogrified. 

“But Rimmer’s a hard light hologram, ma’am. He hasn’t got any DNA.”

“The computer must have managed to do a transposition – swapping hard light for genes. I don’t understand how.”

[Technopeasant]

Just wait until you get the double polaroid scene with Kochanski instead of Lister…

[Rushy]

Just wait until you get the double polaroid scene with Kochanski instead of Lister…

What’s really odd is that I don’t think Book Kryten ever exhibited a desire to become human in the same way TV Kryten did. 

[Warbodog]

Hopefully it stops bastardising old scripts for the worse soon so it can get back to original material that doesn’t feel like Red Dwarf again.

[International Debris]

Just wait until you get the double polaroid scene with Kochanski instead of Lister…

What’s really odd is that I don’t think Book Kryten ever exhibited a desire to become human in the same way TV Kryten did. 

Yeah, there are a few nice moments, but his character is barely developed in the books to be honest.

[Rushy]

Both Last Human and Backwards seem to crowbar Kryten’s development into the time that Lister spends in Backwards World, although neither version is terribly specific about what Starbug was doing during that time. 

[Moonlight]

I think we should get Rob to write another Red Dwarf novel, but force it to be a sequel to Last Human.

[Technopeasant]

That joke was just posted in the other thread.

[Flap Jack]

Great minds, though.

[Technopeasant]

And fools as well.

[Rushy]

Rob could probably make more profit off a book where he reviews every Doug episode, than a fully fledged new Red Dwarf novel. 

[Moonlight]

I feel like normie fans would be more interested in original content than something very fan-focused like that.

Although normie fans probably don’t even know the novels exist anyway.

[Unrumble]

[Rushy]

Kryten’s decision to turn back human has much less weight without the conversations he has with Lister in the TV episode. 

In the book, he just gets a bit sad over the concept of death, which I guess is fair enough (and ties into Last Day), but it’s not nearly as impactful. It makes it look like he went “ehh nevermind” and switched back. 

Also, unlike the TV episode, the book version of Rimmer thinks he should turn back as well, which means there isn’t anyone around to offer a contradictory point of view. It’s just less interesting as a result and I’m not even sure what the point of it all was. At least the Kinitawowi sort of tied into the adventure. 

[Asclepius]

I think the stuff on the Garbage Planet is probably the best stuff in any of the books that wasn’t used in a TV episode.

But I also prefer Last Human to Backwards.

[Rushy]

Last Human would probably be much more popular if it’s prose style matched the first two books. It has a pulp quality to it that none of the other ones have

[International Debris]

Whenever a character is changed in one of the books, it always feels really off. Last Human is the worst offender by a mile.

[Rushy]

Whenever a character is changed in one of the books, it always feels really off. 

Can you give specific examples?

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Gestures broadly around at every single character 

Last Human is a sci-fi book crowbarred into a Red Dwarf novel where none of the characters do anything you’d really expect them to do because they’re serving the story, rather than the story being written to serve them in anyway.

[Rushy]

It’s less funnier, but I didn’t really notice egregious examples of anyone being out of character. 

And he did say books in plural.

[International Debris]

Oh, no, I meant when a character is swapped rather than their characteristics are changed. 

And he did say books in plural.

Who’s he, the cat’s father?

[Warbodog]

[Rushy]

Never forget that Rimmer was seemingly happy to date Lister as long as he could keep his position as the superior officer. 

[Unrumble]

Never forget that Rimmer was seemingly happy to date Lister as long as he could keep his position as the superior officer. 

[Ben Saunders]

Having not read the books, hearing little tidbits and plot points on here makes them sound like the most insane things ever committed to paper. What the hell is going on over there in book land?

[Asclepius]

Having not read the books, hearing little tidbits and plot points on here makes them sound like the most insane things ever committed to paper. What the hell is going on over there in book land?

The purest, most undiluted form of Grant Naylor’s vision, frankly.

The first two are absolute classics. Take the day off work and get started.

[Warbodog]

At their best it’s prime Grant Naylor expanding on Red Dwarf in unpredecented depth, why bother?

If the point about Rimmer dating Lister was included among the insanity, that was referencing Balance of Power the episode (which is really more like Rimmer panicking and not thinking things through).

[Author]

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