Rob Grant’s Colony

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I read chapter 33 last night and couldn’t be bothered with chapter 34.

Whilst I’ve been enjoying the book, I still feels like its lumbering nowhere inparticular.  And knowing that it’s building to yet more threat, when you’d think their current situation is bad enough, almost feels like either a child or an improve group going “and then and then and then” just to move things forward.

I’ll finish obviously, but feel a bit of slump again after a couple of events that I thought were going to drive things forward.

[Dave]

Yeah, I think this book shows Rob struggling to move on from the episodic format of the Dwarf novels (which I think we more readily accept in those books because we’re conscious that it’s several different episodes of the TV show strung together with some new material).

Here, it makes the book feel shapeless and lacking in forward momentum. He’s lumbering from one situation to another, and while the situations are individually full of interesting ideas that could support individual 30-minute sitcom episodes, I don’t think they really cohere into a whole.

I’m a little behind you (Chapter 32) but I feel the same about losing the impetus to continue. It’s almost a themed sketch show feel rather than a single narrative at this point.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Yeah episodic is a good descriptor.  There’s just bits every so often that I think “what was the point of that”.  Like, where you’re at with Eddie wedged in a vending machine … other than Lewis running off, the whole thing was just another thing holding the momentum of the story back.

And at this point, I am well over Eddie being a robot.  Like Warbo said, Rob avoided whacky robotos in Red Dwarf, and you can kind of see why.  They’re a one trick pony comedy wise.  Ok so he is big, metallic, and doesn’t have great control over his moments.  That’s all covered in the first chapter … several chapters later and the same is still true, but the funny has warn off.

[Jenuall]

I’ve fallen behind with this a bit now – I’ve just finished Part Two. It’s very enjoyable so far, but feels like everything is lacking that little bit of depth to really make it sing. The frenetic pace worked well to kick things off but it feels like it needs to have settled down a bit more now – things just seem to keep happening without much time spent exploring the events or consequences individually.

I do like the world, and for the most part, the characters that are being built up though. It feels like a nice blend of Dwarf and Rob’s later stuff in Incompetence.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

You’re more or less not alone in your thoughts there Jenuall.

I’ve just finished part 3 and don’t really have anything more to add that I haven’t already. It’s already clear what happened at the end there to a certain extent.  With the last part so short I can’t help but feel the whole ending will be disappointing.

I like the world of these characters on the ship across multiple generations, but we’re not given any time to live in or experience it too much.  The first generation are dispensed of so quickly, and the 10th Gen raise a lot of questions but won’t have time to be answered.

[Warbodog]

Not rushing anyone, but since a few people are at this point anyway, we could move on to PART FOUR: Hobgoblins and Foul Fiends to see whether Rob ties up his second novel more successfully than his first.

[Rudolph]

Not much to add, but I remember reading the book over the course of two days on a family holiday to Crete in 2002. I was only just getting into Red Dwarf, and was too shy to play with the other children at the hotel, so this and the other books I took will always hold fond memories for me.

[Warbodog]

I finished the book. ‘Spoiler-free,’ smug-withholding thoughts:

I found the ending satisfying, after we got past some distractions for the sake of dramatic cliffhangers for episode 5. If anything, he’s overcompensating for Backwards’ loose threads by pulling the drawstring bag tight (around your gonads, presumably).

It definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea (the tradition it evokes is a common term of derision), but it felt very classic sci-fi novel to me. The Pilgrim’s Progress allusions might finally come out here, I don’t know.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Chapter 39

Padre Lewis takes on the roll of Rimmer and Trinity the roll of Kryten (albeit it minorly reversed) in White Hole.

the whole situation and the whole plan is basically White Hole, and here we have the crew voting, and a member siding with the position she is against because she feels it is a moral duty to do so.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

So I finished this off last night.  I sort of enjoyed the ending, but I feel it would have been more satisfying it the story had spent some time getting to that point.  It very much felt like he reached the end and pulled that out of his arse.

I don’t understand why the ship behaved the way it did, destroying itself and such.  I don’t understand why (or even how) it made sure the crew became illiterate.  I understand it recognises the need for Eddie and thus goes back in time and creates the circumstances that lead him to be on board … but he is needed for things the ship has done and could have chosen not to do.

Ultimately, I’m very interested in this bit of the story, as I was very interested in all the other bits of story Rob only alluded to and didn’t actually cover.  The time jump between part 2 and 3 is where the actual story of this book is and not enough of it is uncovered or revealed in any meaningful way for the book to justify itself I don’t think.

And entirely unnecessary, the Mr Pink socks storyline.  That just wasn’t needed, at all, other than to add some more tension to an already bloody tense situation.  Oh there crew are contending with half a dozen life ending events at the moment, lets put a murderous hit man into the scenario too.

I have enjoyed reading the book, its got humour and interest and some not too complicated sci-if ideas.  But there’s another story in here that’s far more interesting than is on the page.  Sure it might not necessarily be hilarious, and would probably be more drama than comedy, but it’s the book I’m left wished we’d been given.

[Warbodog]

It very much felt like he reached the end and pulled that out of his arse.

There was the legitimate clue of the computer’s messages to Eddie calling back to the ‘hallucination’ in the casino, but since it’s a comedy novel, I foolishly put that down to more of a running gag than something I should think about. We also could have kept Eddie’s computer fraud in mind as a mystery.

So not entirely a deus ex machina out of nowhere, just an unexpected change of tone and coming in with the wrong expectations.

Did I need a character’s stress hallucinations to be retrospective supernatural mystery clues, a la Lost? No, but I don’t mind a bit of bullshit. I didn’t realise Eddie was a hero, Rob was very convincing in undermining him.

(I thought he was going for a sappy solar system homecoming ‘twist’ when the planets were introduced, but fortunately not).

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Those seeds are so few and far between he could have easily gone back and added those in to help secure the ending though.

But yeah, it’s the tone change that is jarring.  Nothing anyone does resolves the situation. The ship creates it and solves it for reasons I’m unsure of.

I do sort of like that maybe the ship was putting Eddie through his paces so at the end he can come out on top and command the crew as they go to form the colony.  But that maybe isn’t quite clear that’s the motive or what was happening if that’s the case.

There’s many ways it could have ended which would have just been a bit more typical (not that I’m advocating for it) … but imagine say, they flew around in circles for 10 generations and the gas giant is actually Jupiter.  Some small pockets of survivors from Earth who have in the intervening years have healed the planet and have some space tech have been tracking the colony ship and then stage a rescure when it gets caught in its gravity pull.  They wind up back on Earth in a sort of Garden of Eden scenario, and a reverse Garbage World.

Feels like that would have made more sense than what did happen.

[Stilianides]

I’ve finished the book as well and, generally speaking, enjoyed many aspects of it.

I don’t consider it to be a step down from Backwards, but due to the absence of the Red Dwarf name it was always going to get less attention.

The comparisons with Red Dwarf became even stronger towards the end and there are numerous similarities between Eddie and Lister (to pick just one example). The idea of having a guy who is basically a loser on earth, but becomes the hero of a science fiction story is pretty much the same. Not to mention the sexual preferences that both men favour.

I think the final section could have been longer, but it still was a fairly satisfying way to wrap things up.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I think the final section could have been longer, but it still was a fairly satisfying way to wrap things up.

Give how long part 3 is, part 4 does seem to just leg it as quick as possible to the end.  It’s like Rob got bored and wanted to wrap it up quickly, which is a shame as giving it a bit more time to breath and explore exactly what was going on might have alleviated it of some of the complaints I had.

Because overall I did enjoy it, but it’s felt a little let down at the end.

[Dave]

I just finished the final section. For me the book is less than the sum of its parts. There are lots of good jokes, some fun set pieces, some inventive ideas and distinctive characters, and an interesting plot. But it somehow doesn’t cohere into anything… coherent.

It’s not that it’s badly written. Rob’s writing is very entertaining in its own right (even when some of the gags are word-for-word lifts from Red Dwarf), and I enjoyed it on a page-to-page basis. But overall the story just doesn’t hang together – there are too many random, different things going on that aren’t really connected at all, but are just there to be lots of wacky shit for our hero to deal with.

It’s the kind of thing that might work better as shorter episodes, like a comic or a TV or radio series, because as a full book it feels like all these ideas have been put in a blender and mixed up in a sometimes fairly random way.

And as far as the ending goes, I’m in the “letdown” camp. It’s not so much that it’s a bad solution to the mystery, more that the mystery was never fully-formed enough for you to even know what the question was, other than several unexplained things going on.

And just as I was starting get engaged in all the epic life-or-death pool with planets climactic situation, it’s pulled away and made effectively irrelevant for the sake of a quick, pat ending. Like Rob just decided one day that he was bored with writing the book and wanted to end it all in the space of a chapter or two.

Disappointing overall, but I don’t regret reading it either.

[Warbodog]

I was getting BBC 7 radio serial vibes from parts two and three. Parts one and four felt more novelly.

[Jenuall]

I’m on part 3 now I think, we’ve jumped into the future and our protagonist is now a head in a jar controlling a robot… hmm. It’s all very “and then… and then… and then…”

I’ve skimmed some of the other comments from those who’ve finished and agree with the view that there’s lots to like here, Rob can write well and has lots of good ideas and is obviously very funny, but it just doesn’t come together into something that makes the most of those strengths.

I’m keen to see how things play out and whether it can pay off some of the chaos that has played out so far. I reread Incompetence earlier this year and I think that plays many of the same cards as this book but manages the trick better

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Is there any appetite for reading any more of Rob Grant’s books?

[Stilianides]

I would definitely discuss more.

[Warbodog]

I’d join, if someone can be proactive about organising it! I read Incompetence in the early 2000s when I was about 17 and extremely sheltered, ignorant and comparatively illiterate, so it surely reads a lot different now.

[Warbodog]

That foreshadowing, man.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I’d join, if someone can be proactive about organising it! I read Incompetence in the early 2000s when I was about 17 and extremely sheltered, ignorant and comparatively illiterate, so it surely reads a lot different now.

If there’s a bit of interest I’d get it going for sure.  I’ve lost touch with reading again and need motivation to pick up a bloody book 

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Just recently bought a first edition in mint condition.

In my imagination, there was no hesitation.

[si]

In my imagination, there was no hesitation.

We walked together hand in hand. Yeah?

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

We walked together hand in hand. Yeah?

Yeah.

    

[si]

How exactly did we get here again? 

[Ian Symes]

That foreshadowing, man.

Bloody hell, we said we’d do something and then actually did it!

[Stilianides]

I thought that I would bump this thread, just in case there is any appetite for discussing another book now that the rewatch is over.

[Warbodog]

I thought that I would bump this thread, just in case there is any appetite for discussing another book now that the rewatch is over.

How about if anyone else is interested, someone makes an Incompetence thread on the weekend/Monday? Or even if they’re not.

My ebook has 48 chapters. Not the weekly ‘parts’ we’re used to with Rob, but they look pretty evenly broken up for maybe 5 chapters a week or a bit more.

Looks like there’s a Prologue after Chapter 4 (I’m liking it already), so that could be a good point for pausing and first impressions.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I thought that I would bump this thread, just in case there is any appetite for discussing another book now that the rewatch is over.

I certainly am still. There wasn’t a great response before but now Refresh for the Memory is over hopefully more people would be up for it 

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Hell yeah, let’s get some multimedia going!

[NeverLeavingFred]

I have fond memories of the paperback release, as I saw Rob at a reading/Q&A/signing at my local Ottakar’s that summer, which for a generally rather housebound 14 year-old, whose only gig had been John Shuttleworth a couple of months earlier, was quite the event. I read the book prior to the signing too, and I enjoyed it, more than I had enjoyed Dark Ages, The Strangerers or even Backwards (or Red Dwarf VIII for that matter). Can scarcely remember a thing about it some two decades later though.

[Dave]

Never read it, but would be up for a readalong.

[Warbodog]

We can read the first chapters next week then, if that gives everyone enough time to buy/borrow/steal a copy.

I’ve only got a Tony Hawks book on the go at the moment, no fiction/telly.

[Stilianides]

Good stuff. I think I have an old copy somewhere.

[Jenuall]

I may join in with this, but I re-read Incompetence fairly recently so not sure if I’ll stick with it again so soon!

It was interesting returning to it after so long though, some bits held up better than others!

[Dave]

Picked up the book this weekend and have started reading it. Looking forward to the discussion. I’ll start a new thread.

[Author]

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