When did you first read the novels?

[Warbodog]

Could you spare the time to complete this short survey for my course on… nah, I’d just like to know.

1. How old were you when you read the novels? (Mainly the first one).

2. How much Red Dwarf had you seen at that point?

3. How do you think this impacted on your blah of etc. (Discuss?)

[Warbodog]

1. I was 11, saw the first book in the library when browsing the SF section for the first time.

2. Brief snippets from IV but mainly post-Psirens VI at least twice through and probably VII, unless this was just before. Rd Dwarf had been a Starbug-based experience.

3.

I figured it was either a novelisation of how the series started – I assumed a loose adaptation (Jurassic Park’s book was different from the film, you see) – or maybe the backstory they never showed on TV if that had jumped right in.

I was reminded about the adaptation thing when it got to Kryten’s origin, but otherwise I wasn’t thinking about that and just got caught up in the story. I don’t remember thinking that any of the random, often flimsily-connected escapades were probably all culled from different episodes, and it wasn’t jarring that the prose descriptions would give way to loads of dialogue during the Future Echoes/Me2 bits like it is now, it all just seemed to fit.

My mental image of the Red Dwarf interiors was on the vast and realistic side. I saw some III & IV bytes a few months later and those seemed to fit in fine with what I’d imagined, if smaller, but when I saw series 1 a while after, I felt let down by the look, which I felt wasn’t doing those stories justice. I got over it.

I read BTL a short time after, but it wasn’t such a page turner… not sure why, since I came to prefer it. A year or two later, I got the abridged audiobooks and Chris Barrie read them to me A LOT at bedtime. By then I’d probably caught up on the episodes, so appreciated the more direct-from-TV bits being left out in favour of the original novel plots, so those are what I think of when I think of the books. All in Chris Barrie’s voice(s). Girls, girls, girls and sex, sex, sex.

Don’t have much to say about Last Human or Backwards.

Well, I think that’s enough of a sample to confirm my hypothesis that the novels have deeper personal significance if you read them before seeing the relevant episodes. Feel free to chip in though.

[MANI506]

I got the first two novels for my 12th birthday in 1992. I’d seen series 2, III, IV and V. Series I was extremely rare and I used to freeze frame the scene in the hologram simulation suite to try and see at least a bit of it.

Anyway, I loved the whole of the first book but especially the Future Echoes section and I freaked myself out by imagining another version of myself walking in to the room like in the double Rimmer scene. When I finally saw series I the following year I generally loved the look of it but it bugged me that the stars from the sleeping quarters window were static when the ship was supposed to be traveling at light speed.

Fave bit of the second book was Garbage World but now I appreciate how amazing the Better Than Life section is. It could almost be a Black Mirror/Inside No 9.

Third book was long awaited (I got it for my 15th birthday) and at the time I wasn’t impressed although I like it now. Backwards passed me by a bit as by then we knew that series VII was being made which was a far more exciting prospect. When I got around to reading it I adored the Dimension Jump adaptation. I much prefer the abridged versions of Backwards and Last Human. Makes them tighter imo

[Warbodog]

It was the Future Echoes bit that blew me away most on the first reading too. But when I eventually saw the episode, there was no question it was the definitive take (in the way the Better Than Life and Backwards episodes weren’t).

Actually, I’d read the Smegazine comic adaptation of (the end of) Future Echoes before I saw the episode, with its strangely modernised set and costume design. But I knew what series 1 was supposed to look like by then.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I honestly can’t remember. Was a teenager probably, which would put me early 00s and I would have seen all of Red Dwarf at that point but maybe not so much that I knew it all inside out and back to front as I do now.

[Dave]

Not long after the omnibus edition came out, after I’d seen V but (I think) either just before or just after VI had been televised. So I guess late 1993.

[bloodteller]

>1. How old were you when you read the novels? (Mainly the first one).
2. How much Red Dwarf had you seen at that point?
3. How do you think this impacted on your blah of etc. (Discuss?)

I was about 9 years old when i found “Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers” in my dad’s bookshelf. At the time I had only seen “Demons & Angels” so I didn’t really know too much about the show other than what the characters looked like.

I remember reading through most of it on a long car journey and being incredibly interested by it all. my dad told me there was a TV show of it. i asked if it was like the book, where “he was all on Mimas being homeless” and my dad said no it started off with rimmer and lister fixing a soup machine. i was a bit put off but started watching it anyway, all the way from I-VIII. i remember being slightly disappointed that it wasn’t as grand and epic as in the book and that they never ended up getting back to Earth, but i enjoyed it anyway and that’s about it really

[bloodteller]

in addition i remember being really freaked out by Last Human when i finally got around to reading that novel, i don’t remember if i ever actually finished reading it or not.

needless to say i much preferred Backwards although i was genuinely horrified at the Gunmen adaptation where rimmer slowly gets boiled in his own melting flesh. that was just so disturbing

[Warbodog]

I never had much enthusiasm for the last two novels, what with them being solo projects and not read by Chris Barrie. I can’t remember anything from Backwards that’s not in the abridged audiobook, like the Gunmen stuff, so I don’t know if I ever finished the proper book.

I chanced across all the horniest bits of Last Human during silent reading sessions at school (Kochanski sex, GELF sex, sperm donations). They were funnier in that enforced silence, pointing out choice lines to my friend.

[bloodteller]

i vaguely remember Last Human having lots of really surreal and disturbing sections when i read it, like the cyber-prison Lister gets sent to, the parallel universe where the crew’s dead bodies are all found, and the flashbacks to lister’s foster mother. it all felt like a slightly off-brand version of red dwarf where everything is just a bit creepy and unsettling.

the Rimmer/McGruder love story was rather sweet though

[Warbodog]

I must have read the first book before VII was broadcast (at least Nanarchy), since I hadn’t seen Norman’s Holly yet. I’d seen Hattie’s Holly briefly, and knew she was a character in the pre-VI series, but I didn’t understand why they’d changed her into a male for the book. And still kept the original, clearly female name.

[bloodteller]

isn’t Holly called Holly because they’re a hologrammic computer though?

i always thought that was the case since they call the stochastic(?) computer in Holoship “Stocky.”

[Taiwan Tony]

1. About 13. I must have had pubes!

2. A fair chunk of what was shown on TV. So up to Series VI.

3. I love the books. The books might be the reason I prefer the earlier series to the later ones. Or my love for the earlier series could account for why I love the books. And although they are obviously connected, I sort of view them as separate entities. The books are untouchable. And the boys from the Dwarf will always, on paper, be cheeky, 20-something and have moderate acting ability. And Kochanski will always be Clare Grogan.

You’ve made me want to read the books again.

[Ben Saunders]

1) I started the first novel at 22 and haven’t finished it yet
2) All of it
3) I felt like Rimmer going to a brothel was a bit OOC honestly but to be honest it probably isn’t and I’ve not read that far into it, yet. I fully intend to, however.

[bloodteller]

additional: i also recall picking up the novel for the first time, getting to chapter 1 where saunders punches himself in the dick and george gets his nose wrenched off by the mafia and wondering “who are these people and where is lister and the robot”

the first few chapters of the novel really are interesting because they give you a glimpse of what society is actually like outside of the ship and the lives of the main characters, which is something i don’t think you really see in the show outside of that one section from The Inquisitor and certain parts of Samsara

[Ben Saunders]

Oh, you have no idea how spooky it was for me to open the book on Christmas Day only to be greeted with “Saunders had been dead for almost two weeks now, and hadn’t enjoyed a minute of it.” Had I?

[Ian Symes]

I stole my sister’s copy of the Omnibus when I was about eight, at which point I’d seen Series V and VI, but I didn’t actually read it for a long time. I then got the audiobooks for my birthday I few years later, having by then seen everything that existed at the time (up to VI), and listened to them straight away. It wasn’t until a couple of years after this that I actually read the books properly, and was shocked at just how much extra material was in there, compared to the abridged tapes.

It’s interesting to note just how much the abridging changes your perception of the books. For Infinity, it pretty much skips from the accident to rescuing Kryten to the Better Than Life bits, which take up a much bigger proportion of the story as a result. For BTL, I recall the majority of the cuts were from later on, and so the game stuff is more prominent there too. Most interestingly, they skip the Polymorph stuff so Lister’s heart attack is brought on by old age, rather than being as a result of the confrontation.

[International Debris]

1. How old were you when you read the novels? (Mainly the first one).
It was a World Book Day type thing and our school had people in selling loads. I found the first four there and persuaded somebody to lend me the money to buy the first one (I never paid her back). I think this would have been 1998, so I was 13.

2. How much Red Dwarf had you seen at that point?
I’d probably seen all seven series, but I’d only got off-airs of IV, VI and VII. I might have had a couple of Remastered videos too. The others I hadn’t seen in a few years.

3. How do you think this impacted on your blah of etc. (Discuss?)
I couldn’t get used to ‘rip his nipples off’ in the TV version of Future Echoes, and similar small changes. I’ve always taken elements like Z Shift, Lister and Kochanski’s relationship, Kryten’s history etc. as canon.

[Hamish]

1)
It was 2008, when I was 14, that I went through all of the audio books for the first time. I have only just finished reading the full unabridged Backwards novel, and I am about halfway through Last Human.

2)
Every show that had been made up to that point, but just barely – that was also the same year that I finished watching all of the Red Dwarf DVDs for the first time.

3)
Honestly the first Red Dwarf novel is the only one I can wholeheartedly recommend. Both Better Than Life and Backwards share an unrelenting bleakness that just puts me off them in a way that IWCD never did, and Last Human is a bit too off brand as has already been stated. If anything going through the full Backwards novel lowered my opinion of it, as it just left more room for Rob Grant’s obsessive torture porn, with me actually starting to feel a little bit revolted during the Gunmen bit. Besides, part of the joy of the Gunmen episode is Andy De Emmony’s tight direction, so the novel version just reads as a flabbier imitation of that.

I would have much preferred it if the BTL plot had been wrapped up quicker in the second novel to make more room for life on board ship parts like in IWCD before moving onto Garbage World, and I still don’t like how missing the flight window in Backwards reverts Lister and the Cat to teenagers, even if it does allow the novel to make a nice subversion of the “jail bait ball girl” joke. Does anything new really get explored by the BTL bits in the second novel, other than just more elaboration on Rimmer’s self-loathing? It feels redundant to me, especially when so much of the first book was already dedicated to covering it.

So yeah, mixed feelings then. IWCD is just about perfect though.

[bloodteller]

>it just left more room for Rob Grant’s obsessive torture porn

so THAT’S why Backwards is so gruesome? i never really realized that when i read it, i just thought it was being gory and nightmarish in the Gunmen Of The Apocalypse segment to make the whole thing a bit more scary

that certainly does explain the out-of-nowhere chapter where the Cat tears up a women’s vagina and then runs off and it’s never really talked about again though

[Dave]

It’s been a while since I read it, but aren’t the consequences talked about quite a bit before it happens (in true Backwards-world style)? The act itself is the payoff to the setup.

It’s still very unpleasant, though.

[bloodteller]

oh and of course there’s the Agonoids section in which they have somehow turned the ship into a giant torture chamber and are discussing various torture implements to use on Lister to keep him alive but in as much pain as possible.

i think that section was the only bit of literature i’ve ever read that’s legitimately made me shudder in disgust. the only bit of it i can recall is them planning to use a cocktail umbrella to scrape out the insides of lister’s penis, but either way i recall the whole chapter being rather fucked up

[Ben Paddon]

One of my parents’d bought “Last Human”, so I started reading it. I was 11 at the time. Later, I found “Backwards” in the school library. At the time I had no idea they were a separate continuity.

[International Debris]

Yes, it got under my skin in a rather horrible way as a kid. Also Ace’s rather graphic death.

[Dax101]

I got Last human when i was like 10 years old and i only remember reading parts of it on random pages, so i kinda already knew Rimmers fate even though i hadn’t read the book fully.

Technically the first time i actually got through one of the books was seeing the Infinity welcomes careful drivers abridged audiobook in a library and loaned it out to see what it was like.

What i was expecting from it was Chris just narrating the book but when i realised chris was doing impressions of the cast incredibly well i was hooked on it.

So really the audiobooks were my first take on the novels.

[Pete Part Three]

1. How old were you when you read the novels? (Mainly the first one).

12 for Infinity and BTL. And no, I wasn’t a full member of the book club.

2. How much Red Dwarf had you seen at that point?

I can’t remember for Infinity and BTL; probably no further than Series 4 . I got Last Human and Backwards on publication date, so 1-6 (apart from Psirens) and 1-6 (inclusive) respectively.

3. How do you think this impacted on your blah of etc. (Discuss?)

I can actually remember buying Infinity and then eagerly starting to read it in the back of my dad’s car ( Incredible. Bentley V8 convertible) . No, really. I think I was a bit surprised reading it and seeing the differences of the first series, which I found a bit jarring at first as I was expecting more of a novelization of the show than a novel. I was probably expecting it to open on the first scene of The End, so the stuff about Saunders and his rubber plant were all very strange.

Clearly, I was a twat. I love the first half of the book. It’s the best bit of all the novels. Lister lusting after Kochanski (but Kochanski never getting any actual dialogue) is the best realization of their relationship because it sidesteps the problem of making this fantasy into a character. Likewise, Rimmer’s exam technique is just brilliant characterization of him, it’s perfect. It also does a better job at explaining what’s going through Rimmer’s head in The End when he’s taking his astro-nav (the palm print, the blowing “between” the sheets).

Likewise the stuff with the Duplicate Rimmer is also much better realised than Me2, with the bit about the two not sharing mints and getting on each others tits, being stuff that really wouldn’t work onscreen.

I hadn’t seen It’s A Wonderful Life when I first read the book (and don’t think I did for another 5 or so years), so that stuff was a little odd to me and I don’t think I even guessed what U = BTL meant, despite having already seen the episode several times.

Better Than Life is pretty great too. I love the reveal of who Trixie La Bouche is. The pace of the novel seems a bit off though, as Lister seems to hurtle from one disaster to the next. He comes out of BTL, is extrremely ill, has to play pool with planets, crashlands on Garbage Land, ages in the blink of an eye (to the others), and then dies of a heart-attack after battling the Polymorph. There doesn’t seem to be much status quo of “Life on Red Dwarf”.

I raced through Last Human in one day. I’ve never been keen. It’s not really Red Dwarf to me, and the chunks of the episodes it recycles stuff from don’t seem to sit easily in the narrative. It all seems a bit more Star Trek than Red Dwarf, with a strangely populated galaxy of gelf tribes and civilizations. For example, Reketrebn, the symbimorph who helps Lister escape Cyberia, reminds me of that shapeshifter in The Undiscovered Country who helps Kirk and Bones escape from that prison planet. The other new characters are also shite. Kochanski in utterly bland, and Michael McGruder is just (and that whole storyline) is…NO. And I DETEST the stuff about Rimmer’s brothers all getting chips implanted, explaining why they’re all marvelous and Rimmer is hopeless.

I actually did English Literature coursework, comparing Last Human and Backwards. I like Backwards quite a bit more in terms of the prose, but I don’t think the story hangs together at all. They spend YEARS on Backwards Earth, get on Starbug, find Holly…who dies, Ace pops in for a bit and -um- dies, then they play Gunmen, then Rimmer and Kryten -um- die…then the teenage (?) Lister and Cat fuck off to another dimension. It’s kind of too hard to be invested when you re-read this one, as they never get where they’re supposed to get to (Red Dwarf), almost everyone dies, and then they ditch their original dimension anyway.. Curiously, the framing device around the novel is stuff about Rimmer and Ace (both of whom stuff it) as if the overall story is about them.

Sorry. I’m drunk. I got a bit carried away.

[Hamish]

> so THAT’S why Backwards is so gruesome?

I have no idea why Backwards is so gruesome, but Rob Grant does seem to rather like writing about torture and gore. I comes up again in Colony as far as I can recall, although that is the only other book of his I have been exposed to.

[Hamish]

> oh and of course there’s the Agonoids section in which they have somehow turned the ship into a giant torture chamber and are discussing various torture implements to use on Lister to keep him alive but in as much pain as possible … i think that section was the only bit of literature i’ve ever read that’s legitimately made me shudder in disgust.

To be honest that bit did not bother me as much because there is a certain dark comic aspect in finding the most roundabout ways of using every day household implements to inflict pain in the most ridiculous of ways. It at least felt a bit more justified than half the rest of the shit that Rob Grant actually put people through.

[Paul Muller]

I have a very vague memory of reading Last Human to an (extremely elderly) primary school teacher. I must have been about 10 at the time. Luckily I think we only got a few pages in, so she was mercifully spared the horrors to come.

[Hamish]

LISTER: Or Rob Grant – what a bastard!
RIMMER: Eh?
LISTER: He’s the big fat git who comes up with all these unspeakable ways to inflict pain using all of the kid’s favourite toys!

[Warbodog]

>Rimmer’s exam technique is just brilliant characterization of him,

That’s probably the book’s greatest legacy for me – novel Rimmer has always informed how I see series 1 Rimmer on-screen. It makes The End and Me² more meaningful, and the brief gag about him wasting weeks making his revision timetable in Balance of Power has a rich backstory.

It’s not the same for novel Lister. I never imagined that all the Mimas stuff happened before The End, since it wasn’t mentioned. He was just an ex-supermarket trolley attendant who had a home on Earth where he might conceivably have left a light on in the bathroom and sausages on the table.

[Dax101]

>I have a very vague memory of reading Last Human to an (extremely elderly) primary school teacher. I must have been about 10 at the time. Luckily I think we only got a few pages in, so she was mercifully spared the horrors to come.

So you didn’t get to the kochanski/lister sex scene?… that would have been awkward to read.

[Paul Muller]

God I hope not. She’d have probably phoned social services there and then.

[Dave]

That’s probably the book’s greatest legacy for me – novel Rimmer has always informed how I see series 1 Rimmer on-screen. It makes The End and Me² more meaningful, and the brief gag about him wasting weeks making his revision timetable in Balance of Power has a rich backstory.

Same for me. That early Rimmer stuff from the books does a great job of fleshing out the small amount of pre-accident Rimmer we see on-screen.

[bloodteller]

>LISTER: Or Rob Grant – what a bastard!
RIMMER: Eh?
LISTER: He’s the big fat git who comes up with all these unspeakable ways to inflict pain using all of the kid’s favourite toys!

this made me laugh out loud, nice one

[Warbodog]

>Ben Saunders: I started the first novel at 22 and haven’t finished it yet

Come on, it’s “new” Grant Naylor Red Dwarf! But the long stretches that are just copy-pasted script extracts with “said Rimmer” inserted are probably tedious and off-putting if you’ve seen the episodes, I might even skip those if I read it again. There’s plenty of new and expanded stuff to look forward to though, but maybe not as affecting if you didn’t read it as a Dwarf-deprived adolescent.

>I felt like Rimmer going to a brothel was a bit OOC honestly but to be honest it probably isn’t

It’s a droid brothel, isn’t it? That’s less weird to me than thinking of TV Rimmer fucking an inflatable doll.

[Flap Jack]

I’ve only listened to the audiobook versions of the first 2 novels, but nonetheless.

1. 24.

2. ALL OF IT – except for Series XII because that hadn’t been broadcast yet.

3. Wow, OK, that’s a broad question. I’ll try to break my reaction to the novels into points:

• I really liked a lot of the back-story expansion and pre-accident story stuff, especially the details about the development of the cat race, Lister’s first meeting with Rimmer and induction to Red Dwarf, Rimmer’s whole exam ordeal, and his stasis habit too.
• However, I hated any major detail which contradicted the TV version. Lister got himself sentenced to time in stasis on purpose? Hate it. Kryten was directly responsible for getting the crew killed due to inexplicably being crap at his only job? Hate it. “Zero-Gee Football: It’s A Funny Old Game by Joe Klump”? HATE. IT. They got it backwards; Lister is meant to be kind of thick (at least in the beginning) and Kryten is supposed to be smart. Yes, yes, I know, skeletons, but the show makes it clear that’s the exception, not the rule.
• Compared to the TV version, there was a definite shift towards drama, which made for some really good set pieces, but on the whole really wasn’t that funny to me. Classic dialogue exchanges fall a bit flat when it’s just multiple Chris Barries with no audience..
• So… Better Than Life The Book was really one made for Talkie Toaster fans, eh?
• There’s so much bitterness and bleakness in these books. The 2 Rimmers are both around for much longer and torture each other way more, Holly revives Talkie out of pure loneliness and they end up hating each other too, Lister and Rimmer basically just straight up loathe each other even more than on TV, everyone is almost killed by Better Than Life, Lister spends several decades just barely managing to survive all alone on Garbage World before dying of a heart attack… there’s no everyday life on Red Dwarf here to make it feel like a sitcom, just constant danger and sadness.
• The concept of the black hole causing time to move at different speeds in different parts of the ship is brilliant, and I’m surprised the show itself didn’t copy the idea back (not that I’d replace the time trickery we did get in White Hole!). I actually finished listening to Better Than Life less than a week before the Doctor Who episode “World Enough And Time” aired, which was a fun coincidence for me.
• Something felt… off about Lister’s fantasy being It’s A Wonderful Life. Not just the fact that we never got any indication that this was a fixation for him before this, but the fact that it’s so specific and limited. Surely a Lister fantasy would be more inventive than just “Lister, in one specific part of It’s A Wonderful Life” – and definitely involve a farm on Fiji? As with so many Marilyn Monroe mentions, it felt more like Doug and Rob were the George Bailey fanboys, not Lister.
• The structure is still very episodic despite the format, which unfortunately prevents either book from feeling like it has a proper overarching story. Hitchhiker’s Guide has this problem too, of course, but Hitchhiker’s has a style and humour that better suits it. Also, I can confirm that ending a book on a cliffhanger is just as annoying as ending a series on one.
• Garbage World as a concept is great. It was the one part that felt truly Adamsian in its view of the future, and could have been a genuine direction the TV show could have gone in, if they wanted to be a bit darker.
• The Cat’s BTL fantasy was perfect; Rimmer’s was good, especially with how bizarre the Trixie stuff got, but the amount of complexity involved with his multiple marriages and such seemed a bit needless. I don’t even remember Kryten’s fantasy; something about doing a nice bit of ironing?
• Chris Barrie’s reading is just spot on for so much of these audiobooks. I think I would have listened to the remaining 2 novels by now if he’d done those as well.

Phew. Anyway, on the whole, I’d say that Red Dwarf (affectionately known as “Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers”) and Better Than Life are… fine. Yep.

[Pete Part Three]

>Something felt… off about Lister’s fantasy being It’s A Wonderful Life.Not just the fact that we never got any indication that this was a fixation for him before this, but the fact that it’s so specific and limited.

IAWL is seeded early in the novel as being the favourite film of both him and Kochanksi. (Were you listening to the abridged versions?, as maybe it’s not in that). Lister’s annoyance when he discovers that they are in BTL and he could have dreamt a little bigger comes up, but it’s indicated that the game is trying to conceal itself by going relatively subtle (being a far more devious type of game than the TV episode’s version of a genie lamp. Plus, Lister craves a simple life (in contrast to Rimmer and The Cat).

The fact that Lister can’t really leave Bedford Falls, just as George Bailey never could, is really neat too.

>I can confirm that ending a book on a cliffhanger is just as annoying as ending a series on one.
I *LOVE* that last line. It could just as easily be an ending.

>Garbage World as a concept is great. It was the one part that felt truly Adamsian in its view of the future, and could have been a genuine direction the TV show could have gone in, if they wanted to be a bit darker.

It seemed to have at least reached the draft stage, as Ed Bye mentions a script for the TV show where the crew mount huge cockroaches in “Six of the Best”.

>Lister got himself sentenced to time in stasis on purpose? Hate it. Kryten was directly responsible for getting the crew killed due to inexplicably being crap at his only job? Hate it.

Never really had a problem with the Lister change (or Rimmer no longer being responsible for the radiation leak) but the Kryten thing is unnecessary. Seemed to wander into the TV show in Ouroborous (“You killed the crew, Kryten! No wonder you ended up on your own! All right, it was an accident, but nevertheless… “)

[bloodteller]

>Lister and Rimmer basically just straight up loathe each other even more than on TV

yeah, i remember at one point in the novel Lister is incredibly cruel and callous towards Rimmer (something about him hating him so much he’d rather drink his own shit every day?) to which Rimmer seems genuinely hurt and offended. it felt a bit out of character for him to be so downright horrible

in the TV show, you get the sense that although they argue and moan about each other a lot, they’re actually fairly good friends

[Flap Jack]

IAWL is seeded early in the novel as being the favourite film of both him and Kochanksi. (Were you listening to the abridged versions?, as maybe it’s not in that). Lister’s annoyance when he discovers that they are in BTL and he could have dreamt a little bigger comes up, but it’s indicated that the game is trying to conceal itself by going relatively subtle (being a far more devious type of game than the TV episode’s version of a genie lamp. Plus, Lister craves a simple life (in contrast to Rimmer and The Cat).

Ah, I wasn’t listening to the abridged versions, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t just forget that detail. Fair enough!

I can’t exactly pinpoint why Lister’s fantasy feels off to me, because it does make sense for Lister to want a simple, calm life like that.

Maybe it’s that everyone else’s fantasies are original settings, while Lister’s is literally just It’s A Wonderful Life. With the other fantasies, you can kind of buy that Earth might just be like that in the distant future, but Lister’s fantasy makes the artifice immediately obvious.

Surely if the game was trying to stop Lister realising it wasn’t real, it would put him in a scenario that was like Bedford Falls, but not literally Bedford Falls. If it’s his favourite ever movie, then Lister of all people should have recognised it as a fiction straight away.

[Plastic Percy]

When I was eleven, so around 1999. I read the first book after picking it up at a school jumble sale. I’d seen a few bits and pieces previously, parts of Stoke Me a Clipper and Epideme. I was utterly surprised when I first saw The End as I had figured that the books matched the series pretty faithfully.

[Pete Part Three]

>lSurely if the game was trying to stop Lister realising it wasn’t real, it would put him in a scenario that was like Bedford Falls, but not literally Bedford Falls. If it’s his favourite ever movie, then Lister of all people should have recognised it as a fiction straight away

Well, it’s not really. In Infinity, the explanation is that there is a real town by this name (believable) where fans of the film live and honour the fiilm It’s basically a Capra-convention. Lister goes by the pseudonym “George Bailey” (although this seems to be abandoned in the second novel) and the other residents treat it as an in-joke.

Although, tbf; this explanation isn’t presented as the reason why it’s always Christmas Eve. Even Lister twigs that this is a bit strange.

[clem]

Also the game works by making the player so happy and content that they don’t question anything odd. Stuff doesn’t just pop into existence as if by magic like in the version in the episode, but impossible things still happen, like Lister’s baby son driving a car.

[bloodteller]

i always liked the way the “Earth” section of the book was put together, because on your first read you’re sort of tricked into thinking they really have managed to get back to Earth and that this is really how it’s going to end.

at least for me, the revelation that they’re in Better Than Life was as much as a twist for me as it was for the characters-the curious absence of kryten and the repeated statement about lister’s arms hurting slowly clues you in that something isn’t quite right, but i never really realized that they were in the game until the bit where it’s stated the second message on his arm is “U=BTL”. it’s quite a clever bit of plot twist and the foreshadowing of it during the Future Echoes part is quite well done too

[Flap Jack]

Well, it’s not really. In Infinity, the explanation is that there is a real town by this name (believable) where fans of the film live and honour the fiilm It’s basically a Capra-convention. Lister goes by the pseudonym “George Bailey” (although this seems to be abandoned in the second novel) and the other residents treat it as an in-joke.

OK, I guess my attempts to look for wholly rational reasons not to like the Bedford Falls fantasy didn’t go to plan. My only remaining rationale is that Bedford Falls requires an extra level of fakery. Better Than Life has constructed the fantasy, but Lister has constructed a fantasy within the fantasy.

[Dax101]

>at least for me, the revelation that they’re in Better Than Life was as much as a twist for me as it was for the characters-the curious absence of kryten and the repeated statement about lister’s arms hurting slowly clues you in that something isn’t quite right.

Its a great twist and its pretty dark and horrific

[Dax101]

>Surely if the game was trying to stop Lister realising it wasn’t real, it would put him in a scenario that was like Bedford Falls, but not literally Bedford Falls. If it’s his favourite ever movie, then Lister of all people should have recognised it as a fiction straight away.

I think the book does mention that even lister was shocked a place like that even existed where people who loved the film got to live in a town exactly like bedford falls.

I think its more of a case that lister had no reason to be suspicious because to him he was back on earth and he remembers getting back to earth.

[Warbodog]

This topic has inspired myself to read the books again (at least the good ones). I’ve just got to the accident and Frankenstein being safely sealed in the hold. Good, innit?

Red Dwarf’s introduction to the reader with a Star Trek: The Motion Picture style flyaround is immense in the literal and colloquial senses. Book Red Dwarf has a crew of 11,000+, I didn’t remember that.

There are also lots more little touches that originated in the novels than I remembered: light bees, Rimmer’s Io backstory and brothers, Salt: An Epicure’s Delight, an Alsatian dog after a head swap operation, smallprint hidden in a microdot on the letter I, a scientist claiming to have isolated the positive virus of love. I could go on. I won’t go on.

[Lily]

Okay so I’ve never read the books as I presumed they were essentially novelizations of the shows.

But skimming this thread has me horrified enough to pique my interest.

[Flap Jack]

Okay so I’ve never read the books as I presumed they were essentially novelizations of the shows.

But skimming this thread has me horrified enough to pique my interest.

Oh, now I feel bad for this thread containing so many plot details.

Despite my complaints, I do definitely recommend the first 2 novels, because no matter how good or bad things are in the moment, the divergences from the TV series are always interesting.

FWIW, it’s not too much of a financial risk to try them out. The books are all super cheap used, and the unabridged Chris Barrie audiobooks are pretty reasonably priced on both iTunes and Audible.

By the way, does anyone know what the difference is between the unabridged audiobook versions of IWCD/BTL and the “Radio Show” versions? They seem to be a lot shorter, but cost 2-3 times as much. If they’re just abridged versions, then that’s seriously terrible value for money.

[Author]

Posts