When did you first read the novels?

[Pete Part Three]

They also have sound-effects. They were re-edited for BBC World (Radio) in the nineties.

[Flap Jack]

Well… at least it’s something. One for the money-rich/time-poor among us, I suppose.

[bloodteller]

i checked out the abridged “radio show” versions on youtube a while ago. they really do skip over a lot of it, especially the post-accident stuff where they’re just hanging out on the ship before finding the Nova 5. this makes some of it feel a bit rushed, but i think they’re still worth listening to. the music added to them is really good too- the music as the radiation leak happens is incredibly intense, and the “ending” music to the Better Than Life show adds to the emotional impact of that scene

[Flap Jack]

Good to know! Perhaps I’ll consider those versions next time I want to re-listen to the novels, but it probably makes more sense to go unabridged if you’ve never read the novels before.

[Dax101]

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.

Infinity and BTL are definitely worth a read or even a listen too if you go with the audio books.

There are several plots and elements from the shows in each novel but for the most part they are their own stories.

[International Debris]

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.

As others have said, they’re greatly expanded versions of the show with lots of new stuff. IWCD is closest to the show, but probably the best standalone read. Once you get to Better Than Life, the differences between the TV and book versions are much bigger. Rob’s Backwards is rooted in episodes, but expands them much, much further than the first two books (the titular episode is given physics that makes sense, for example), and Doug’s Last Human is practically an entirely new story (+ universe) with a few scenes from the show transplanted in.

[clem]

> Kryten was directly responsible for getting the crew killed due to inexplicably being crap at his only job? Hate it.

That’s interesting. The bit about washing the computer is daft, but I think it works with the novel version of Kryten, the first two novels anyway. In my head he’s much more like David Ross’s Kryten than Bobby Llew’s, and doesn’t become the de facto science officer/ know-it-all exposition machine to nearly the same extent as in the series, so doing something so ridiculous doesn’t seem as far fetched.

> “Zero-Gee Football: It’s A Funny Old Game by Joe Klump”?

I think I’m right in saying that was a change made for the Omnibus, and in the original version of Infinity… it’s by Kevin Keegan as per the TV show. And obviously just Football rather than Zero-Gee. I don’t like that change either.

[clem]

Anyway,

1. 11

2. Became a fan during the 1994 repeats and I’m pretty sure I must have read the Omnibus during that run, or very shortly thereafter. Christopher Smith in the year above used to let me look at his copy on the school bus before I had my own.

3. This thread has made me want to read all the novels again but the first two are where it’s at. I read that Omnibus to death and it might well be the most dog-eared book I own. It’s just so rich and contains so many brilliant quotes and passages that have lodged in my brain. A few that come to mind and haven’t been mentioned yet: (SPOILERS)

– “Aquamarine with a diagonal lemon stripe”
– Rimmer complaining at great length about Red Dwarf not having a STOP button, and how relatively cheap even a jewel-encrusted one would be.
– The chapter about the evolution of the cat people, figuring out what a tin-opener’s for and all that, interspersed with Holly gurning for thousands of years and going senile.
– The Nova 5’s mission. COKE ADDS LIFE
– “I’m a bleeding technisherrn, don’t yew know!”
– Juanita’s goldfish bowl bra.
– The Cat’s castle with the milk moat. Hunting dogs and playing croquet with gerbils.
– KIT stands for Keep It Tidy, or Ken Is a Transvestite

The two solo novels do have their moments. I love the young Rimmer chapters in Backwards. Great covers, too.

[Flap Jack]

That’s interesting. The bit about washing the computer is daft, but I think it works with the novel version of Kryten, the first two novels anyway. In my head he’s much more like David Ross’s Kryten than Bobby Llew’s, and doesn’t become the de facto science officer/ know-it-all exposition machine to nearly the same extent as in the series, so doing something so ridiculous doesn’t seem as far fetched.

It’s kind of hard to feel the David Ross vibe in the audiobook when Chris Barrie is doing a near-perfect Bobby impression throughout. =P

But my main problem isn’t that Kryten should be a super expert in all things scientific like he is in the show, it’s that his entire job is CLEANING on a SPACESHIP, yet he somehow doesn’t know that he shouldn’t just clog all the electrical equipment with soapy water. This is meant to be his one area of expertise!

I think I’m right in saying that was a change made for the Omnibus, and in the original version of Infinity… it’s by Kevin Keegan as per the TV show.

Wait… WAIT. They changed things between the solo edition of Infinity and the omnibus/audiobook?! How many things did they change? And why? Did they really need to do “Remastered” for the books as well as the episodes?

[bloodteller]

i think they corrected a number of things between the original and Omnibus editions of the books. the only one that springs to mind is the fix of continuity error regarding exactly how many times Rimmer has failed his exams

[clem]

> They changed things between the solo edition of Infinity and the omnibus/audiobook?! How many things did they change?

I dunno about the audiobooks but I think both the Grant Naylor novels had changes made for the Omnibus. Apparently it’s only a few minor alterations. Another one might be the song played at McIntyre’s funeral which I’m almost sure isn’t See Ya Later, Alligator in the Omnibus like it is on TV. I’ve only ever read the Omnibus versions.

It’s just occurred to me writing that that if I’m right about McIntyre’s funeral song, the Netflix version makes three variants of that joke. Gonna have to check what that song is tomorrow. In bed now.

[Warbodog]

Finished the first book and loved it. Even if you hadn’t seen the series, it’s really well structured with some great character development.

“I always thought you saw me as a sort of big brother character. Heck – we don’t always get on. But then, what brothers do? Cain didn’t always get on with Abel.”

Lister tries to cheat his way back to Earth through a smart but lazy stasis scheme, which goes wrong. When he eventually spots another chance of getting home using the Nova 5 drive, he puts his brains to use and becomes a hard worker for months. Alright, so that doesn’t exactly go to plan either.

(It was very satisfying to see Red Dwarf’s mining equipment actually put to use. Rob & Doug must have been pretty pleased with themselves when they thought of that. If you hadn’t seen the series, you’d think the mining ship detail was just another bit of seeding like the book’s jam-packed with).

Rimmer’s development is a bit more forced and on the nose as he gets an objective view of himself. It’s the same thing Me² already did for TV Rimmer, but still works great here.

And when everyone’s learned those lessons and become better people, we’re treated to a crazy coda that’s got the most concentrated laughs of the whole book, leaving us on a compelling cliffhanger.

“A fifteen-month-old baby driving into town to get some milk for his brother. It was barely believable.”

Reading again, the Future Echoes bit stood out as the weakest. As classic as those scenes are, it’s a bit of an awkward deviation into episodic territory, and I don’t think the future visions amount to anything in the book continuity, though maybe they wanted to keep that open just in case (is the old Lister in the next book connected to the old Lister in this one?). More time settling into the lonely cosmos and getting to know Cat would have been a better use of the time, but it’s not like Rob & Doug weren’t busy enough writing Red Dwarf III.

[Pete Part Three]

>Reading again, the Future Echoes bit stood out as the weakest.

Yes, agreed. It’s not really expanded on like the other episodes that are lifted (with the only real change being Rimmer seeing Lister’s grandson’s death). I’m guessing it’s mainly in the novel simply to justify Lister not going straight back into Stasis (which is never actually explicitly stated in the show).

[Warbodog]

Better Than Life re-review:

The Officers Quarters era novel. Some excellent high-concept sci-fi comedy, but light on character compared to the previous one. And not all that funny, but maybe that’s because the funniest bits are in the copy-pasted dialogue that I have to credit to the episodes.

It’s true that Lister never gets a break and is hurled from one ordeal to the next, but the ending makes up for that. First by having him point that tendency out, when he realises he’s been marooned for the long-haul a second time, and then by giving him a surprisingly happy ending that beats his BTL fantasy.

The BTL bit itself wasn’t all that enjoyable, dragging on, repeating the same stuff from last time and actually getting quite depressing. I like the Holly/Toaster stuff, but the planet-potting works much better when you can see it, as does the Polymorph action which was the clear culling candidate for the abridged audiobook. The Marooned section also felt like a page-filling segue they’d been lucky to find a place for, but it’s understandable they’d want to recycle as much material as they could. There was more of that than I remembered, and even though I hadn’t seen these episodes when I first read it, they didn’t stand out in the way Future Echoes and Me2 did in the first book.

What I REALLY liked is the time dilation stuff, the brief Backwards snippet at the end, and Garbage World most of all. That’s some great pessimistic world-building, and what a way to subvert expectations when its identity is revealed: the “mission” is over in the middle of book two.

[Pete Part Three]

The Backwards stuff at the end is great – much better than the depiction of that idea in the episode, and really no similarity to it at all.

>the “mission” is over in the middle of book two.

There’s a vague attempt at setting a new one; Lister wants to toe it back to the Solar System (why?), although this is discarded pretty sharpish.

[Warbodog]

I think he admitted towing Earth was just for sentimental reasons, but don’t know how he planned to achieve it.

Grant Naylor probably at least had a vague plan for Lister creating the universe in their next book (jump started?) Maybe that’s why it’s the universe that’s “wrong.”

Did Holly recover from only having a few seconds of life remaining and no conceivable way of being fixed? Erm, I think they put some ointment on him. Considering Holly can provide instructions for turning ashes back into a human being, he could probably just print instructions again.

[Dax101]

I feel like the Polymorph stuff in BTL was inspired by John Carpenter’s The Thing. there is just something kinda horrific about the way its described in bits.

Once they leave the game in BTL i notice the overall tone changes and i wonder whether all of the BTL stuff was actually written back with Infinity welcomes careful drivers and they just decided to end it on a cliffhanger instead and use the rest with the next book.

[bloodteller]

There’s a vague attempt at setting a new one; Lister wants to toe it back to the Solar System (why?), although this is discarded pretty sharpish.

you would think it would’ve come up again in Backwards or Last Human that they’ve got the entire planet Earth chained onto the back of the ship, but it never is mentioned again.

then again both Backwards and Last Human sort of seem to forget about the previous two books at some point in their stories, what with Starbug somehow being back despite it being melted to shit by acid rain

[clem]

Sorry to bang on but re McIntyre’s funeral music: turns out I was thinking of the pilot script in the Omnibus. The song is Stevie Wonder’s ‘Heaven is 10 zillion light years away’. And what I remembered as croquet with gerbils for balls is polo with unspecified small furry creatures for balls.

I can kind of see why they did it but I’m not all that keen on the change to the reason for the cats’ holy war to Cloister/Clister. Cardboard hats is funnier.

[bloodteller]

>I can kind of see why they did it but I’m not all that keen on the change to the reason for the cats’ holy war to Cloister/Clister. Cardboard hats is funnier.

yeah, the cardboard hats thing is funnier because it’s such a simple and meaningless thing to start a war over, as well as the eventual punchline of “…they were supposed to be green!” cloister/clister doesn’t really have a joke to it, it’s just an unfortunate misspelling.

[Ben Saunders]

I love Craig’s delivery of “yeah that’s me, Cloister the Stupid!” because it’s like he doesn’t realise what he’s saying until the very final syllable, on the “-pid” and by that time it’s too late. Cloister is funnier than Clister tbh

[clem]

I love that too. Waiting For God is really underrated imo. 48th place in the Pearl Poll? Fuck off.

[Warbodog]

I wonder what possessed Grant Naylor to limit the universe options to six in Better Than Life, considering all the alternate universe stories they like to tell.

Last Human has the evil Lister universe (any more?), while Backwards covers five at least (Backwards universe, Ace universe, dead-Ace universe, proper universe, they-died-playing-BTL universe). And Last Human and Backwards are in different universes. And none apart from the Backwards universe seem to be the “right” way round.

[bloodteller]

maybe the “six different universes” in BTL are different from the “infinite parallel realities” mentioned in Backwards?

or maybe Rob Grant just forgot, i dont know

[Warbodog]

They mostly use “reality,” but interchange with “universe” sometimes. Clearly Backwards takes place in the universe where there are infinite universes.

[Dax101]

Rob and Doug probably forgot certain details when it came to writing their own novels 5 or 6 years later.

Whats interesting about BTL is that by the end of the novel Rimmer seems to be much more caring about what happens to lister and expressed some joy that Lister wasn’t gone for good… but with Robs novel Rimmer went back to being a goit again who didn’t care what happened to lister and just wanted to leave on backwards world to save his own butt.

[Ben Saunders]

Both Rob with Backwards and Doug with XI seem to have come to the conclusion that writing Rimmer as an out and out bastard is easier/better

[Warbodog]

Backwards: I liked it more than I remembered and expected, but definitely has its problems. Compared to the smooth adaptation segues of the previous two, this feels more like a three-byte video of random episodes with minimal cross-fading.

The Backwards part has some unpleasantness, but the backwards logic keeps it interesting and it’s not overlong. Youthing Lister and Cat is bonkers though, especially since we only just corrected Lister’s age in the other direction. Grant pretty much disregards this distracting detail towards the end when it’s hardly mentioned. Maybe he regretted digging that pointless hole. So we’ve done that, on to the next episode.

Dimension Jump was a good choice for the novel expansion treatment, especially for giving us more of “Spanners” Lister’s background and clarifying exactly where his path forked – continuing the theme of Prime Rimmer ruining things for everyone even when he’s not trying. Shame it doesn’t really go anywhere once Ace crosses over, his ship being the only consequence of any of that. No Infinity-style growth for Rimmer upon encountering himself, he’s going to be dead again soon anyway.

High Midnight is where everything goes to shit. The Agonoid scenes themselves are fine, their OTT violence obsession being turned on themselves is probably funny if you like that sort of thing, I used to more than I do now. But then that death and gore bleeds into a once-charming Western pastiche and everything ends on a downbeat note.

[bloodteller]

so out of interest, what’s the general consensus on the “canon” of the novels? personally i only ever considered IWCD and BTL to be canon, since both sequel novels just aren’t really that great compared to them, as well as pretty much ruining the happy note that BTL ends on.

[Hamish]

I personally do consider Backwards to be cannon, but only because I am still hoping that Rob Grant will sit down some day and write a follow up.

[Warbodog]

Last Human’s not great.

[Flap Jack]

None of the books are canon in the general sense, because they all massively contradict the TV versions.

In terms of whether Last Human or Backwards is canon to the first 2 novels, I’d say they both have equal claim.

[Dave]

I took the question to be about the canon of the novels alone – otherwise yes, there are loads of contradictions with the TV show.

For me, Backwards is a better continuation of the first two novels, so I choose that as the ‘official’ third book over Last Human. Too many details in Last Human just feel ‘off’ to me.

[Jimboid]

[Jimboid]

Ah, fuck. Uploaded the wrong image.

Why can’t I edit my post?

[bloodteller]

>I took the question to be about the canon of the novels alone

yeah, that’s what i meant. personally i never really considered either Backwards or Last Human to be canon to the first 2 novels- i always saw them as sort of optional bonus sequels.

besides, Lister getting to spend the previous 36 years of his life living happily on Earth with Kochanski feels like a much better ending to the novel series than “everyone is fucking dead and lister is now 15” or “lister and kochanski have sex in the bushes”

[International Debris]

I prefer Backwards in terms of canon, largely because it still feels like it operates in the Red Dwarf universe (what with having the ship, and Holly, in it), whilst the Last Human universe is so heavily populated that it feels somewhat at odds with the show.

[Dax101]

I think IWCD and BTL fit nicely together as a whole while Backwards and Last Human have a time skip and do abit of a refresh when the novels begins.

Robs novel probably connects better to the previous books then Last Human which did feel abit like a stand alone adventure.

I also agree with the person that said Doug novel feels more like star trek in some ways because he uses the concept of gelfs, simulants and Hologrammes to populate the universe abit to make up for the fact aliens don’t have a place in Red Dwarf.

[Warbodog]

the Last Human universe is so heavily populated that it feels somewhat at odds with the show.

The show nowadays feels a lot like that to me. Last Human is especially crowded, but it’s explained that all those guys have been dumped there by the Omni-zone and are getting by.

The Star Trekification started in VI with “GELF space” and Simulants prowling around like the Borg.

[bloodteller]

>The Star Trekification started in VI with “GELF space” and Simulants prowling around like the Borg.

i guess, but after VI it quietens down a little for a while, doesn’t it? VII barely has them encounter anything (in fact there’s 2 episodes where they pretty much do nothing) and although VIII has the full crew alive, outside of the ship there seems to very little going on-they only find 2 derelicts, and the one they find Cassandra on has a genuinely believable reason for why a derelict is out 3 million years into space.

i feel like it went full-on Star Trek in XI, where it pretty much felt like the universe was almost overly populated.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

They also make the point in X is it, or BTE, that they haven’t really encountered anyone or anything for a long time. The entire time the show is off air.

In fact, its only Hoggie that seems to show up as having met the crew in all that time, and it seems he is as bored as they are.

I like the idea of going through different areas of space. Populated, nothing at all. Thats what space would be like, depending on how far out the human race has expanded.

In fact, the first thing they ever come across is Kryten … and if we take the novels as canon, then that had a drive to hop it out to the far reaches of space to turn a star super nova.

Then next encounter is what? Camille in series 4?

Takes them a while to get into any sort of populated space. Maybe the time in between is between galaxies or something? RD can clearly travel very fast (future echos) so makes sense they slow down when in a star system and speed up in between

[Warbodog]

I felt X was populated too, with that droid shopping channel… area, or whatever it was, and the BEGGs.

I should have laid my “VI” blame squarely on Emohawk. Not a bad episode, but it kicked off a few undesirable trends.

[clem]

> and the one they find Cassandra on has a genuinely believable reason for why a derelict is out 3 million years into space.

The problem with this is that the ship is there because Cassandra was considered so dangerous, but whoever sent it into deep space to get rid of her could have done so much more easily by tipping some water on her power cable.

[Ben Saunders]

>Then next encounter is what? Camille in series 4?
Polymorph

[Dax101]

>The Star Trekification started in VI with “GELF space” and Simulants prowling around like the Borg.

I only really noticed it with Series 7 because the moment i heard the phrase “gelf battle cruiser” it suddenly felt like they become the Klingons of the Red Dwarf universe.

I feel like you could have gone from 6 and never acknowledged those gelfs again and they could have been just one time things but Series 7 seemed to embraced them as a regular gelf species that even hung up with simulants.

[Dave]

If you’re counting the Polymorph then presumably you also count Hudzen 10.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I didn’t count the Polymorph or Hudzen 10 because they both arrived on Red Dwarf on their own ships/shuttles.

One was left adrift in a pod that assumable floats through space from its point of origin. Hudzen 10, like the post pod, was trying to catch up to the Nova 5 (presumable) and then Red Dwarf since they left the solar system.

I was looking at derelicts and such that had made is that far out, ships under a crew that had died/crashed etc.

[Hamish]

> VII barely has them encounter anything (in fact there’s 2 episodes where they pretty much do nothing)

Well, if you ignore the GELFs in Ouroboros and the GELF and Simulant in Beyond a Joke, then sure, they encounter barely anything. Besides Epideme.

[bloodteller]

>The problem with this is that the ship is there because Cassandra was considered so dangerous, but whoever sent it into deep space to get rid of her could have done so much more easily by tipping some water on her power cable.

Yeah but then the best episode of VIII wouldn’t exist

>Well, if you ignore the GELFs in Ouroboros and the GELF and Simulant in Beyond a Joke, then sure, they encounter barely anything. Besides Epideme.

Well sure but arguably there are long stretches in VII where not much really happens- it’s definitely a less populated universe than VI, where there was an asteroid with 20+ crashed starships that had all somehow come across the Psirens etc.

i think XI and XII are still the most populated with stuff so far- it gets to almost bizarre levels in Can Of Worms, where they encounter a research station, a Vampire GELF hunting ground, and a spaceship torpedoing into a black hole all within the space of around 10 minutes

[International Debris]

Encounters with external lifeforms, craft, or settlements*:
I: 0
II: 1 (Kryten)
III: 2 (Polymorph, Hudzen-10)
IV: 4 (Camille, DNA, Justice, Meltdown)
V: 4 (Holoship, Terrorform, Quarantine, Back to Reality)
VI: 6 (every episode)
VII: 3 (Ouroboros, Beyond a Joke, Epideme)
VIII: 3 (Cassandra, Pete Part I, Only the Good)
IX: (I don’t know whether to count the squid or not, as it was supposedly picked up between V and VI, and also don’t know whether to count that as one or three episodes)
X: 2 (Entangled, The Beginning)
XI: 6 (every episode)
XII: 4 (Cured, Siliconia, Timewave, M-Corp)

*excluding parallel universes/realities and time travel, which don’t really reflect the area of space they’re in.
* also excluding references to derelicts they’ve previously found

[Author]

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