Wednesday, 20 May 2015 10:08 pm
Book Review: Redshirts
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sleepyjohn00 recommended this John Scalzi comedy to me. By some chance, I had put the novel on the shelf next to one by Patrick Rothfuss, who's one of the people praising Redshirts on the back cover. He says he'd never laughed harder at a book. Of course, Rothfuss doesn't do much in the way of humor himself, so I took his taste with a grain of salt.
For those not well acquainted with Trekkie culture, a "redshirt" is a minor character likely to die horribly and/or bizarrely for the sake of cheap drama and soon be largely forgotten. More often than not, such characters on "Star Trek: The Original Series" were security officers, whose uniforms included literal red shirts. I had assumed that this novel would make fun of ST:TOS in particular, but the afterword assures me that the same cliches have turned up in many sci-fi series since (and Scalzi dismisses rumors that he had in mind "Stargate Universe," for which he was a creative consultant).
Right from the prologue, featuring a short-lived redshirt, it's clear that Scalzi goes for a rather meta approach. Characters may notice when someone's being unprofessionally dense but don't dare say anything about it -- or simply can't. Free will has a way of coming and going, which makes demises even more ignominious.
The ironically main character is Ensign Andrew Dahl of the starship Intrepid. It doesn't take him and several fellow new recruits long to discover that strange things happen there, even by space-faring standards. Veteran crew members have secrets they're reluctant to share with newbies, much less the highest-ranking officers. For example, a ridiculously user-friendly MacGuffin known only as "the Box" can do whatever the situation demands, but they use it only in desperation, because its impossibility freaks them out. More importantly, they've learned tricks to avoid their superiors so as to avoid away missions, whose death tolls are inexplicably disproportionate to the rest of the Universal Union's fleet -- not that they're much safer on board, statistically -- but never give said superiors anything that won't heal fast.
One computer scientist has gone reclusive but allows Dahl to find him. His brand of paranoia is seemingly insane but ultimately correct: The ship has had its adventures shaped by a knockoff of ST:TOS, "Chronicles of the Intrepid," which, tho more lazily written, has had twice as long a run. Dahl urges his friends to take the theory seriously, and together they hatch a plan to go back to 2012 (the year of the novel's publication) to prevent further episodes with stupid, nearly meaningless deaths. Apparently, preventing deaths they've already had is out of the question.
Just as interesting as the rest of the book are the three codas, labeled "First Person," "Second Person," and "Third Person" and narrated accordingly (odd as that is for the second). Each has at its focus one of the concerned people from 2012, each with a different philosophical conundrum from the intervention of seemingly fictional characters. Incidentally, one coda mentions Stranger Than Fiction, which I opted to watch while midway thru the book without realizing how appropriate it was: It too has a "real" character out to prevent an author from inadvertently killing him.
Redshirts is pretty funny, especially in dialog. It almost makes me want to rewatch ST:TOS (or move on to a poor imitator) to keep an eye out for the dumber aspects. Reading went quickly. But I can see why the story isn't any longer: However intriguing the concept, there's only so much you can milk from it. Understandably, the characters aren't very fleshed out; we don't even learn the first things about appearances unless absolutely necessary. And I had to get used to more frequent use of the F-word, including in its literal sense, than usual for my reading.
Scalzi's no Terry Pratchett, but I may try him again some time. In the meantime, I feel ready for another tome, so I picked up Neil Gaiman's American Gods. So much for taking a break from the F-word.
sleepyjohn00 recommended this John Scalzi comedy to me. By some chance, I had put the novel on the shelf next to one by Patrick Rothfuss, who's one of the people praising Redshirts on the back cover. He says he'd never laughed harder at a book. Of course, Rothfuss doesn't do much in the way of humor himself, so I took his taste with a grain of salt.For those not well acquainted with Trekkie culture, a "redshirt" is a minor character likely to die horribly and/or bizarrely for the sake of cheap drama and soon be largely forgotten. More often than not, such characters on "Star Trek: The Original Series" were security officers, whose uniforms included literal red shirts. I had assumed that this novel would make fun of ST:TOS in particular, but the afterword assures me that the same cliches have turned up in many sci-fi series since (and Scalzi dismisses rumors that he had in mind "Stargate Universe," for which he was a creative consultant).
Right from the prologue, featuring a short-lived redshirt, it's clear that Scalzi goes for a rather meta approach. Characters may notice when someone's being unprofessionally dense but don't dare say anything about it -- or simply can't. Free will has a way of coming and going, which makes demises even more ignominious.
The ironically main character is Ensign Andrew Dahl of the starship Intrepid. It doesn't take him and several fellow new recruits long to discover that strange things happen there, even by space-faring standards. Veteran crew members have secrets they're reluctant to share with newbies, much less the highest-ranking officers. For example, a ridiculously user-friendly MacGuffin known only as "the Box" can do whatever the situation demands, but they use it only in desperation, because its impossibility freaks them out. More importantly, they've learned tricks to avoid their superiors so as to avoid away missions, whose death tolls are inexplicably disproportionate to the rest of the Universal Union's fleet -- not that they're much safer on board, statistically -- but never give said superiors anything that won't heal fast.
One computer scientist has gone reclusive but allows Dahl to find him. His brand of paranoia is seemingly insane but ultimately correct: The ship has had its adventures shaped by a knockoff of ST:TOS, "Chronicles of the Intrepid," which, tho more lazily written, has had twice as long a run. Dahl urges his friends to take the theory seriously, and together they hatch a plan to go back to 2012 (the year of the novel's publication) to prevent further episodes with stupid, nearly meaningless deaths. Apparently, preventing deaths they've already had is out of the question.
Just as interesting as the rest of the book are the three codas, labeled "First Person," "Second Person," and "Third Person" and narrated accordingly (odd as that is for the second). Each has at its focus one of the concerned people from 2012, each with a different philosophical conundrum from the intervention of seemingly fictional characters. Incidentally, one coda mentions Stranger Than Fiction, which I opted to watch while midway thru the book without realizing how appropriate it was: It too has a "real" character out to prevent an author from inadvertently killing him.
Redshirts is pretty funny, especially in dialog. It almost makes me want to rewatch ST:TOS (or move on to a poor imitator) to keep an eye out for the dumber aspects. Reading went quickly. But I can see why the story isn't any longer: However intriguing the concept, there's only so much you can milk from it. Understandably, the characters aren't very fleshed out; we don't even learn the first things about appearances unless absolutely necessary. And I had to get used to more frequent use of the F-word, including in its literal sense, than usual for my reading.
Scalzi's no Terry Pratchett, but I may try him again some time. In the meantime, I feel ready for another tome, so I picked up Neil Gaiman's American Gods. So much for taking a break from the F-word.
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Right about that time, he launched his "I Hate Republicans and America" comic strip (the name was not quite that blatant).
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle