The Grant Naylor Red Dwarf Novels
I first heard about Red Dwarf in the place where you learnt about most of what was destined to become your favourite flavour of escapism – the playground. I’m pretty sure I actually started watching it when series IV came out. That was definitely my first proper series. Laughing with my friends at the thought of Lister morphing into a ridiculous mini Robocop clone, long before any of us had ever seen the regular sized Robocop. Hattie Hayridge as Holly. Kryten’s first attempts at lying and insulting people and purposefully mis-naming fruit. The Cat revealing his ultimate crush was himself. The ironic injuries of the justice field. Ace Rimmer smoking kippers. And let’s not forget the dreaded space mumps.
By the end of that series, I was collecting the magazine, or Smegazine. By the release of series V, I’d picked up series II and III on VHS, but you couldn’t get series I for some reason. So, I had to settle for replaying the other three episodes on a tape collections I could find over and over again. I played them so close to death that my video recorder started daydreaming of silicone heaven. That was, of course, along with the ones I was recording off the TV. Their cardboard cases labelled with biro. Little bits of other shows and sketches edited in around them to fill up the gaps.
It must’ve been around then that someone first told me that there were also novels. Or maybe I read about them in the pages of the Smegazine or ‘making of’ books I’d started to collect. I remember finding the first one and being so excited to start it. Here was the origin story I’d been waiting for. This was how Lister and Rimmer ended up stranded on a mining ship in deep space, three million years from Earth, living alongside a man who’d evolved from cats.
I devoured that book like a ravenous polymorph. There were a few familiar bits, mainly about Better than Life, but it made the world of Red Dwarf so much bigger for me. Also, they broke the most important barrier they needed to cross - the FX budget. They could do anything they wanted in the novel, and they did. They showed you a universe chocked full of human satire, adventures that happened by mistake, robots obsessed with their soap operas.
My parents had introduced me to Douglas Adams earlier on. I knew who Arthur Dent was. More importantly, I knew where my towel was. I loved Hitchhikers Guide. I still do. But the first Red Dwarf novel felt like my version of that world. Me and my friends went around quoting our favourite bits. I knew at least three good Kryten impersonators and I had one friend who might’ve actually been part Cat as it turned out. The novel just locked all of that deeper into my geeky young heart.
The sequel, Better than Life, was even more of a joy for me. It was wilder. It had more references to shows that I recognised. It also took some wild chances with the characters as they managed to escape their own virtual paradises; once Rimmer’s subconscious had destroyed them all in an effort to chase him down – which turned out to be a far more satisfying ending than what we got in the actual BTL episode during series II.
Yes, okay, the novel ended on a bit of a cliff-hanger, but I didn’t care. I wanted to read it all again. I wanted to read whatever came next. There was a real excitement in knowing, wherever the novels were going, they weren’t exactly following the episode guide. In other words, who knew when it was going to go next?
Of course, then I had to learn a few hard lessons. Series I came out on VHS, and it was not like the first novel. Don’t get me wrong, it was good, but it wasn’t Lister driving taxis on one of Jupiter’s moons and sleeping in a locker. He didn’t meet Arnold Rimmer trying to pretend he was interested in checking out the best restaurants the red light district had to offer. We didn’t get to watch Holly slowly worry that he was losing his mind. I had to watch those early episodes a few times to appreciate that they were the first seeds Red Dwarf planted in pop culture. They were the place where everything else was made possible.
By then, the show was rolling in. Series V was great. Series VI tried new things. Series VII started to lose me. Series VIII really lost me. That was where I started to tell myself I’d outgrown Red Dwarf. I’d watched it as a kid after all.
When the two new novels came out, now written by one co-writer of the original novel each, I bought them, but I never really took them onboard. I had already shrugged off Lister and the others. I had moved on to things which the people around me deemed to be cooler, and I made a point of rolling my eyes when people mentioned the show. It was, as far as I was concerned, for kids. It took a long time for me to realise I was being an idiot.
It all changed when a friend of mine sat me down a few years ago and explained I should give the later shows another chance. We watched series VIII, and it was funnier than I’d remembered. Not perfect. Not by a long shot. But I’d missed how hard it was working to keep the old fans interested, whilst trying to find something new for the show to be.
Those two nights working through a boxset and the extras ended up costing me more money than I’d have expected. I bought the original eight series and started watching them again. Then, when the show came back, I started to watch the new episodes with a more open mind. (Apart from maybe Back to Earth, maybe. I still find that one a little too slight.) But, on the whole, it wasn’t a crime that the new shows weren’t exactly the old show. They weren’t those first two series, original and ambitious and testing the boundaries of how cult sci fi could work on a TV sitcom budget. They also weren’t the mid-era Red Dwarf, with more money and a growing fanbase. They’ve still found a place in my heart, though.
Still, it was only recently that I decided it was time to revisit the novels. I’d kept the first novel, unofficially known as Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, thanks to its cover illustration, and Better than Life. I decided, much like my reappraisal of series VII and VIII, that it was time to try the later books again. The books where each writer tried to write a solo sequel to the cliff-hanger ending of Better Than Life.
First, though, I wanted to go back and remember the journey of those first two novels. For a start, I wanted to see if they were as much fun as when I first read them, but I also needed to remind myself exactly where Grant Naylor (the combination of Rob Grant and Doug Naylor), took the crew.
Having just finished Better Than Life now, I’m so glad I made a point of going back. These two books are just as great as I read them the first time. Without the need to stick to the sitcom formula, the storylines they used in the novels can run and intertwine in far more interesting ways. The characters gain some real depth in places. Apart from the Cat, maybe. He’s very possible depth proof and proud of it.
The introduction to Rimmer’s revision timetable, or to Kryten’s life aboard his crashed ship are just as clever and funny as they were before. Also, I had genuinely forgotten just how wild Better Than Life gets, and I don’t mean the virtual reality stuff either. There are garbage worlds, time travel, black holes, a far more logical reason for the existence of polymorhs, and far more for a talking toaster to do than they ever managed to get to in the series.
Yes, okay, it’s not all in there. We never get to meet Lister’s escaped Confidence and Paranoid. Queeg never raises so much as an eyebrow in judgement on a computer monitor. Rimmer never talks Lister into swapping bodies with him so he can help his bunkmate lose weight. It’s a trade-off, though. By losing those classic episodes, you see more of how Rimmer struggles to live with his own duplicate, let alone the sheer noise that rages on in his head. You get to witness Lister swearing in cockroach. You understand exactly what Kryten cleaned in order to crash a star ship.
For the record, though, it is a shame that we never get Hattie’s version of Holly. She was my first Holly, and she will always be my personal favourite. What can I say? Sylvester McCoy was my Doctor and Hattie was my supercomputer. It never did me any harm. (Although I do occasionally count by banging my head on the screen in tribute to her.)
So, now, I have a potentially less fun journey ahead. When Grant and Naylor parted ways, back at the end of series V, Red Dwarf changed. Doug Naylor stuck with the show. He fought to try and get a movie made. He took the show away from the titular ship. He recast Kochanski. He brought back the crew. He started experimenting with CGI. Rob Grant, meanwhile, wrote more sci fi novels of his own, which I’ve not tried yet. He wrote the brilliantly surreal radio show Quanderhorn for the BBC. There’s nothing to say their separate attempts at Red Dwarf novels won’t hold up. I’m hoping that, like series VI onwards, I’ll find I just approached them at the wrong time, in the wrong frame of mind.
Either which way, whatever happens next, I’m so glad I read the two original, co-written novels again. I laughed. I cried. I promised myself to stay away from total immersive video games. And I made a mental note to never get so drunk that I wind up driving a stolen, frog jumping taxi across the moons of Jupiter. You have no idea where that sort of thing can lead.