Redshirts

An absolutely brilliant novel. John Scalzi becoming the my new favorite writer. So far his head is hitting the ass of Robert A. Heinlein who has been my favorite author since I was a teenager. But in this funny, often hilarious, touching and moving novel, there is an author that teaches me more about me in a different way that Heinlein touched and taught me as a teenager.

This book is just pure genius and has given me something that I wanted; who are the characters that support the main characters, and the narrative of a story? What are they about? Are they there just to be killed off? Or do they serve a greater purpose? This book firmly does not answer those questions but does an awesome job of giving you at least one author's perspective.

And I think we need more of that. Of course, in this book Scalzi refers to another author and now I have to go back to this book and find her name and her work and start reading her.

Thanks Scalzi!

This was geared toward fans of the Star Trek television series mainly, of which I count myself as one, specifically disavowing in the acknowledgements any reference to the author's own experience working on the SF television series Stargate: Universe. The first third of the book starts out introducing the characters and the setting in a way familiar from almost any science fiction adventure story, but halfway through it shifts its focus on the unlikely way in which the crew of the Intrepid carry out their missions as though pawns in the hands of a second-rate writer. It's all portrayed using the techniques of realistic fiction, with only the triple codas making a slight excursion into the area of experimental storytelling.

It was a pleasant and quick read, in a style very reminiscent of the other book of his that I read (Old Man's War). Here again I did notice a tendency to make the lengthy stretches of dialogue a little bit "on the nose," as though the author were afraid that someone would have trouble getting the metafictional premise of characters placing demands on their author. By now, you would think this was no longer that revolutionary an idea, and in the first Coda he cites a few famous precursors (though not Pirandello and not Flann O'Brien). In the end, the tale he tells turns out to be a slighter matter than I had been expecting.

This was the first of my reads through this year's Hugo Award nominated novels.

I have an inherent fondness for Scalzi books. He and I share a similar sense of humor and of drama. Redshirts is a great example of what I'm talking about here. This is a darkly humorous book, somewhat of a send-up of Star Trek, but told from the point of view of the "redshirts" of the crew, those extras whose sole job it is to die horrible deaths so that we know our heroes are in danger. In this case, the protagonists of the book are newly graduated cadets of a Universal Union who all score the most prestigious posting in the Fleet, the Intrepid. As far as they know, they live in a normal universe, leading relatively normal lives. They bond over drinks in the space station bar before the shuttle takes them to their new home. Once aboard the Intrepid, they start to notice that things are very odd there. Whenever the Captain, the Science Officer, the Engineer, or any of the other "main cast" crew members are walking down the corridor, all of the other crew members suddenly find reasons not to be found. Our protagonists discover why, as they go on "away missions" and barely survive. As they talk with other crew members (once they survive their "initiation"), they discover that for some reason, the rules of physics and statistics are severely bent out of shape in the presence of the "main cast" officers.

The book is full of very dry and dark humor. This is especially true as the characters come to terms with the fact that they are each likely to be killed off soon in some pointless and meaningless way. Cliches abound, but they work for this kind of a story, as they become the recognizable tropes that signal imminent danger for the characters that they are completely oblivious to, but which are obvious to readers. Even the ultimate solution to the problem is a huge cliche, but I found I didn't mind in the least because it was so appropriate to the setting. It was almost inevitable, and it was done well.

I do have some complaints with the novel. There were a few editorial oversights with mixed up names and such. I can generally overlook that, but it was jarring this time. Also, some of the names of the protagonists are visually similar and it took me a while to sort out which backstory belonged to which character. But the biggest complaint I had with the novel was that it seemed to end too soon. I don't mean the book was short; I mean that it felt like one of those TV shows where everything looks like it's wrapped up neatly but you still have fifteen minutes to go, so you expect that there's some big twist that's just about to happen to make the story that much more interesting. This novel seems to set up such a big twist, but then suddenly ends. It was disappointing because that apparent big twist had such potential.

After the main story ends, the book has three "codas", extensions of the main story with characters that were featured in the main story but were not the main characters. Each of these codas were interesting additions to the story in very unique ways. The first coda is a first-person narrative told in blog/epistolary form. The second coda is written in second-person, a very unusual and difficult style that rarely works. This time I thought it did, exploring the thoughts and feelings of someone who has been told he was in a terrible accident with severe brain damage, and is trying to account for a couple of weeks missing from his memory. Finally, the third coda is in... you guessed it, third person, which tells the story of an actor who learns how profoundly and positively affected someone was by her portrayal of a bit part character, someone who had all of a couple of minutes of screen time. It's sweet and perfectly caps a story line from the main story.

I'd say, if you like Scalzi's stuff, this is a no brainer. Pick it up and enjoy it. It's not his best work, but it's a fun read. If you're in to Star Trek, or other weekly SF TV shows that sometimes just don't make a whole lot of sense, you might find this darkly humorous take on the entire genre to be entertaining. If neither of those are the case, you might still like it for the humor and the character interactions, which Scalzi always handles well. This is not a deep book, there are no life-altering revelations for the reader, but it is a fun read and a quick read.