Colony - Rob Grant

...had been in stasis. In Colony it is Eddie O’Hare, because he had been pickled in a jar. In Red Dwarf the other characters are a creature which has evolved from a cat, a hologram, an android and a computer. In Colony the other characters are merely the descendants of the original crew - none of whom are at all likeable - and the computer doesn’t have a personality at all. Call this sci-fi?!

I felt that Grant spent too long, ...
...a high-ranking officer (the ship’s Colony Planner) who has just become a millionaire and would rather spend the rest of his life spending his money than spend it on the space-ship he designed the rules for. He made his choice wisely. Eddie soon finds that the ship rules are cruel and idiotic. Children are only allowed to work in the same jobs are their parents. In some cases this works, but doesn’t turn out too well for people like the ... more

Rob Grant is half of the comedy writing partnership that created the cult comedy, Red Dwarf (the other half being Doug Naylor). Grant without Naylor is like any good comedy partnership - they are both good in on their own, but better together. Red Dwarf has lost it’s edge since Rob Grant left. Which was why I bought this book.

Hmm. I forgot that Rob Grant was responsible for the Sky One ‘comedy’ The Strangerers. Mysteriously popular, I found The Strangerers incomprehensible and ridiculous. Grant without Naylor doesn’t so much verge on silliness as wallow in it. He has the ideas, the wit, the classic put-downs, but something is missing. He comes across as an eternal student, this book has the feel of a rag-mag. I found it hard to get into and didn’t warm to his characters, but I will probably read it again. The last series of Red Dwarf was abysmal, but I stuck with it because I was a hopeless addict by then and was completely involved with the characters. So if Grant does a follow-up to Colony, I will probably read it, because I have started to get to know these new characters. The author has a good track record, so I'll give him another chance.

The blurb on the back of the book reads : “The human race is facing extinction. And the only man who can save it is made up of the bits even the most ravenous cannibal would leave on the side of the plate. A generation-spanning epic saga of treachery, revenge and fluorescent pink socks.”

Sound a bit like the early Red Dwarfs? It is. It is again the story of one man who has survived beyond his years. In Red Dwarf it was Lister, because he had been in stasis. In Colony it is Eddie O’Hare, because he had been pickled in a jar. In Red Dwarf the other characters are a creature which has evolved from a cat, a hologram, an android and a computer. In Colony the other characters are merely the descendants of the original crew - none of whom are at all likeable - and the computer doesn’t have a personality at all. Call this sci-fi?!

I felt that Grant spent too long, particularly in the early parts of the book, on characters who were short-lived. There is no point in wasting words on a character who is not important to the plot and is not going to play a large part in the book. Too much time is also wasted on Eddie’s (the man character) life BEFORE he joins the ship which is to become his home for the next few thousand years. He could have done with sticking more to the Red Dwarf formula here - they didn’t waste time introducing us to Lister’s friends and lifestyle before he joined Red Dwarf.

The idea of the book is that the earth is finished. The boffins have designed a space-ship to colonise other planets and have selected the cream of humanity to crew it. Eddie is far from cream-material, he is a total failure (and not very likeable). He manages to get on the ship by swapping with a high-ranking officer (the ship’s Colony Planner) who has just become a millionaire and would rather spend the rest of his life spending his money than spend it on the space-ship he designed the rules for. He made his choice wisely. Eddie soon finds that the ship rules are cruel and idiotic. Children are only allowed to work in the same jobs are their parents. In some cases this works, but doesn’t turn out too well for people like the atheist who inherits his father’s job as a priest or the spotty-faced, penis-obsessed adolescent whose father dies too early and catapults him into the Captain’s job.

The one person I did warm to in this book was the ship’s adolescent captain, actually. He talks like a 60’s throwback - “Dudes & dudettes” - and has a penchant for naming planets after bodily functions. He is called various names by Oslo, one of the crew who really dislikes him : Captain Dickwit. Suppurating little haemorrhoid. Poisonous little splat. Captain Zit. Pok-faced dork. She also tells him he makes Captain Bligh look like a management genius.

The adolescent Captain gives as good as he gets : “I could not have done it without your constant foul bitching and all-round-pain-in-the-ass-ness.” “And what’s your plan, Queen Bitch of the Bitch tribe?” This again is reminiscent of Red Dwarf - I like the over-the-top put-downs.

Another Red Dwarfism is the invention of a new swear word. In Red Dwarf it was ‘smeg’. In Colony it is ‘frot’. Inventive and not as offensive as ‘real’ swear words.

One major difference between Lister and Eddie is that Lister is bodily intact. Eddie is only a head and a spine. The rest of him has been removed. He is kept alive in a jar for generations. The 10th generation crew revive him by giving him a metal suit for a body, but his head needs to remain in preserving liquid. So his new appearance is rather off-putting : his head is in a jar of green gloop and his body is made up of metal hoops, with pincers for hands. Eddie is hard to like, he doesn’t even like himself. He didn’t like himself before joining the ship; he likes himself even less now he has been revived as something that looks like a “genetically mutated potato being digested by an anaconda”.

I would hate to be on the special effects team if they decide to make a television series out of this book. It will be something of a challenge.

By the time I was two-thirds of the way through this book, I was starting to enjoy it. I think only die-hard Red Dwarf fans would get beyond the first couple of chapters though.
 

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