Red Dwarf :: essays research papers

Red Dwarf, by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor Red dwarf was written in collaboration by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. However on the cover of the book the author is called Grant Naylor and is referred to as a â€Å"Gestalt entity† giving the reader a clue as to what style the book is going to take. The BBC television series of the same name is based on this book but the events of the book and series are quite different and in my opinion the book is superior. The central character of this book is Dave Lister and it focuses on his journey through space which brings him farther and farther from the planet of his birth. The other characters in the book are Arnold Rimmer (the hologram of a third grade technician who was killed by a nuclear explosion, which had the power of a neutron bomb); Holly (a computer that once had an IQ of 6000 but went computer senile due to 3 million years alone in deep space;) and Cat (a humanoid whose race evolved from a cat which was protected from the radiation, in the ship’s hold). The first stage of Lister’s journey began on his 25 birthday. He decided to take a monopoly board pub crawl around London. When he woke up with a huge hangover he was on Mimas (one of Saturn’s moons) with no money wearing a lady’s hat and a pair of yellow fishing waders and a passport/work permit made out in the name of Emily Berkenstein. Since he had no work permit he could not earn enough money to buy his way off the moon and so the only way he could think of to get home was to join the Space Corps on the mining ship Red Dwarf. His plan was to work his way round the solar system until he reached Earth, then he would go AWOL. However this plan was altered when something drastic befell him, he fell in love. For five weeks the boring monotony of ship life was bearable but then Kristine Kochanski broke it off with him. This made life on ship unbearable and so he formulated a plan by which he could get to Earth sooner (at least from his perspective). He bought a cat on one of his shore leave holidays and then took pictures of himself and the cat to be developed to make sure he was caught.