Customer Reviews

Better than Life (Red Dwarf)

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This is the equally hilarious sequel to Red Dwarf, so you really want to make sure you read the first book before reading this one. As the novel opens, our heroes--the bumbling yet enterprising David Lister, who is now millions of miles as well as three million years away from the earth he unintentionally left when he got royally drunk on his 25th birthday, the born loser Arnold Rimmer, whose string of incredibly bad luck in life continues unabated in death, the Cat, a humanoid feline cat with at least eight and a half of his nine lives devoted to his own vanity and self-worship, and Kryten, the mechanoid who takes commitment to service, especially when it involves cleaning things, way too far--are trapped inside the highly addictive (and illegal) VR game called Better Than Life, each enjoying his own brand of subconsciously created paradise. With their actual bodies wasting away due to lack of nourishment, they must find a way to escape the game and return to reality. Reality, though, does not welcome them back with open arms. Among the crises the crew of the Red Dwarf must now face are the virtual death of the onboard computer, an impending collision with a very large planet, the capture of their ship by a black hole, a crash-landing on a planet used as a system-wide garbage dump, time dilations, and even death.

This book may be even funnier than the first Red Dwarf novel. By now, the reader has come to know and "love" the characters, so the authors can just propel them into one humorous situation after another without wasting time setting up the jokes. As an added bonus, the characters seem to really evolve emotionally by the end of the book, and we also find out (as if we didn't already know) the major "problem" each character suffers from (anger, guilt, vanity, cowardice). Rimmer, though dead, actually shows a nice, thoughtful human side on occasion. If you were trapped in a room with any of these characters, you would probably be ready to strangle them before too many hours, but the ability to watch their interactions from the safety of your own reality makes for some of the best comedy ever put on paper. You will laugh out loud at least once, and you will wish the book would never end, especially since no more Red Dwarf novels are forthcoming. I haven't seen any of the Red Dwarf TV episodes, but I can't imagine they could be any funnier than the books.

Better Than Life continues directly from Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers. The four members of the Red Dwarf crew, Dave Lister, the hologram Arnold Rimmer, the Cat, and the service mechanoid Kryten, are trapped in the ultimate game, where the player creates one's own paradise out of one's greatest dreams, or, as things turn out later for Rimmer, one's worst nightmares, and is addicted to the point that they eventually die because their real selves die. Would I go for a game like that? Heck yeah!

In the meantime, Holly, the ship's computer, and Lister's insufferably talkative and chirpy Talky Toaster (patent applied for), get involved in trying to get Holly's IQ back into the quadruple digits like it was before, a process that invariably causes the computer's remaining time to exponentially decrease. Result, Holly shuts himself down to preserve what little remains of his life. Further result: the ship's powerless as a result. Further further result: a runaway planet is on a collision course with them.

However, one sobering aspect of the future that Grant and Naylor work into this novel is a garbage planet. One of the planets in the Solar System is chosen to house all the other planets' waste, and guest which planet that is? North America gets the bottles, Europe the sewage, Australia domestic waste, and Japan the graveyard of motorcars, etc.

Lister finds himself on this kind of planet, and attacked by lethal pollution storms by the planet itself. "Then he knew. He'd done everything to Earth. He'd crucified it. He was a member of the human race, part of the species that had spread like bacteria over the planet...finally rendering it fit only for use as a dumping ground for all humanity's garbage." Panic-stricken, he pleads for mercy, promising to make it right again." The concept of the Earth as a giant organism, with us unaware that it's organic is taken here. To that end, he forms an alliance with a creature most of us would immediately say hello to with the sole of our tennis shoes. This reminder of how we're polluting our planet is the best segment of the book, interesting for book derived from a comedy series.

A brief history of Earth's genetic mutations for new and weird sports, such as twenty-feet tall basketball players and soccer playres with five legs and no mouths, to sentient vacuum cleaners, wars against these creatures, later called GELFs (Genetically Engineered Life Forms) is given as an intro to a creature that appears in the TV story Polymorph. And GELFs are encountered in the 6th and 7th seasons.

Another insight into humans: "The thing about human beings was this: human beings couldn't agree. They couldn't agree about anything. ... And the reason was this: basically, all human beings believed all other human beings were insane, in varying degrees." That leads to wars, but by the 20th century, human beings "got so good at war, it couldn't have one anymore." Some of this Douglas Adams style humour is wry, and also appears in a section when Rimmer royally messes up by accidentally destroying a whole bunch of scutters (Red Dwarf's tiny arm-shaped service robots) in testing the engine's pistons.

Here are the stories worked into this novel:

Better Than Life, Season 2, Episode 2
White Hole, Season 4, Episode 4
Marooned, Season 3, Episode 2
Polymorph, Season 3, Episode 3
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, Season 3, Episode X

Once again, revealing what that last story is would spoil the fun, but the sequel would actually take place in the fourth and not the third book.

Like its predecessor, it's more than just a TV tie-in, but an actual book that delves more into the personality of the characters, especially Lister.

...then you don't really need to read this. It's essentially a novelization of 5 or 6 episodes; "Backwards", "Marooned," "Polymorph," "White Hole"--but oddly enough, bears little or no similarity to the eponymous "Better Than Life." The first half of the book is original; the second half, taken piecemeal from the episodes above (some of the dialogue is verbatim)--but without the actors' comedic talent. It's okay--but not a must-have.

I'd have to say that "Red Dwarf: Better than life" is one of the better books I've read in a while... It combines a few episodes in the series (also my favorites) and laces them together so they act as one story, and a very good story, at that! I definetly reccomend this book to anyone who likes comedy OR Sci-fi!

Rehan

........Then this book is great. With no confined producer-created characters and sets to compare it too your imagination can go wild with this wacky adventure. I actually have seen one or two episodes but refuse to watch more since it will pale in comparison to the human imagination. I've reread it at least 7 times, loved it. P.S. If you like Hitchhiker's Guide, you have to read it.

The second book in the RD series (this is important, if you read it first you will be hopelessly lost), BTL is a hilarious expansion of the season 3 tv show. a must-read for any sci-fi/humor fans. if you liked douglas adams, you'll love RD

Partway into "Better Than Life," Rimmer is shot and killed by police officers. Actually, Rimmer's body was under the control of a serial killer at the time, so Rimmer is technically still alive, albeit as a prostitute called Trixie. This is however in a video game. In reality, Rimmer is already dead and exists as a hologram. So there's nothing actually at stake for him, in both the video game and in reality.

Confusing? Yup. Contrived? Yeah. Completely pointless? Definitely. Unfortunately, that's the way BTL, the second book in the Red Dwarf series, mostly goes. "Better Than Life" begins painted into a corner by its predecessor, "Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers." At the end of IFWCD, Lister realized that the Cat, Rimmer, and himself were stuck in a computer game that would eventually result in their deaths. BTL continues the boys' adventures within the video game. Bad move. The fantasies are funny at first, but Lister's quaint little town is boring, and Rimmer's never-ending party never ends. You'd be surprised how quickly public displays of drunkenness get old. The Rimmer/Lister dynamic that that makes Red Dwarf so amusing is completely absent since the two don't even interact until over one hundred pages into the book. When they eventually escape the game, their way of getting out is so contrived and longwinded that you're tempted to give up the book before it's even begun.

Once the crew does get back on track, the book falters again. The text frequently reads as if the writers didn't know how to get from A to C, so they copied and pasted B from one of the TV scripts. What's more, by the time they ford the black hole and bring on the Polymorph, the writing reads like stage direction. Grant and Naylor must have been facing deadline because everything is glossed over. By this point in the book, the reader wants to get to the good stuff just as much as the writers do. Unfortunately, most of the novel is already over.

But to make up for the dismal beginning and halfhearted midsection, BTL winds down with a truly terrific ending. It's something unexpected, and unexpectedly touching. I won't give it away, but it involves ashes and a hyperintelligent Holly. I can't recommend this book because it's lazily written, hastily plotted, and generally a disappointment. But its cliffhanger is continued by the next novel in the series, which makes it somewhat essential reading to the trilogy. So borrow this book. Read the ending. Then read Rob Grant's "Backwards." Things get better.

Not as good as the first book, Red Dwarf, but in some respects it has some elements that are missing in the first book, such as a much darker tone of humour.

The crew end up in a game, called Better Than Life, which is so addictive that the 'players' end up dead, wasted away in 'reality' as there minds are submerged in their seamless fantasies. Unfortunately for Rimmer, his dark self-paranoid consciousness replaces his initial fantasy of living as one of the richest men in the world, and he ends up in his own hell. The premise begins well, but the whole thing seems long and tired, because when the characters spilt up, especially Lister and Rimmer, the jokes are not as funny.

A lot of the book is 'copy and paste' jokes from the tv series, however, there is one particular scenario that involves Lister and huge giant cockroaches and a runaway Earth that is totally new (and gross).

There are also lots of scientific errors and continuity errors, but as Red Dward is famous for these and it IS a comedy, foremost, then this seems insignificant.

The book sets itself up to one of the two individually written sequels, Backwards, by Rob Grant.

All in all, a funny, imaginative sequel. Well worth a dead.

If you haven't got, or read Red Dwarf either, it may be worth getting the Red Dwarf Omnibus, which has this book as well. It may save you some money!

I saw this book at the same time I saw "Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers" and bought both. I enjoyed the movies and figured the books would be insightful.

Plot:
At the end of "Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers", Lister, Rimmer, Cat, and Kryten were stuck in a video game--"Better than Life". They realized it was unreality, but as they got what they wanted, they didn't care to go back to the real world. In this installation, Rimmer's fantasy starts to tear apart the world, and the remaining crew of the Red Dwarf leaves the game.
Meanwhile, Holly has turned to a talking Toaster for help in regaining his 6000 IQ. Holly's IQ skips to 12000+ but his run-time is down to minutes. He shuts down, unable to help the ship navigate past an imminent black hole.

Good:
One of my complaints with IWCD was that it felt like a screenplay of the TV series. This one repairs this fault considerably, feeling much more original. I enjoyed reading about Lister on garbage world, fighting the acid rain, befriending the cockroaches, the effects of time when in close contact with a black hole (it is cool how the book attempts sometimes to be scientific--just don't trusts the planet pool!), and even reading about the origins of the polymorph. The events were original and exciting. I finished this book in less than a week--a world record for me!
The Toaster was an absolutely hilarious addition to the team. I enjoyed the £19.99 (plus tax) toaster's smarmy remarks, heroic actions, and egotism. I was crushed when he was ground in the garbage masher and rejoiced when Kryten put him back together.
Speaking of Kryten, I enjoyed seeing him convert from an eccentric cleaning mechanoid seen in the episode "Kryten" to the companion of Rimmer, Lister, and Cat in later episodes. The TV series never explains this inconsistency--not that I am that concerned about Red Dwarf continuity (but see below).

Bad:
Towards the end of the book, the authors fall back into rephrasing the TV series. The Polymorph is brought up, the Backwards planet introduced, etc. I like these episodes and reading about them is great; however, if I wanted to read a screenplay of Red Dwarf, I would do so.
While sexual jokes have been reduced from last time (and the TV series), there are just enough that make me cringe. Again, I think good humor is more than commenting on organ size or who did it with whom.
Lastly, while I am pretty care-free concerning Red Dwarf continuity, one thing that does bother me is when Lister (I think Rimmer also does it) recalls his three week dating of Kristine Kochanski. In IWCF, Lister and Kristine only were dating in his mind.

Dialogue/Sexual Situations/Violence:
Dialogue constrained to sh**, mild profanities and some crude British words (of course, I could be wrong as I am American). Sexual situations are pretty common although more restrained in my opinion than in "IWCD. Rimmer is caught trying to fool around with his ex-wife just after getting remarried. A prostitute invades Lister's ideal world. Cat imagines a land with large breasted women. As for violence, Kryten blasts things with a bazokoid. Lister loses an ear lobe in acid rain (gross for people like me!). On the whole though, there isn't much in the violence department that will have you in twitches.

Overall:
Either I am getting used to "Grant Naylor's" writing style, or this is a better book than IWCD. The events are more original and less like a rehash of the TV series. The humor was great (as always). The characters great. Besides frequent sexual references and some falling back to the TV series, this is a great book.

Brought to you by:
*C.S. Light*

As surprising and funny as Red Dwarf. But even better due to more profound interrogations about life and death.