The ship's computer Holly gets some definition before almost totally dropping out of the story. Rimmer seems to get a lot more character development than Lister, and in fact I find it hard to really define Lister as a character at all, which is not great after reading two novels about him. Stuck on a mining space ship in deep deep space, our main characters are Lister (probably the last human alive) and Rimmer (a hologram of his dead roommate). I've always just read them as one big story, but now I kind of wish I had them as separate books so I could more easily enjoy and digest them on their own. I don't think a novel has to have a clear structure to be good, but it certainly makes a difference here. The first novel has a clear 3-act structure while the second just feels like a list of stuff happening. My main reaction is that the first novel is a lot better than the second. Many many years later I have come back to this very dogeared book. By senior school, I was reading the novels and hugely influenced by them at the time. In junior school, I was a massive fan of the TV show because my family watched it, though half the jokes sailed over my head. This is the first book for adults that I ever read. It was published in 1992, though the original novels were first published in 89 and 90. This is a collection containing the first two Red Dwarf novels with a couple of scripts at the end of some early versions of the show. In all that distance & all the planet's they encounter, they never once run into any conceivable sign of aliens. Their aim is to get back to earth to see if it really has been destroyed or if Lister can finally buy a farm & settle down in Figi.

The genius of the story is the fact that the mining ship Red Dwarf has been floating around space for billions of years with one living sole survivor from earth who has recently awaken from stasis, a cat mutation, a hologram, a service droid, & a computer head with a deminished IQ. In saying that, it is still hilarious, especially if your imagination is better than mine.

There is no way I would have picked up on as much comedy reading the book without already knowing the characters. So I'm thinking reading the book without Craig Charles & Chris Barbie already playing Lister & Rimmer in my head, may have dulled the book a little for me. I think it is extremely clever, terribly unique, & roll around on the ground, excruciatingly hilarious, the characters are so well played it's ridiculous. I must firstly admit that I am a HUGE fan of the television series RED DWARF.

Red Dwarf Omnibus by Grant Naylor