# The Red Dwarf novels by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor



## Werthead (Jul 9, 2011)

*Book  1: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers*



> Mimas, 2180. After an epic all-night bender in London to celebrate his  25th birthday, Liverpudlian slob Dave Lister wakes up a billion  kilometres away on one of Saturn's moons with the mother of all  hangovers. Desperate to get home, Lister hits on the plan of enrolling  in the Space Corps, getting a job on an Earth-bound ship and then going  AWOL the second he gets home. Unfortunately, the only vessel that will  have him is the city-sized Jupiter Mining Corporation ore-hauler _Red Dwarf_.  And before it gets back to Earth, it's going all the way to Triton on a  job. So it will take Lister four and a half years to get home.
> 
> Driven  to distraction by his mind-bogglingly anally-retentive bunk-mate Arnold  Rimmer and heartbroken by a doomed romance with navigation officer  Kristine Kochanski, Lister hits on a plan: by smuggling an unquarantined  cat on board and getting caught, he gets condemned to spend the rest of  the trip in temporal stasis and forfeit four years pay. Unfortunately,  whilst he's in stasis, the _Dwarf_'s fusion reactor unleashes a deadly radiation pulse which kills everyone. The ship's AI, Holly, takes the _Dwarf_  into deep space and waits for the radiation to die off before reviving  Lister...which takes three million years. Lister awakens to find his  only companions are a holographic simulation of Rimmer, a senile AI and a  creature which evolved from his pet cat. Their mission: to get back to  Earth. Somehow.
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> ...


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## Rodders (Jul 9, 2011)

I read these a long time ago and whilst i do remember them being very enjoyable, i don't really remember them that well. I shall have to dig these out.


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## Werthead (Jul 10, 2011)

*Book  2: Better Than Life*



> Three million years into deep space on the mining ship _Red Dwarf_,  the last human alive, Dave Lister, wants nothing else other than to go  home. Instead, he has become trapped in a virtual reality computer game,  _Better Than Life_. In his fantasy he is a resident of Bedford Falls (the town from his favourite movie, _It's a Wonderful Life_),  married to Kristine Kochanski with twin sons. The Cat has his own  Gothic castle, where his every whim is attended to by Valkyrie warriors  in skimpy underwear and he amuses himself by going dog-hunting on his  favourite fire-breathing yak. Service mechanoid Kryten has mountains of  washing-up to get done. And Rimmer is a multi-billionaire, married to  the most beautiful woman alive and using a time machine to get 'the  lads' (General George S. Patton, Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte)  together every now and then so he can beat them at _Risk_.  Outside the game, the AI Holly embarks on a mission to return his IQ to  its previous level of 6,000, but unfortunately relies on the advice of a  sentient toaster, with catastrophic results.
> 
> The  problem with the game is that it is almost impossible to escape from,  and, eventually it will kill you. However, Rimmer's psyche is so  ridiculously self-loathing that he cannot stand to see himself or his  friends happy, and it sets out to destroy them...
> 
> ...


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## Mouse (Jul 10, 2011)

I've read these. They're actually pretty good! Your review's reminded me that I still own them somewhere...


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