Redshirts Review

Today we’re gonna do a little John Scalzi tribute and review one of his newer books, Redshirts. Now, if you’re into science fiction and don’t know who John Scalzi is it’s probably because you’ve been living under a rock so let me go ahead and take a moment to welcome you to the twenty-first century, how’s that internet thing treating ya?

No, I’m just kidding. There’s nothing wrong with you and if you’re like me, prior to about a year ago, you’d never heard of Mr. Scalzi. I admit, I’m a late bloomer, but you’d think with as many books as I read in a year I would’ve come across him sooner. Eh, that’s the world of discoverability for you.

Scalzi is an interesting character in the world of science fiction because the scope of projects he takes on are…unique to say the least. And by that I’m talking about The Androids Dream or The Fuzzy Nation, both of which are effectively reboots of earlier, fairly famous works.

Though you might be tempted to think of these works as fan-fiction, they aren’t quite that, though they aren’t quite not that either. So it is, in that vein, that we come to Redshirts.

Now, if you grew up with Star Trek (hell, even if you didn’t) you might be familiar with the redshirt always die trope. That is to say, whenever Captain Kirk and his minions go planet side for a little off-ship action, there is usually one, if not two, redshirts (aka underlings) tagging along for the ride. For these poor saps, however, it’s only a one-way trip because without fail they always die.

And why not? These are expendable characters and killing them off doesn’t cost much emotional investment but it does keep the viewers interest piqued with a contrived drama.

I say contrived because anybody can throw in an ancillary character just to kill them off two pages later, but that’s emotionally manipulative and doesn’t serve the broader story beyond tugging on heartstrings like an ADD kid on a cow’s teat. <— There’s your one really weird metaphor for the review, by the way. Good luck getting that out of your brain.

So this is the launching off point for Redshirts. Scalzi takes this trope and runs with it. Without getting too deep into the story or the plot or the characters let’s just talk big picture type stuff.

First: Yes, I liked the story. Would it have been better had it been 30,000 words shorter? I wouldn’t dispute that claim. See, in my eyes Redshirt would have been a great novella, and a fantastic short story. The more flushing out it received the more it seemed to stretch the suspension of disbelief, which is already stretched quite far on a story like this, but hey, I got no qualms about that.

Second: Scalzi is a funny guy, no doubt. I dig his sense of humor, but there’s something to be said about writing a scene with the express purpose of dropping a one liner at the end. Comedy writing is insanely difficult, I get that. I’d rather have my nether-regions shorn by a squadron of hungry termites than try it myself.

Being funny on command is rough to say the least, so I’m not going to hold too many points back on this account because by and large there were some really hilarious bits to this book. Unfortunately there were a fair number of groans, too.

–By comparison a book that was friggin hilarious from beginning to end without having many, if any, overtly groan worthy scenes is Andy Weir’s The Martian. This is the barometer for comedy sci-fi against which I judged Redshirts.

Third: I’m going to put this down right here and you can take it or leave it. Your choice. No pressure. I Love Scalzi’s transparent writing style. That is to say, his words flow by without much conscious thought on the readers part.

Huh?

Yeah, I’ll admit, I detest flowery writing. Words strung together in the hopes of stimulating some sort of parasympathetic response rarely do, (Here’s an exception: Patrick Rothfuss: Name of the Wind). I admire writers who can tell a bad-ass story without their words getting in the way. In my opinion this is one of the hardest skills a writer can master, and Scalzi does it in spades.

Four: You want approachable science fiction? Yeah, me too. These days it can be hard to find, and when you do, it’s likely a Heinlein rip-off (which I’m totally okay with). In recent years science fiction has had a real public relations problem. Though it’s so closely linked with Fantasy, it sure does have a hard time keeping up with its cousin genre.

If you’ve read my other blog posts, you know my thoughts on the distinction between Science Fiction and Fantasy and I’m not all that surprised that Fantasy, as a whole, outperforms. That’s just the nature of the beast.

Scalzi (in an entirely separate work) has said one of the huge thing Science Fiction has going against it is that people hear Sci-Fi and they automatically think of math. Is that fair? Maybe. Is it true? Yeah, unfortunately to the lay reader it is. See, math isn’t sexy. For most people it’s work. It sure as fuck is for me.

Now that’s not to say that Sci-Fi has much math actually involved, but the concepts aren’t always so simple. One of the thing that Scalzi does better than almost anybody else out there these days, is making Science Fiction accessible to those who would never even consider reading the genre because of their preconceived notions as to what the genre entails.

I love hard science fiction as much as the next guy. Accelerando, for instance, is packed full of the stuff. Great times, I love it. But it’s the fairly sophisticated science aficionado who does. If Science Fiction doesn’t want to get left in Fantasy’s dust, authors are gonna need to do a better job of bridging that accessibility gap.

Scalzi is at the forefront, no doubt.

Fifteen: Wait, what number are we on? Shit, like I said, I’m not good with math.

“But Anthony, it’s just counting,” you say.

Screw you. This aint the 1950’s, give me a calculator.

Alright, fine. Don’t. Then we’re done here. I quit.

You heard me, I’m pouting. Go away.

Ok fine, come back and let me wrap this up proper so nobody gets pregnant.

If you’re looking for a funny read that’s a bit silly at times with great characterization, an interesting story concept, and good execution, then you should go fondle yourself a Redshirt.

Alright, now I’m officially done. Somebody give me a beer.

Anthony