Colony
March 30th 2007 08:38
Rob Grant is probably best known for being the co-creator of science-fiction sitcom 'Red Dwarf'. Following the television show's hiatus in 1993 he decided to relinquish input into the sitcom, and instead wrote a solo novel based on the cult program. Following this he primarily became an author, specialising in absurdist speculative fiction reminiscent of Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut. 'Colony' is the first of Grant's post-Red Dwarf novels (his third, 'Fat', has just been released) and is also the book most similar to the show itself. Grant has also written the futuristic crime comedy 'Incompetnce'.
Eddie is your average regular everyday nobody on dying planet Earth. When it comes to unimportant and unimposing, Eddie pretty much rules the roost. So when he suddenly inherits a massive and unpayable debt thanks to a computer error he naturally finds himself completely unequipped to deal with the situation. He finds himself in a makeshift town of gambling and recreation constructed around a base known as 'The Project', and when the opportunity to escape a brutal and violent death at the hands of debt collectors arises he immediately latches onto it with both hands. And so he finds himself trading places with a prominent figure in The Project, a social engineer who has designed a facistic life-plan for the denizens of a massive exploration ship named the Willflower. This ship is set to travel deep into the uncharted depths of space in the hope of finding an Earth-like planet that humanity can colonise.
Flash forward a few hundred years, and Eddie wakes up somewhat less than whole. Some sort of calamity befell upon him and he must now adjust to a new life. Also, the ship's occupants are more than a few generations removed from the original crew... strict mating programs have ensured more than a minimal amount of inbreeding and latent stupidty, and the ship itself is breaking apart thanks to a meteorite collision. Worse still, everyone looks to Eddie to lead them to safety!
This a dark and deeply funny book full of twists and complete turnarounds. Grant dazzles us with every page and I soon learnt not to get too attached to any peripheral characters after the story performed more than a few sommersaults and backflips. It's incredibly well constructed, and the characters are hilarious. Eddie is a likeable hero, remarkable in that he is completely unremarkable - the sort of man whose ambitions are almost non-existent, and I found myself warming to him a lot. Never once does the book get dull either, the dialogue (as Red Dwarf fans might expect) is snappy and crude and incredibly fun, and there's some great big scale science-fictiony action to keep things moving along at breakneck speed.
I'd read 'Incompetnce' before this and I enjoyed it a lot, but I have to say I liked 'Colony' even more. Grant has a steady and confident hand when it comes to low-brow comedy and big-concept science fiction . I'm now looking forward to his new book 'Fat' immensely, and my only wish for this novel was that it never ended or that we one day get a sequel.
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