On May 29, 1976, there were no VCRs, not even Betamax. Music was played on the radio, on a phonograph player, or an eight-track tape player. As a result, when a party was held on a Saturday night, which this particular date was, it was inevitable that if the host did not turn on the television at 11:30, someone else would. It was the first season of Saturday Night Live and no one, in my young crowd, was willing to miss a single episode.
And so it was that that night found me in the living room of a friend watching the 22nd episode which included the skit that has become a cult classic, The Last Voyage of the Starship Enterprise. Every once in a while it shows up on the internet briefly, before it is pulled again. I paid $1.99 at Amazon for the episode, feeling it was worth it for John Belushi's Captain Kirk, Chevy Chase's Mr. Spock and Dan Aykroyd's Dr. McCoy.
It has always been my absolute favorite parody of the series, which was by then running in syndication every night. My ex-boyfriend was a fan, and so the television was tuned to the show on a regular basis. Part of my joy at my single state was the absence of the nightly series in my life. And after SNL, I could never again keep a straight face when William Shatner made every word written for Captain Kirk into a separate sentence.
And while I am sure that The Next Generation has been parodied somewhere by someone, I haven't seen it and so can still enjoy reruns of that series on Netflix or Amazon. Parodies are hard. Good parodies are so very much harder. Even the SNL skit could only achieve 11 minutes, and not every minute was perfect. Somehow, John Scalzi has accomplished more than an outstanding parody in Redshirts, A Novel With Three Codas
Redshirts, A Novel with Three Codas
by John Scalzi
Publisher: Tor Books
Hardcover: $24.00 ($16.98) Paperback: $15.00 ($10.98)
eBook: $7.99 Audible.com: $3.99 Audiobook MP3: $10.97
June 5, 2012
320 pages
Anyone who has watched science fiction series on television is familiar with the redshirt trope: that in every show, in order to create dramatic tension someone must die. It cannot be one of the show's starring cast, so it is an extra who is hired specifically to die. They generally wore a red uniform shirt in the early Star Trek series, and "redshirts" eventually became the shorthand that even the writers used in referring to these expendable characters:.
“I’m reading the notes from the first script of the season, and it says, ‘Redshirt starts walking down the hallway,’” he recalled. “Internally, everybody shorthanded the doomed crew member as a redshirt."
Poor Ensign Jones: John Scalzi on Redshirts
Wired 05.28.12
So everyone knows that the redshirted crewman is doomed to an early death on the show, the actors, writers, directors and producers. But what about the characters? In
Redshirts, John Scalzi explores the trope from the point of view of a small group of redshirts aboard the Universal Union flagship Intrepid.
Ensign Dahl is a young xenobiologist who meets another young Ensign, Maia Duvall at Space Station Earth while waiting for the shuttle to take them to the ship. Before joining the UU, Dahl spent three years as a seminary student of the leftward schism of the Forsham religion. Three more ensigns, Hansen, Hester and Finn, join them as they wait. Within days they begin to realize that some things are very strange on this ship, with away missions heading the list:
“I mean that within five minutes of getting to my new post I heard three different stories of crew buying the farm on an away mission. Death by falling rock. Death by toxic atmosphere. Death by pulse gun vaporization.”
“Death by shuttle door malfunction,” Hanson said.
“Death by ice shark,” Dahl said.
“Death by what?” Duvall said, blinking.
“What the hell is an ice shark?”
“You got me,” Dahl said. “I had no idea there was such a thing.”
“Is it a shark made of ice?” Hanson asked. “Or a shark that lives in ice?”
Dahl notices how everyone who works with him in the Xenobiology Lab seems to vanish whenever a senior officer approaches the lab, leaving him to face the officer. For that matter, the entire crew seems to avoid the senior officers, walking rapidly away in the opposite direction or speaking into their telephones when they appear. Soon, the young ensigns start to put the picture together.
Ensign Dahl confronts his fellow lab workers about this strange reluctance to participate in away missions.
“All right,” Collins said. “Here’s the deal. Some time ago, it was noticed that there was an extremely high correlation between away teams led by or including certain officers, and crewmen dying. The captain. Commander Q’eeng. Chief Engineer West. Medical Chief Hartnell. Lieutenant Kerensky.”
“And not only about crewmen dying,” Trin said.
“Right,” Collins said. “And other things, too.”
“Like if someone died with Kerensky around, everyone else would be safe if they stuck with him,” Dahl said, remembering McGregor.
“Kerensky’s actually only weakly associated with that effect,” Cassaway said.
Dahl turned to Cassaway. “It’s an effect? You have a name for it?”
“It’s the Sacrificial Effect,” Cassaway said. “It’s strongest with Hartnell and Q’eeng. The captain and Kerensky, not so much. And it doesn’t work at all with West. He’s a goddamn death trap.”
But then Dahl discovers a mind-bending, possible solution which he presents to his companions. They then decide to take steps to rescue themselves.
The first section of the novel is a sustained, very funny sendup of the science fiction series of my youth, of the space travel and exploration of Star Trek. But Scalzi manages to hook the reader through his humor and joyful exploration of the absurd into caring about the characters. As we followed them through their initial weeks on the Intrepid, we wanted them to stay alive, we started to care about their futures, even while knowing that their uniform redshirts guaranteed that those would not be very long.
Or would they? Taking advantage of their very own science fiction world which is frequently built on bad science, including a magic box in the xeno lab, they decide to explore Dahl's proposal.
Good science fiction has always been about more than the science, it has been about our world and our place in it. The best science fiction has helped us form our vision of our future. It has explored man's relationship with his environment and with his fellow man. While this novel may not deal with issues quite as all encompassing, it does deal with the human condition, and it does so with some real heart as well as with a very healthy dose of humor. It won the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
I listened to the Audible digital presentation of this book, narrated by, appropriately enough, Wil Wheaton, who, as part of the ensemble cast of TNG played Wesley Crusher, the brilliant son of the ship's doctor, Beverly Crusher. He does a wonderful job on this book. I can't recommend it highly enough. Many thanks to scilicet who got me started on audiobooks in general and recommended this one specifically.
In July,
Think Progress reported on Scalzi's refusal to attend conventions without strong sexual harassment protections for all participants. He has been a committed feminist for years, having dealt with the depiction of
women in the genre during his term as President of the Science Fiction Writers of America.
A conservative sci-fi writer, John Ringo, claims that Scalzi won his latest Hugo, not for his novel, which Ringo freely admitted he had not read, but for his politics:
"But he's been speaking truth to power about the degradation of women in SF along with other idiocracy and so he's beloved by all the has been liberal neurotics who control the Hugo voting and balloting. Look to many more in the future as long as he toes the Party line. Huzzah."
- As quoted, but clearly not endorsed, by Paul Constant at Slog
Sounds good to me. I confess that this is the first Scalzi novel that I have read, but it will definitely not be the last. Next on my list will be his first novel,
An Old Man's War in which those over 75 are invited to the Colonial Defense Force in exchange for a healthy young body.
His popular blog, Whatever, just hit the 30 million views mark and is well worth reading. In it he writes about anything, including this memorable piece on Being Poor posted in 2005:
Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.
Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for all the crap they see on TV.
Being poor is having to keep buying $800 cars because they’re what you can afford, and then having the cars break down on you, because there’s not an $800 car in America that’s worth a damn.
Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away.
...
Thanks for the opportunity to post this diary in your Sci-Fi/Fantasy Club series, quarkstomper. I would like to return to write more about Mr Scalzi and his work as time and space in this weekly series allow.
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