Red Dwarf (SF): Discovering the TV series

Red Dwarf (SF): Discovering the TV series - Tom Salinsky ****

As the author makes clear, this is one for the fans - amongst which I count myself. I can still remember in the late 80s, workmates enthusing about the BBC SF sitcom Red Dwarf. As a result, I first encountered it in series 3, where it really found its feet, but later revisited the whole show from the delightfully titled first episode, The End.

There are broadly two types of content in Tom Salinsky's slim book - a history of the making of the series and the episode guide. The history part - an overall section, followed by a piece on the making of each series - would appeal to anyone with an interest in TV, and particularly TV science fiction. By contrast, the episode guide is very much for people like me - it's geeky detail, such as circumstances when Rimmer appears more solid than he should be, anachronistic mentions and lack of in-series consistency.

Salinsky gives each show a rating - for an enthusiast he's quite harsh on episodes that others might regard as perfectly acceptable, but it's always interesting to see someone else's reviews of a favourite show.

My biggest criticism is that this is a distinctly thin book - about 150 pages before getting to the end material. It only covers series 1-6, with the rest coming in a second volume. Personally, I'd rather have got the whole lot in one go.

Not for everyone by any means, then, but if the mention of Red Dwarf brings a smile to your face, then it's for you. I certainly learned plenty in the history bits. I hadn't realised, for example, that none of the three original main characters had been actors prior to the show, being as they were a performance poet, an impressionist and a dancer from West End musicals. Indulgence, yes - but enjoyable indulgence.

Hardback:

Kindle:
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee:
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Comments

The Laws of Thought - Tom Griffiths *****

In giving us a history of attempts to explain our thinking abilities, Tom Griffiths demonstrates an excellent ability to pitch information just right for the informed general reader. We begin with Aristotelian logic and the way Boole and others transformed it into a kind of arithmetic before a first introduction of computing and theories of language. Griffiths covers a surprising amount of ground - we don't just get, for instance, the obvious figures of Turing, von Neumann and Shannon, but the interaction between the computing pioneers and those concerned with trying to understand the way we think - for example in the work of Jerome Bruner, of whom I confess I'd never heard. This would prove to be the case with a whole host of people who have made interesting contributions to the understanding of human thought processes. Sometimes their theories were contradictory - this isn't an easy field to successfully observe - but always they were interesting. But for me, at least, ...

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum ****

This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a series of paradoxes. However, I need to say up front that I'm giving it four stars for the ideas: unfortunately the writing is not great. It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable - it really should have co-authored with a professional writer to make it accessible. Even so, I'm recommending it: like some government reports it's significant enough to make it necessary to wade through the bureaucrat speak. Why paradoxes? Dignum identifies two ways we can think about paradoxes (oddly I wrote about paradoxes recently , but with three definitions): a logical paradox such as 'this statement is false', or a paradoxical truth such as 'less is more' - the second of which seems a better to fit to the use here. We are then presented with eight paradoxes, each of which gives some insights into aspects of t...

It's On You - Nick Chater and George Loewenstein *****

Going on the cover you might think this was a political polemic - and admittedly there's an element of that - but the reason it's so good is quite different. It shows how behavioural economics and social psychology have led us astray by putting the focus way too much on individuals. A particular target is the concept of nudges which (as described in Brainjacking ) have been hugely over-rated. But overall the key problem ties to another psychological concept: framing. Huge kudos to both Nick Chater and George Loewenstein - a behavioural scientist and an economics and psychology professor - for having the guts to take on the flaws in their own earlier work and that of colleagues, because they make clear just how limited and potentially dangerous is the belief that individuals changing their behaviour can solve large-scale problems. The main thesis of the book is that there are two ways to approach the major problems we face - an 'i-frame' where we focus on the individual ...

Search This Blog