Waiting for Redshirts
(courtesy of http://www.trekp.com/)
Between a plane flight and before-bed reading, I finally got to read Redshirts last weekend, thanks to DunDraCon. If you haven’t read the novel yet, it’s John Scalzi’s marvelous take on the expendable extra in fiction, especially science fiction.
Warning: in the course of this discussion, I’m probably going to give spoilers. I must say, though, that the spoilers I have in mind did nothing more than resolve an issue I developed early in the book and made that issue work. So in that sense, I’m not giving away anything you aren’t likely to figure out yourself, because the points I’ll make have less to do with plot points per se, than with the essential elements of the story and the writer’s contract with the reader. So if all you’re worried about is plot, you can probably read on. If you don’t want any hints at all, then I hope this paragraph has been sufficient to gird your innocent eyes from any secrets flung forth down below.
Well, actually, I guess there are two plot elements I have to talk about: one is major but appears early in the book and the other is a side-plot, which might factor into your decision. Read on at your own risk.
Ready? All right, let’s do this.
Apart from the sheer joy of the story and the humor, which were considerable, the metafiction level of Redshirts made me think of “And Now I’m Waiting,” a short story by Richard Matheson that was developed as an episode of the original Twilight Zone series under the title “A World of His Own.”
The Matheson stories tell of a writer who discovers that he can describe people and things into existence. The Twilight Zone episode takes the idea in a fairly light and comedic direction while the short story is much darker, but in both cases the key is that the writer decides what to do with his power. Further, he feels free to destroy his creations because he knows he can bring them back at a moment’s notice.
Redshirts approaches the story from the other end of the spectrum: characters discover that they’re fictional and, worse, that they are extras.* They manage to abuse the pseudo-physics of their fictive universe to go back in time to when their show is aired and talk to the head writer about their problem. This has an interesting side effect – the writer develops a crushing case of writer’s block. Having learned that what he writes affects real lives in another universe, possibly a universe of his own creation, he dreads murdering innocent people. On the other hand, if he stops he loses his job (plus he enters the special hell of being a writer who can’t write). I’ve already given the spoiler warning, so I guess it’s safe to mention that the writer overcomes his writer’s block through the realization that the problem was not death, but meaningless death.
In some ways it’s not fair to compare these stories. The Twilight Zone episode is comedy, the short story is horror and the novel is science fiction. Also, in Redshirts, the fictive author is a minor character instead of the main character. Nevertheless, the three stories tie together through the idea that what we imagine might gain reality of its own, or that the stories we tell have consequences.
Think about your favorite novels, movies, and television shows. Now imagine for a moment that they all tell true stories from other worlds. All of them, not just the good ones. Would it change your reading and viewing habits? Or would you treat all fiction like history: a story that’s already happened, so you might as well enjoy it?
Gives new meaning to the term “escapism” doesn’t it?
*If the nature of a novel about extras suggests to you that the characters aren’t actually extras at all because there’s a novel about them, I’ll say only that Scalzi does address this.
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Sorry about the delay in posts. I failed to write ahead and never had a chance to post while I was at the convention.
