They're Redshirts, Get It?

Redshirts by John Scalzi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my first scalzi book, but I hope his other books are better. I love the first half, but was progressively more bored with it through the second half. Much like certain episodes of Community, the further one crawls up one's own ass in a story, the less entertaining/immersing it tends to be. The problem with going meta is it kind of kills immersion and any reason to care about the characters because one is too busy applauding the author and oneself for recognizing that these are characters in a story and someone wrote them, which, you must admit, is kind of a low bar. There's a weird trend of grown-ass adults recognizing the existential reality of a situation and waiting for the accolades to roll in.

"Well, really this is a story and stories tend to follow a formula." *stunned silence* *one man starts clapping slow, and is soon joined in thunderous applause*

It honestly seems like a cop out, a way to avoid writing an actually interesting story. Instead the author gets bored and starts dissecting the act of writing half-way through.

The other problem is, what's the end game after recognizing the meta-situation? It's just pointless. Scalzi essentially stops what is essentially a good story, by saying, "really this is just a story see?" and then it's done. There's no reason to care about the characters once they go back to the past to confront the writers. Nothing really interesting happens there. I would have been more interested somehow in a solution that involved the characters talking back to the author or fighting the narrative within the constraints of "the show." As is, I suppose it's a fine bit of navel-gazing if you're a writer, and like to mythologize and wank on about the act of writing and creating characters, but like most forms of masturbation, it's not going to be that interesting to anyone else.

That said, the first half was good enough that I'd be willing to give some of his less tongue-in-cheek books a try. This one's probably not staying on my bookshelf though.

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