Metafiction and John Scalzi's "Redshirts"

Just finished John Scalzi's Redshirts. In case you haven't heard of the story or don't catch the allusion, the reference is to the red-shirted security guards in the original Star Trek series whose sole purpose was to die pointlessly in the first act of the show to create an artificial sense of drama. (I've often thought that the reason Star Trek the Next Generation gave the command crew the red uniforms was because the hostile aliens had finally figured out that the redshirts weren't the really valuable ones and that they were wasting their efforts killing "extras". Presumably in the next series, they'll shift command crew to blue shirts to further confuse the aliens.)

Scalzi takes the notion that just maybe the redshirts don't consider themselves expendable, and runs hard and far with the idea. Were this just a "Galaxy Quest"-style poke at Trek, it would be a pleasant enough diversion -- but probably fit only for a long short story. Many reviews called the book "laugh out loud" funny, and indeed it is. I treat such comments with considerable skepticism, but several times I chortled so loud my wife raised an eyebrow and demanded an explanation I couldn't provide without spoiling the book for her.

[Speaking of which, some spoilers follow...]

What makes the story a good read goes beyond the humor. For me, it was the characters. Scalzi writes effortlessly in the Heinlein mode, but with a modern sensibility: his characters are certainly smart and sexy, but they're far wittier than typical Heinlein characters, and the women are more real to adult me than Heinlein's women were to adolescent me. (Even then I know there was something "off" about Heinlein's view.) Most of the story is carried through (excellent) dialogue rather than lengthy descriptions. And once the protagonists start to figure out that something's wrong and what they can do to fix it, things get very meta -- though never in any way that draws attention away from the story, which is a neat trick.

Here, the meta occurs on several levels, of which I'll focus on two (thereby ignoring parallel universes and the essence of adventure fiction). The first, which makes for a painless intro into the second, is the guilt that most authors feel at some point for the pain they put their characters through. (I always apologize to my characters whenever I feel obliged to do something nasty to them. Yes, I'm a wuss. *G*) Although Scalzi mostly plays this for laughs, poking fun at neurotic writers everywhere, he also makes some trenchant points about the difference between truly understanding what a character is going through and just killing or maiming them for dramatic effect. Understanding and empathy is not a question of the so-called tragic fallacy in which we anthropomorphize our cars and computers and believe they're real people, but rather a question of whether we're trying to make real things happen to real(istic) people, and giving those people a chance to object and strive to find their own path even when we want them to go elsewhere. Nobody is an "extra" in their own life, even if we're not always important in the larger scale of things. As authors, we need to remember that in our fiction.

That leads us to the second point, namely an exploration of how a real(istic) and rational person might respond if thrust into a situation where an omnipotent and demonstrably malevolent deity controls their fate. (There are no explicit religious overtones to this part of the story, but one could easily extend the argument to examine the religious notion of "free will".) The courageous ones struggle on, hoping to find some sense of control of their lives, as do we all in our real lives. This is what makes for nobility, but also for a compelling character.

There are a few points where I found the story lurched a bit... never derailed, but hit a bumpy patch. But on the whole it's a quick, smooth, and highly pleasant read. I liked all the characters, even the ones who were intentionally less likeable, and would happily read more about them. And the book ends with three virtuoso exercises in point of view ("codas", labeled first, second, and third person) that pick up and neatly weave together three threads from the main story.

There's much of interest to chew over if you pick up on and explore the challenging notions of responsibility to the characters we create and the extent of free will. But what makes this work is that it's always subtext, and never intrudes on the story unless it's absolutely necessary. If you've got a sermon or two you feel a need to preach, you could learn much from Scalzi's example.

Thoroughly recommended.