Kim Miller
This book really hit my funny bone. It's a satirical take down of Star Trek, based on the premise that in Star Trek they have to kill off one or more cast members early in the episode to heighten tension and those characters are all wearing red shirts. They are minor crew members, often newly introduced, have little bearing on the plot, and are designed to be expendable. Senior officers don't wear red uniforms, so are safe.
The story is set 350 years in the future and a spaceship, the Intrepid, is being sent on lots of dangerous missions to distant planets. They are attacked, or they send out a ground crew which is attacked, and some members return and some are killed. A new crew member sees a strange pattern. Certain senior officers go on away missions and are sometimes injured but never killed. And often when one junior member is killed all the others are safe from that moment.
A few of the crew start to chase up some answers, but the search takes them to an impossible idea. They are playing out a scripted TV show from 2012 in what seems to be a parallel universe. The TV show writes and films the script each week and somehow it travels across time and whatever weirdness is in the way, and impacts their lives. They have to stop the TV show from doing whatever it is they are doing.
The first half of the book is filled with satirical references to the tropes of such TV shows. The second half is suddenly deeply human as they make contact with the cast of the TV show. Characters blend between the two time slots as it meets grief and trauma head on. The story gets rounded out well at the end, although there is a lingering question of what will happen to the Intrepid once the TV show is off the air.
One funny element sticks in my head. It's 'the box'. When somebody on the Intrepid is infected by a body-dissolving virus they are given six hours to find a 'counter virus'. They get out the box, put the bio-sample in it, set the timer to five hours and wait. The box dings, they transfer the data to a tablet and rush it to the captain. He points out the place they have to investigate, the sick man is saved. Nobody knows how the box works. It turns out that when the TV shows writes in bad science or impossible solutions it works for TV but won't work in real life. So somehow 'the box' becomes part of the Intrepid's arsenal. They don't need to know how it works, it just does. Whenever they are faced with an impossible challenge they put the relevant thing in the box and all's good.
This book really hit my funny bone. It's a satirical take down of Star Trek, based on the premise that in Star Trek they have to kill off one or more cast members early in the episode to heighten tension and those characters are all wearing red shirts. They are minor crew members, often newly introduced, have little bearing on the plot, and are designed to be expendable. Senior officers don't wear red uniforms, so are safe.
The story is set 350 years in the future and a spaceship, the Intrepid, is being sent on lots of dangerous missions to distant planets. They are attacked, or they send out a ground crew which is attacked, and some members return and some are killed. A new crew member sees a strange pattern. Certain senior officers go on away missions and are sometimes injured but never killed. And often when one junior member is killed all the others are safe from that moment.
A few of the crew start to chase up some answers, but the search takes them to an impossible idea. They are playing out a scripted TV show from 2012 in what seems to be a parallel universe. The TV show writes and films the script each week and somehow it travels across time and whatever weirdness is in the way, and impacts their lives. They have to stop the TV show from doing whatever it is they are doing.
The first half of the book is filled with satirical references to the tropes of such TV shows. The second half is suddenly deeply human as they make contact with the cast of the TV show. Characters blend between the two time slots as it meets grief and trauma head on. The story gets rounded out well at the end, although there is a lingering question of what will happen to the Intrepid once the TV show is off the air.
One funny element sticks in my head. It's 'the box'. When somebody on the Intrepid is infected by a body-dissolving virus they are given six hours to find a 'counter virus'. They get out the box, put the bio-sample in it, set the timer to five hours and wait. The box dings, they transfer the data to a tablet and rush it to the captain. He points out the place they have to investigate, the sick man is saved. Nobody knows how the box works. It turns out that when the TV shows writes in bad science or impossible solutions it works for TV but won't work in real life. So somehow 'the box' becomes part of the Intrepid's arsenal. They don't need to know how it works, it just does. Whenever they are faced with an impossible challenge they put the relevant thing in the box and all's good.