Backwards

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Backwards is the fourth Red Dwarf novel. It is set on the fictional backwards universe version of Earth.

The novel was written by Rob Grant on his own. It follows on directly from the second Grant Naylor novel, Better Than Life, ignoring Last Human which was by Doug Naylor. As well as Backwards it contains elements of the episodes Dimension Jump and Gunmen of the Apocalypse.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The Red Dwarf crew have traveled to this version of Earth to bury Lister, who has died in his sixties due to time dilation, here so he can come to life and be age backwards (youth?) to 25. They also brought Kristine Kochanski's ashes and resurrected her so they could have a relationship backwards, but by this time she and Lister have been "unintroduced". The crew arrives on Earth in the newly built Starbug. They go to the sovenir shop in Niagara Falls to meet up with Lister. Kryten watches the news and discovers that Lister and the Cat are involved in a murder. Lister misses the rendezvous point. They leave the shop and see Lister being chased backwards by policemen and suffering a savage backwards kick to his groin. Lister immediately recovers and gives chase. Kryten convinces Rimmer that no harm can befall them as they are in a backwards universe. They catch up with Lister and are being chased backwards by police then are 'un-shot' at by a hillbilly. They see this hillbilly 'unweeping' earlier on that day.

The crew discover Starbug and find that it is destroyed. Rimmer and Kryten start looking for the landing jets. Kryten discovers the corpse of the hillbilly, with a pick axe in his chest. Kryten is confused as he was seen alive later that day. It is the twin of the hillbilly that was unshooting at them. Rimmer reassures Kryten that the man will come to life. The corpse comes to life and starts fighting Kryten backwards. He pulls the pick ax out of his chest, fights then the man leaves. Kryten realised that he had killed someone, which he cannot do, and switches off. Lister repairs him and finds out about the fight. He now realizes that he didn't commit the crime that he was sent to prison for.

Kryten is now working and all agree that they all should start talking forwards (as the Cat can't understand back-talk). They miss the flight window and realised that they have to spend the next ten years living backwards.

Ten years have passed and the Cat and Lister are now 15. The Cat becomes a virgin after a bizarre sexual encounter with a beautiful cousin of the mountain men. Lister and Kryten re-bury the landing jets they find as they work out that Starbug is badly damaged by something. Lister and the Cat fly Starbug backwards, scraping against the cave it is hidden in, over the treetops, re-attaching the landing jets and are unshot down by a missile which undamaged the ship. They arrive in their universe under three weeks later, only to find Red Dwarf is missing. Following the events of Better Than Life, Holly has continually decreased his intelligence to increase his lifespan. Now unable to calculate either, he was incapable of preventing the ship falling into the hands of the insane killing machines known as agonoids.

At the same time Ace Rimmer is preparing for his trip through alternative timelines (not to be confused with the six main universes). With the help of his brilliant engineer "Spanners" Lister (who got his act together thanks to a supportive bunkmate on the Dwarf) he breaks the reality barrier, and arrives in the Dwarfers' timeline, crashing into Starbug. He immediately volunteers to help with the repairs. Rimmer is unimpressed. Then Ace realises that, if the ship homes in on Arnold Rimmers without concern for time periods, it could be used to bring the Dwarfers back home, or at least to somewhere very similar.

The aganoids, having junked Holly, and turned the Red Dwarf into a huge torture chamber, are fighting for the right to kill the last human. The most ruthless agonoid, Djuhn'Keep, succeeds in jettisoning all the others into space, but one of them, Pizzak'Rapp, is heading directly for Starbug. Pizzak'Rapp attempts to kill Lister, but Ace manages to send the aganoid (and himself) out into space, allowing himself a messy but heroic death (Pizzak'Rapp caves in his spacesuit faceplate and causes his head to explode) and condemning the psychotic agonoid to a frozen eternity in the blackness of deep space.

Meanwhile, Djuhn'Keep himself arrives on Starbug, just as the oxygen supply gives out and Lister loses consciousness. When he awakens, he is tied down in the engine room. Kryten bazookoids the hull, sending the agonoid into space, but learns that Djuhn has infected Starbug's computers with the Apocalypse Virus. Kryten infects himself to create an antidote.

Entering Kryten's mind through a virtual reality machine, the crew find themselves in a cowboy-theme frontier Western town, where various people and institutions representing Kryten's faculties are being threatened by the Apocalypse Boys, representing the virus. Kryten's consciousness is represented by Sheriff Carton, and his direct problems with the virus as an alcohol problem and general lack of respect, courage, skill and basic morality. After various clashes with the Apocalypse Boys (who inflict horrific injuries on the Dwarfers - shooting Cat in the brain, decapitating Lister and reducing Rimmer to a puddle of molten slag - while forcing them to remain both alive and conscious), the Dwarfers are able to buy Kryten/Carton time and remind him who he is, but while kryten is able to send the Dove program through Starbug's systems (in the form of "Dove" bullets which vaporise the Apocalypse Boys), the virus has already taken its toll on both the mechanoid himself and Rimmer's hologram systems. Kryten and Rimmer are dead, and Cat and Lister are still unable to stop Starbug from crashing.

Taking Ace's ship, they head for another timeline. They find themselves in a universe where Kryten and Rimmer are still alive, although they themselves died playing Better Than Life. Lister reflects that this isn't home, but it might be close enough.