And part of it is the fact that this book isn’t about the humour. A lot of it’s down to the fact he’s just really, really good at this. Perhaps because he’s just so laid-back and post-modern and wittily ironically flippant about it all that it’s hard to get annoyed. Strangely, I didn’t find any of this a problem. In that respect, it reminds me of the kind of collage-of-scenes effect in the Red Dwarf novels themselves, where familiar things from the series are rearranged and given new significance in the books. In particular, there are five or six things lifted straight from Red Dwarf (some comic, some played straight). Actual jokes are recycled, not in the form of words, but in the sense of concepts and scenes. It’s laid-back post-modern wittily ironically flippant British sci-fi humour. The underlying tone is something in the vicinity of Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams, and Grant Naylor. A lot of things about this book are very familiar, particularly the jokes. I’m serious about re-using material, though. And then spends the second half of the evening telling a long long joke and wandering off before the punchline. I never saw him perform, because he was long, long before my time, but I get the feeling he would have been one of those guys who tells the same old jokes in the same old ways, but is somehow funny despite all that. Michael Marshall Smith used to be a comedian.
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