![]() This is what Scalzi read at MiniCon that had the audience on a constant roll of laughter. ![]() ![]() The prologue is a scene that feels like a straight up parody of Star Trek, with a redshirt POV character meeting a quick and gruesome fate. But it wouldn’t be so funny if you were one of those crew members, having gone through Academy training and getting stationed on an exploratory vessel just to get eaten by random planetary fauna. Looking back on the series, the redshirt cannon fodder members of the crew are kind of funny, particularly to an SF geek who likes to obsess about things and look for patterns. According to Wikipedia, 73% of crew deaths in the original series wore red shirts. In the original Star Trek TV series the main recurring characters of the show were often accompanied by acting extras who frequently died in some way that illustrated the dangers of the particular planet they were visiting that week. The term “redshirt” refers to a “cannon fodder” character in a piece of fiction who exists strictly for the purpose of killing in order to raise the stakes. ![]() It is relevant here, so for the benefit of anyone who isn’t aware, I’ll briefly explain. Most people who spend a lot of time around geeks like myself are familiar with the term “redshirt”. ![]()
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