Grant Naylor Books In Order

Publication Order of Red Dwarf Scripts Books

Publication Order of Red Dwarf Books

Grant Naylor is the writing team of Doug Naylor and Rob Grant, who are best known as the authors of the “Red Dwarf” series of novels. They came to their name by combining their last names into one easy to remember one. Naylor and Grant have often called themselves a gestalt entity or something of a Legion. In the author notes for their novels, they enlarge on the joke by saying that they have separate wives for tax purposes. Their collective form has also been caricatured to Nan’t Greylar. The two authors began writing together during the 1980s. They were responsible for writing “Cliché” and “Son of Cliché” for BBC Radio 4. They also worked together on TV programs such as “The Ten Percenters,” “Spitting Image” and several Jasper Carrott projects. The pair has also been responsible for writing “The Chicken Song” lyrics in addition to several musical parodies for “Spitting Image” the British satirical TV show.

The collaboration between Naylor and Grant which became Grant Naylor had much success with “Red Dwarf,” the science fiction comedic series. Following the success of the “Red Dwarf” series, the two authors ended their collaboration during the mid to late 1990s. It was at a time when Grant Naylor was writing the Ten Percenters. With the collaboration falling apart, Naylor was forced to write everything on his own. Doug left the partnership with a controlling stake in “Red Dwarf,” even as his partner Rob Grant asserted that he had to leave the partnership because of creative differences. Nonetheless, Grant also said that leaving the series would make it possible to work on more projects as he wanted to be remembered for more than “Red Dwarf.” Working with other writers, Doug Naylor wrote the seventh and eighth episodes of the “Red Dwarf” series before shutting it all down. In 1999 and 2000, Rob Grant wrote the “Strangerers” and “Dark Ages,” two television series that did very well. In the past four years, he authored several other works including “Cruel Aliens” an animated series.

Since 2009, Doug Naylor’s Grant Naylor Productions has been working on “Red Dwarf” DVD releases as well as planning new series. In 2012, Grant Naylor Productions supported and funded by Dave released “Series X.” Doug would then release “Series XI” and soon after he released “Series XII.” All of these series were released on the Dave platform.

“Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers,” the first novel of the series by Doug Naylor is a novel set in 2180 Mimas. Dave Lister the lead of the novel is a Liverpudlian that has just had an epic night bender as he is celebrating turning 25. But then he wakes up to find himself a billion kilometers away from the capital. He has the mother of all hangovers and finds himself on the surface of one of the moons of Saturn. He is desperate to get back home and hatches a plan of getting into the Space Corps and then get hired on a ship bound for Earth. Once he is home, he intends to go AWOL. But the only ship willing to give him employment is the Red Dwarf, a city sized ore hauler that belongs to Jupiter Mining Corporation. Before it heads to Earth, it needs to go to Triton on an urgent assignment and hence Lister will take four and half years before he is home. He is bored to death by Arnold Rimmer his anally retentive roommate and soon gets his heart broken by Kristine Konchaski the navigation officer. Wanting to be alone, he decides to bring an unquarantined cat on board and is banished to temporal stasis where he is to live alone for the duration of the trip. Unfortunately, the fusion reactor on the ship explodes releasing a deadly radiation pulse leaving him the only survivor. The Dwarf’s AI takes the ship into deep space and waits to revive him when the radiation dies off. But when he wakes up, it is three million years later, and the only companions he has are a senile AI, a holographic simulation of Rimmer and his evolved pet cat. He now has to get them all back to Earth.

Grant Naylor’s “Better Than Life” is set three million years in the future in deep space. The last human alive is Dave Lister who lives on the space mining ship Red Dwarf. All he wants is to go home but now he finds himself trapped in “Better Than Life,” a virtual reality computer game. In the game, he lives in Bedford Falls and is the husband to Kristine Konchaski with whom he has two children. The cat lives in a private Gothic castle and has his every needs and wants fulfilled by Valkyrie warriors dressed in skimpy undergarments. For amusement, he often goes to hunt dogs perched on top of his fire breathing yak. Krysten the service mechanoid washes mountains of clothes every day. Rimmer his former bunk mate is married to a beautiful woman since he is now a multi billionaire. He makes use of a time machine to bring back Napoleon Bonaparte, Julius Caesar, and General George S. Patton with whom he then plays a game called Risk. AI Holly who is outside the fantasy game is on mission to get back his former IQ but given his senility, goes to the sentient toaster who provides some terrible advice. It is a game that is so hard to escape from that most players will eventually die in it.
“Last Human” the third novel of the “Red Dwarf” series of novels continues following the life of Dave Lister. He had been gazing out of a porthole in the ship while chronicling the series of events that led to him being stuck in space. He had made several poor decisions in unreliable friendships, and career choice that he believes led him to his unfortunate circumstances. He is now on a prison ship that is headed to the outer cosmos, to a very inhospitable penal colony. Growing up, all he ever wanted to become was an icon of the softmetal guitar. Could things get worse for the man on who shoulders rest the fate of the human race?