One year after Last Human, it was Rob Grants time to shine, and he opted for the burn bright and short ideology, making this his final Red Dwarf outing. Unlike Doug's decision to have Kochanski back and in love with Lister, Rob decided to effectively immediately kill her off by having her, before the novel even begins, age backwards to a point of first meeting Lister, and then promptly forgetting him. Then Lister goes to prison. Then Holly is destroyed and Red Dwarf is turned into a giant torture chamber. Ace Rimmer is in this novel by the way! But he also quickly dies. Then the Armageddon virus kills Kryten and Rimmer. It turns out, when Grant Naylor were a thing, Grant was stopping Naylor from writing a perfect, romantic, give-quiche-a-chance, happy ending, while Naylor was stopping Grant from literally killing everybody in horrific and pointless ways. What's the expression? Ah yes. Smeg happens. Backwards drew on inspiration from episodes Backwards, Dimension Jump and Gunmen of the Apocalypse.