There's no kind of atmosphere

I hope Rob Grant would take it in the intended spirit that when I heard the news of his sudden death, all I could think was "All most of us get is 'Mind that bus!' 'What bus?' Splat!" The first six and a half series of original flavor Red Dwarf (1988–99) were a social staple of my sophomore year of college, watched primarily in my case from the top half of a bunk bed occupied by a structurally unwise number of students who would shortly branch out into whatever British television comedy we could get hold of the tapes for. It became an immediate and ineradicable part of our language. Decades later, the number of quotations from especially the first three series that have worked themselves into my present household lingo would be difficult to estimate without a rewatch. In storage with the rest of my library, I still have some of the tie-in novels, including at least one of the separately authored parallel continuations, which unfortunately for this memoriam may have been Doug Naylor's. I cannot find that I ever saw another project of Grant's except for the first series of The 10%ers (1993–96) and I am still stricken to lose yet another artist while Kissinger's heirs don't even seem to be in this machine. Not everybody has to be dead, Dave.