Redshirts

At first glance, this is a superficial work which riffs on the infamous "Redshirt" of doom from the series Star Trek. However, I was impressed by the way the author manages to make it more meaningful than just a work of satire.

We get to know the characters; we see the triumphs and failures of their fairly unremarkable lives; we get a glimpse of their hopes and their dreams and their souls. They live and then they die. They are unextraordinary and never make it into the history books (or perhaps, end up nothing more than a name in red font appearing in someone else's Wikipedia entry).

And yet, and yet... they are nevertheless important as human beings. For the time during which they live, and the people whose lives they intersect, they make a difference. They matter.

I think that is such a powerful message, especially for those of us who've lived long enough to get a realistic perception of our relative importance to the world and to history - that it's okay to not be Rosalind Franklin, or Jonas Salk, or Martin Luther King Jr., or Sally Ride. That it's enough to make our own place in the world and make the lives of the people around us a little bit nicer.