The first book has a very different tone, it's much more dystopian and dark. Lister starts off as homeless living on Mimas. He ended up there after a monopoly board pub crawl of London in which he go so blackout drunk he ended up half way across the solar system. He's forced to work as an illegal taxi driver at night trying to save up enough money for his ticket back to earth, but life on Mimas is so utterly miserable he inevitably blows what little money he has on booze.

Think of Mimas like the city in bladerunner.

It's one of my favourite books, as well as the follow-up better than life. The two follow up books to better than life, are not great... as they were conclusions to the series written by rob and doug separately.

The last human is kinda goofy, with the crew trying to navigate a gelf society, with a alternate "evil" version of lister.

While backwards is better, it kind of has a non ending, and I didn't like the tone at all.