320 pages
English language
Published April 6, 2012 by Tor.
Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It's a prestige posting, with the chance to serve on "Away Missions" alongside the starship's famous senior officers.
Life couldn't be better...until Andrew begins to realize that 1) every Away Mission involves a lethal confrontation with alien forces, 2) the ship's senior officers always survive these confrontations, and 3) sadly, at least one low-ranking crew member is invariably killed. Unsurprisingly, the savvier crew members below decks avoid Away Missions at all costs.
Then Andrew stumbles on information that transforms his and his colleagues' understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is...and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives. Redshirts by John Scalzi is the winner of the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Redshifts was funny, goofy, satirical. Definitely a fun read. I went in blind without a synopsis and I'd recommend the same for you.
If you're a fan of lower decks or the Orville you'll probably like it. Or truly hate it. But at 300 pages it is worth the risk.
Pirandello meets Star Trek. Scalzi takes an interesting premise and has a great deal of fun with it as the "below decks" crew of a starship in the future start to wonder why so many of them suffer horrible deaths while the bridge crew remain unscathed. The crewmen and -women decide to investigate, and the ensuing romp gives Scalzi plenty of opportunity for humor. A fun read with some poignant moments as the plot develops.
I felt the need for a little Scalzi snark and this is the snarkiest of his novels. It delivered on that in spades along with the entertainment. I inhaled this in one sitting, and there were definite snorts and giggles as I went through it. Yes, its only 4 stars on the top line but that's because a reader needs to be in on the joke. You have to be into Star Trek etc for any of this to make sense. Quality Scalzi, can recommend.
Layers and layers of (mostly) fun and thought provoking reading.
Most importantly: DRM-Free
This is an enjoyable, easy read. Both times I've read this I've though "ugh this is a long book for a plot that's spoiled by the back matter, and then discovered/forgotten it's a bit more clever than that, and keeps going.
But yeah I'm not quite buying "ironically bad writing and characterisation" where all the people are largely different based on snark levels.
What a fun read! And, Wheaton did a great job bringing the characters to life as the reader for the audio edition.
Honestly, I expected this to be a Star Trek spoof. That reference is hard to miss from the title, but it really is more than that. The meta-textual and recursive references give this story a bit more depth than the typical spoof.
Coda 3 was my favorite part of the book because there is so much potential to help future Jenkins. The Coda doesn't really satisfy my plot desires, but it gives them some life.
I give this 4 instead of 5 stars because Scalzi leaves a ton of potential on the table. The story could have continued and/or been twice as long; or he could have given us a sequel or two. There is a lot here that can be explored.
A pleasure to read.
Try to come to the book with only the most basic of expectations. Come knowing (hopefully) that Redshirts are the basic expendable unit in the Star Trek universe. Bring your knowledge of tropes and poorly thought out plots and thingymagics, because they'll become essential reference material for this novel.
Then let it completely defy your expectations. Most Hugo winners have an air of grandeur about them. They set out to be morality tales, or epic space operas. This one doesn't. When I first started reading I couldn't work out why this would have won such a prestigious award. By the end I was in complete agreement. It's ease of humour and air of familiarity makes this one of the most accessible science fiction books I've read for a long time. Hell, I'd almost class this outside of the SF genre and closer to satire. Can a …
A pleasure to read.
Try to come to the book with only the most basic of expectations. Come knowing (hopefully) that Redshirts are the basic expendable unit in the Star Trek universe. Bring your knowledge of tropes and poorly thought out plots and thingymagics, because they'll become essential reference material for this novel.
Then let it completely defy your expectations. Most Hugo winners have an air of grandeur about them. They set out to be morality tales, or epic space operas. This one doesn't. When I first started reading I couldn't work out why this would have won such a prestigious award. By the end I was in complete agreement. It's ease of humour and air of familiarity makes this one of the most accessible science fiction books I've read for a long time. Hell, I'd almost class this outside of the SF genre and closer to satire. Can a novel be both? Definitely, but if taking away one label and leaving the other gives it a further reach, then I would be glad to see it in more hands.
Superb.
[b:Six Characters in Search of an Author|741618|Six Characters in Search of an Author|Luigi Pirandello|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1358967186s/741618.jpg|15468851] but funny.
Hilarious, in fact.
Not too sure about the final two chapters or the Codas, however. The codas seem a bit redundant and the final joke of the main narrative seems a bit gratuitous. I can see that the codas "close" a heap of characters and that they add an opportunity to belabour some points about what constitutes "good" and "bad" dramatic writing, but all of that seems as if it should be plainly implicit in the main work to anybody with wit enough to actually read it. "Plainly implicit" is a nice oxymoron, don't you think? Anyway - all the characters who get "closed" don't really need it, either as they are basically extras - which makes them expendable, right?
Humourous and just generally entertaining, this is a pastiche of Galaxy Quest (the movie) and Lower Decks (The TNG Episode), with a sprinkling of existentialism and writing critique thrown in too. An all round fun light read with just a little oomph.
