Redshirts – John Scalzi

Tor, copyright 2012, printed 2012, 314 pages

ISBN: 978-0-7653-1699-8

Read: September 2012, at age 34

It’s a standalone satire of/homage to bad sci-fi, set on the starship Enterprise Intrepid.

From the dust jacket:

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, and Andrew is even more thrilled to the ship’s xenobiology laboratory, 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 some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces, (2) the ship’s captain, it’s chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations, and (3) sadly, at least one low-ranked crew member is invariably killed.

Unsurprisingly, the savvier members belowdecks avoid away missions at all costs. Then Andrew stumbles on information that completely 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.

My reactions – Spoilers aplenty! 

One good thing:  It was worth several amused grins, and was also thought-provoking.

One bad thing:  The humour was more self-aware than I’d prefer.

Overall:

It was a good book.  Not great, and while it was funny, it was more of the wry grin variety than the 'set the book down and chuckle for a while, getting strange looks on the bus' variety that I’d been led to expect.  I think that was partly due to somewhat overhyped buzz that I’d been getting, and because I really liked Old Man’s War, so I maybe expected a bit much. 

It wasn't long into the first chapter, where the paragraph –

“But then he tripped and one of the land worms ate his face and he died anyway.”

-pretty much sets the tone of the book.  At least the story part, anyway. 

The books is structured as a story with three codas, and the story portion never really leaves the feel of a poorly-written TV episode, with a lot of meta-humour, self-conscious humour, and a wonderful, makes-the-whole-book-better-in-retrospect twist at the end.  It was really well done, but… I didn’t really like the tone.  It was too silly, too self-aware for me to really buy in to the characters.  Pretty much every complaint that I can think of comes back to that.  I didn’t buy that the characters actually knew about TV shows.  But that’s a trope that’s being specifically played with.  There’s a LOT of things like that.

The codas were my favorite parts of the book – they brought out some actual emotion, closure to the story and the characters, and didn't have that ‘bad sci-fi’ tone that I didn't appreciate in the main story.

Bottom line, it was an extremely well done satire/homage (I’m still not quite sure which it is, and it doesn't really matter) but it didn't work for me the way it might have for some other people.

Rating: 3

Other Opinions:
As with many newly-published books, this is a very heavily-reviewed book.  I read a few - here were a few I  enjoyed:

SF Reviews.net
Russ Allbery
Los Angeles Review of Books
io9.com