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Redshirts

John Scalzi (Goodreads Author)

3.85 · Rating details · 78,828 ratings · 9,348 reviews

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 thrilled all the more to be assigned to the ship’s Xenobiology laboratory.

Life couldn’t be better…until Andrew begins to pick up on the fact that:
(1) every Away Mission involves some kind of ...more

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Hardcover, 320 pages

Published June 5th 2012 by Tor Books

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Feb 04, 2012 Patrick rated it it was amazing

Simply said, I loved this book.

If you want me to go into more detail, I can. But that's the heart of the matter.

I don't do spoilers. So instead, let me say this: This book was fun. It was clever. It was geeky.

But most of all, it made me laugh. I'm not just saying it was funny. I'm saying I actually laughed out loud in the restaurant where I was reading it. Then later at the coffee shop. Then later still when I was reading it at home, even though I was alone in the house. Even thoug ...more

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Jul 12, 2012 unknown rated it it was ok

Shelves: audiobooks, 2012, book-club, meta, sci-fi-fantasy, wssfbc

I was going to write a review for this one, but then I realized I could basically just cut and paste my review of Agent to the Stars, changing relevant details like "plot" and "character names" and just keeping everything else exactly the same. Because this book, like all of Scalzi's books except maybe Old Man's War and the two Old Man's War books I didn't read because I didn't really like the second book, suffers (or maybe benefits, I don't know, apparently people love this dude) from being written by Jo I was going to write a review for this one, but then I realized I could basically just cut and paste my review of Agent to the Stars, changing relevant details like "plot" and "character names" and just keeping everything else exactly the same. Because this book, like all of Scalzi's books except maybe Old Man's War and the two Old Man's War books I didn't read because I didn't really like the second book, suffers (or maybe benefits, I don't know, apparently people love this dude) from being written by John Scalzi. More specifically, John Scalzi, Popular Blogger and Honorary President of Internet Nerds.

The plusses of being a book written by John Scalzi: you probably have a good premise, you can be read in about three hours, and you are probably going to sell pretty well. The negatives: you won't be as funny as you think you are, the cleverness of your premise will be worn thin even at a three-hour reading length, and all of your characters will sound exactly the same as not only each other, but all of the characters in all of John Scalzi's novels (more specifically, they will sound like a blog post by John Scalzi). Oh, also on the downside, Wil Wheaton will narrate you as an audiobook, which is bad news not only because you don't work very well as an audiobook (unless your listeners like it when every single line of dialogue is attributed, even during long, quippy back-and-forths, though I guess you could argue it is necessary since everyone sounds the same), but because Wil Wheaton is kind of shockingly terrible as a reader of audiobooks (though he does make all the characters sound the same, so maybe that's intentionally meta).

Speaking of meta: this book is very in love with itself, especially the second half, and especially especially the three codas, which are kind of infuriating, if only because they reveal how lazy of a writer Scalzi is: he hints that there is this deeper level beyond his story, one worth exploring, even though he didn't bother writing a story interesting enough to make me care to do it.

Because Scalzi is kind of lazy. I mean, the incredibly hard-working kind of lazy, where you get everything done, but you get it done just enough, and you think it doesn't matter because your boss didn't notice, or your teacher doesn't grade very hard and you got an A anyway, or you are a really nice guy and your fans are going to praise everything you do regardless of quality (hi, Joss Whedon!).

I mean, consider: all the problems in this book, from the samey characters to the limp plot to the unearned sentimentality to the not-very-funny funny dialogue, could probably have been cleared up with, I don't know, another draft or two. But Scalzi is very busy being Scalzi, so he wrote this one in five weeks (because NaNoWriMo just isn't enough time to do a thorough job), sent it off to his editor, and proceded to write 11 blogs posts and attend five comic book conventions before finally dropping into bed, exhausted, but confident that his teacher was probably still going to give him that A, because he's a really nice guy and always makes funny comments in class.

And, judging by his NYT best-seller status, he got that A! But not from me. ...more

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Dec 05, 2014 Anne rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Anne by: Nenia ☠️ Hecka Wicked ☠️ Campbell

Shelves: read-in-2015, humor, sci-fi, time-travel, read-in-2017

4.5 stars

Re-read 2017
My original feeling for the book stand, but I did find the 3 Codas at the end seemed a tad more tedious and unneeded this time around.

Orignal review: 2015

Fanfuckingtastic!
I could totally slap myself for not reading this sooner.

description

The premise of this story is that Andy Dahl and a group of his friends, who all work aboard the starship Intrepid, start to notice a troubling pattern happening on the Away Missions.
And they aren't the only ones who've noticed...

Does everyone know what a Redshirt is?
On the off-chance you aren't a Star Trek fan or maybe haven't been2015
stars
Re-read ...more

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Sep 17, 2017 Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin rated it really liked it

Recommended to Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ by: Matthew

Shelves: sci-fi, own

"There's something seriously wrong with this ship," Dahl repeated.
"Yeah," Finn said. "I think you might be right."

My face when I figured out what was going on

I loved the original Star Trek so much and I still watch it to this day 😄 So the idea of this book having references to the show was cool. There are a group of people that are tired of being killed on the show. They don't understand what is going on and are out to find out what it is.

"The red shirt," Abnett said. "You know, in the original Star Trek, they al
...more

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Jul 28, 2014 Alejandro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, humor, novel, time-travel, star-trek, alternate-reality

Death... the Final Fate...
These are the voyages of the Starship Intrepid.
Its continuing mission,
to kill naive new crewmembers,
to seek out cheap thrills and easy lamentations,
to boldly go where no redshirt has gone before!

I knew since some time ago about this novel but until now I had been able to read it, and I am truly glad that I did it!

One of the best Star Trek novels without really being about Star Trek.

It's a common knowledge but again for those neophytes to the top ...more

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Apr 02, 2012 Kemper rated it liked it

Shelves: humor, sci-fi, 2012, tv-movies

Halfway through this book, I was thinking that I could do something funny in this review with Will Farrell’s character from the movie Stranger Than Fiction. But then it had to go and actually reference Stranger Than Fiction and ruin my plans.

Thanks for nothing, Scalzi!

Anyhow, in the distant future the starship Intrepid explores
the galaxy with a crew led by a bold captain and his logical science officer. A group of newly assigned crew members quickly notice that odd and bizarre things happ Halfway through this book, I was thinking that I could do something funny in this review with Will Farrell’s character from the movie Stranger Than Fiction. But then it had to go and actually reference Stranger Than Fiction and ruin my plans.

Thanks for nothing, Scalzi!

Anyhow, in the distant future the starship Intrepid explores
the galaxy with a crew led by a bold captain and his logical science officer. A group of newly assigned crew members quickly notice that odd and bizarre things happen when they get around the captain and his senior staff. Routine missions become dangerous. The basic laws of physics seem to break down. Common sense is forgotten. And god help you if you’re one of the unlucky bastards who ends up on an away team with them because you’re probably coming back to the ship in a body bag. Assuming there’s enough left of your corpse to bring back at all.

Scalzi took what could be a one-joke premise from the old gag about the extras wearing red on Star Trek being disposable and having a very short shelf life, and he turned that concept into a funny and interesting examination on the nature of fiction and free will. I don’t want to say too much about the plot because the twists and turns are part of the fun, but I liked how the book went off in a couple of surprising directions.

While I had fun with it, Scalzi’s style is becoming a bit odd to me, and that was enough to take it from four stars to three. He skips almost any kind of descriptive writing to focus almost exclusively on dialogue driven plot. For example, there isn’t a single word about what the ship or the characters look like. Skimping on the exposition in the interest of rushing through the main part of the story makes it compulsively readable, but it also makes it feel a bit thin. So while I was completely into the story of the crew fighting against their fate, a few more details about what that looked like would have been welcome.

One other minor nitpick. (view spoiler)

Despite some of my problems with it, Scalzi still writes with heart and humor, and sci-fi could use a lot more of that.
...more

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Aug 05, 2017 Matthew rated it it was amazing

Shelves: humor, book-a-book-club, library, favorites, tear-jerkers, 2017, sci-fi

It's never a good thing to wear a red shirt in sci-fi . . .

Bad things happen to guys in red shirts . . .

You always have a couple of disposable extras for an away mission . . .

But, what if they figured it out and decided to do something about it?

This book was excellent. I am very impressed with ...more

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Nov 26, 2013 Lyn rated it really liked it

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John “I’m not Gene Roddenberry but I dressed up like him once for Halloween” Scalzi could have also been Redshirts: Existential Musings in the Internet Age by a Satire Minded Child of the Eighties.

Winner of the Hugo and the Locus Award, I can see the spinning wheels in the minds of the award voters / selection committee of both trophies – “A fun, unique twist on an old Star Trek gag but then he goes and ends it with an existential quest for meaning amidst ...more

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Oct 29, 2014 Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, humor, fantasy

What if the redshirt ~~extras~~ low-ranking crew members on ~~Star Trek~~ The Chronicles of the Intrepid realized that whenever one of them accompanies the starship's officers on an away mission to a planet or somewhere, that crew member was extremely likely to be killed?

description

Naturally, this creates a dog-eat-dog situation where the long-term members of the crew learn to disappear quickly when description

Naturally, this creates a dog-eat-dog situation where the long-term members of the crew learn to disappear quickly whenever an officer comes around, and the newer members have a very high mortality rate. Finally, a few of the junior crew members decide to try to get to the bottom of this mysterious phenomenon and, if possible, try to find a way to end it.

This book is extremely funny in parts, especially if you're familiar with the original Star Trek and some of its characters and quirks, but it's really kind of an odd book at the same time. Most of the book is a satire, a little on the superficial side and very snappy-dialogue-driven. There's a lot to make fun of with Trek, as fond as I am of it, and it's not all about the callous and weird ways in which random crew members die. (I did think the captain here needed a few sexy alien ladies slinking up to him.) The answer to the mystery of why so many crew members are dying on this particular starship doesn't really hold water logically AT ALL, but I've suspended disbelief on a lot shakier plot lines in my Trek-watching over the years, and I was willing to roll with it.

Then the story gets a little bit more screwy and a lot more meta, and at about the 70% mark the main story ends. The rest of the book is three "codas" written from the points of view of three very minor characters from the first part of the story, telling a little more about what happened in their lives after the main story ended. They're interesting, but so very different in tone from the rest of the book that the contrast is a little jarring. They're kind of sobering, in fact. And no, that wasn't me you saw surreptitiously wiping away a tear as I turned the last page.

3 1/2 stars. I may decide to round up when I see how I feel about this in another day or two. ETA: I have in fact decided to round up, after chatting with Anne in the thread to her very funny review. It made me realize that I recall this book with a lot of affection, despite its flaws.

Content advisory: fairly frequent F-bombs, and some innuendos and crude talk in a few places. ...more

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Sep 28, 2012 Dan Schwent rated it liked it

Shelves: 2012, funny, the-scalz, sf

The starship Intrepid seeks out new worlds and boldly goes where no man has gone before. However, as Ensign Andrew Dahl soon discovers, low-ranked crew members die more often aboard the Intrepid than brain cells at a Spring Break weekend while the senior officers, besides Lt. Kerensky, always survive without a scratch. As they dig deeper, what will Andy and his friends uncover?

Anyone who's watched more than two or three episodes of Star Trek knows that it's always the extra, or redsh ...more

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Jun 18, 2012 Richard Derus rated it really liked it

The Theme Song of the Book! Any song whose chorus begins with "They said this air would be breathable" gets my vote.

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: 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 thrilled all the more to be assigned to the ship's Xenobiology laboratory. Life couldn't be better...until Andrew begins to pick up on the fact that (1) every ...more

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Feb 27, 2015 Kelly (and the Book Boar) rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2015, own-it-spent-my-food-money-on-it

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

Is there anyone left on the planet who doesn’t know what a “Redshirt” is? There is?

Ha! Just kidding. Okay, for the three of you who aren’t familiar with the term, I’ll let Scalzi ‘splain it to you . . .

“The red shirt. You know, in the original Star Trek, they always had Kirk and Bones and Spock and then some poor dude in a red shirt who got vaporized before the first commercial. The moral of ...more

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Jul 13, 2015 ✘✘ Sarah ✘✘ (former Nefarious Breeder of Murderous Crustaceans) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015, set-sail-for-disappointment, science-fiction, br-2015, i-used-to-hate-space, ha-ha-ha

► BR with the BBB gang starting December 18, 2015.

Okay. Everyone says this book reminds them of Galaxy Quest. And after saying this book reminds them of Galaxy Quest, said people usually start squeaking around in glee like manic mice. Well I have a confession to make: I am one of those freaks who hardly ever watches movies and/or TV. Please don't break down and cry. I know how difficult it must be for you to accept I'm not as perfect as you thought I was, but it's the sad, sad truth. Fear not my friends, for as impossi2015.
Okay. ...more

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Jun 11, 2012 Nataliya rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: hugo-nebula, locus-winner, 2014-reads

“Sooner or later the Narrative will come for each of us.”

Thanks to cultural osmosis even I, the person who (according to a colleague of mine) lost quite a few nerd points for having never seen a single Star Trek episode, am somehow familiar with the concept of 'redshirts' - the unfortunate extras whose lot is to die dramatically on screen just to pad the plot and remind the viewer that the near-invincible main characters are indeed, so to say, in a real pickle.

"In other words, crew deaths are a featurpickle.

“Sooner or later the Narrative will come for each of us.”

"In other words, crew deaths are a feature, not a bug."

And so the story goes: a bunch of new crew members on a starship 'Intrepid' discover that despite being to themselves very much real, they are little but the doomed 'Redshirts' on the not-so-good Star Trek rip-off third-rate TV show.

“It’s messed up that the most rational explanation for what does go on in this ship is that a television show intrudes on our reality and warps it. But that’s not the worst thing about it.”

“Jesus Christ,” Finn said. “If that’s not the worst thing, what is?”

“That as far as I can tell,” Jenkins said, “it’s not actually a very good show.”

When the bizarre and incomprehensible to any real reason logic of TV 'Narrative' seizes control of their lives, the events and actions quickly turn rather cinematically idiotic, and a few crew members are invariably destined to die gruesome and pointless deaths while a few officers - clearly the show's protagonists - survive despite all odds. Over the years, certain crew members have even learned to semi-successfully game the system in order to survive. Because what else can you do but succumb to the Narrative, no matter how poorly written and unfair it is?

“We've already established whoever is writing us is an asshole.”

This was my first time reading anything by John Scalzi, and it kept me quite entertained, assuring that it will not be the last. There was something about its constantly shifting style and message that suits my easily distractible nature - I guess it was the constant oscillation between smart satire, slapstick comedy, eye rolling 'meta', sappy sentimentality and unexpected infusion of searching for the meaning of life and self-discovery. All together it creates an interesting combination that at times flows smoothly and at times teeters on the verge of losing its footing just a bit.

But overall it worked. It worked even despite the (honestly, quite unnecessary) three 'codas' stuck onto the ending if the book as though their only function was to pad the word count just a little bit. I wish they were left out, and the ending - just the way it was, abrupt and unexpected and yet completely necessary given the internal logic of the narrative - was left to stand on its own.

But even with the extra padding, the story worked.

“Whether you're an extra or the hero, this story is about to end. When it's done, whatever you want to be will be up to you and only you. It will happen away from the eyes of any audience and from the hand of any writer. You will be your own man.”

I liked it, I really did. I had fun reading it, and now I'm trying to decide which Scalzi book I want to try next. Thoughts?

And no, I'll never ever again will be able to look at any TV show without imagining the implications of the script governing the lives of real people.

“Other science fiction shows had science advisers and consultants," Hanson pointed out.

"It's science fiction," Weinstein said. "The second part of that phrase matters too."

"But you're making it bad science fiction," Hester said. "And we have to live in it.”

...more

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Jun 23, 2018 J.L. Sutton rated it liked it

In John Scalzi’s The Redshirts, the newest ensigns aboard the Union Capital Flagship, the Intrepid, recognize they are expendable. Not only that, they realize that every episodic confrontation of their ship requires that a low-ranking crew member (namely them) be killed. They do what they can to avoid the captain and the other bridge crew, but they know their days aboard the Intrepid are numbered. With a bit of research, they learn they are in a similar position to characters in a television sh ...more

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Aug 09, 2017 Brent rated it it was amazing

Shelves: scifi, humor

Review 2.0 – Commissioned by me, several days after finishing the book and realizing that I had blubbered all over the original review (under the influence of the codas – I must admit.)

Consider it a pre-coda if you will.

What’s up with this book? Why are reviews all over the map on this one?

Because this story is like an ice-cream cone.

A triple scoop ice-cream cone, to be specific, one that presents a series of three distinct flavors that change as you work you ...more

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Dec 18, 2015 Robin (Bridge Four) rated it really liked it

Shelves: awesome-audio, fantastic-fantasy, super-sidekicks, 4-5-stars, sci-fi, chick-i-want-to-hang-out-with, buddy-read

John Scalzi is the Amazon daily deal today 11Feb17 here I really liked this one.

If you liked Star Trek and Galaxy Quest it might be right up your alley.

4.5 Guy is Gonna Die Stars

description

Buddy Read with my Sci-Fi loving peeps at Buddies Books and Baubles

RedShirts seems a lot like a combo of Galaxy Quest and Stranger Than Fiction which means I LOVED IT!!! This hit all my Sci-Fi fangirl hot buttons making fun of all the tropes from those early Scalley.
4.5 ...more

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Jul 05, 2018 Kevin Kuhn rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

I’m a bit torn on this book. On one hand, it was funny but not hilarious. I found the character’s to be a bit flat. I love Scalzi’s books, but if I have a complaint, it’s that all the character’s personalities seem too similar, even males and females. It was also short with the main story being about 280 pages. It has three Coda’s that take it to 314, and while they were interesting, they didn’t add a great deal to the story and they weren’t all that funny. So, I guess I went into this hoping fo ...more

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Apr 08, 2015 Darth J rated it really liked it

3.5 stars

What can I say? If you know about Scalzi and his relationship with readers then you already know why I would want to read something by him. To keep it short, I found this book to be mostly clever and entertaining. The part where the characters come to our universe was like breaking the fourth wall, which I just didn’t care for. But I like the way this man’s mind works.

Also, have this meme in memory of our late Blueshirt:
3.5 stars

What can I say? If you know about Scalzi and his relationship with readers then you already know why I would want to read something by him. To keep it short, I found this book to be mostly clever and entertaining. The part where the characters come to our universe was like breaking the fourth wall, which I just didn’t care for. But I like the way this man’s mind works.

Also, have this meme in memory of our late Blueshirt:

...more

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Dec 23, 2014 Scott rated it it was ok

Shelves: science-fiction

If there was a Booker for ‘Best Concept, Most Poorly Executed’, Redshirts would be hiring a tux and polishing an acceptance speech. This is a novel built on a great idea – imagine if all the disposable non-core-cast characters constantly killed for dramatic effect in sci-fi TV shows realised what was happening to them and rebelled against it, doing their damnedest to avoid going on missions with important, non-expendable crewmembers, trying to get transferred off the ship, etc.

From this great If there was a Booker for ‘Best Concept, Most Poorly Executed’, Redshirts would be hiring a tux and polishing an acceptance speech. This is a novel built on a great idea – imagine if all the disposable non-core-cast characters constantly killed for dramatic effect in sci-fi TV shows realised what was happening to them and rebelled against it, doing their damnedest to avoid going on missions with important, non-expendable crewmembers, trying to get transferred off the ship, etc.

From this great idea comes a thin, ailing novel desperate for a big bowl of Description (of which there is little) and an emergency transfusion of Interesting Characters (of which there are few).

The lack of scene setting and description of the locations and objects in the story really got to me. I read the whole book with no real idea at all of what the central stage for the story – a large spaceship – looked like. The ship could have resembled a gigantic orange phallus wearing a Panama hat and I would have been none the wiser (actually that’s how I’m imagining it from now on- that would make a pretty great flagship). My guess is that Scalzi assumed his readers would be such big fans of the shows he is satirising that they would do all the work themselves, slotting in The Enterprise or Galactica as needed. The lack of descriptive text made every location in the story feeling like a series of shiny white rooms with no distinguishing features- spaceflight as designed by Steve Jobs.

One of the reasons I love SF is the richness of the worlds and environments evoked in the genre – Alistair Reynolds’ gargantuan, baroque Lighthuggers, the beauty of Robert Mann’s planet Paradise, and the vivid memories I still carry from my time with Dan Simmon’s Hyperion. Redshirts in comparison is a blank slate, and while I don’t expect James Joyce level detail from SF novels I at least need a couple of descriptive hooks to hang my imagination on.

Combined with a tendency for all the characters to sound the same Redshirts is a largely colourless novel. Still, it’s a fairly light story with some good funny bits and it flows OK, or at least it does until about two thirds in. At this point the story shifts location, along with tone, and gets way too meta for me, losing most of what had made it interesting.

The last section of the story, a series of codas, also really jarred with me. What had been in large part a light comedic story is finished with some maudlin, sadly meaningful postscripts that seemed like a last-ditch attempt to make the story more worthy.

Overall, this book was a bit of a bummer. From the blurb I was expecting great comedic SF – something along the lines of Red Dwarf or The Hitchhikers Guide. What I got was a novel that wasn’t consistently funny, or particularly well put together.

I didn’t truly hate Redshirts, but it’s so much less than it could have been.
...more

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Oct 23, 2014 Yodamom rated it really liked it

Shelves: stand-alone, memory-lane, i-was-pushed, pure-awesomeness, hahahahahaha

4.2 A twisted tale of the poor Redshirt extras that all became so killed on that classic TV Show. What would happen if they were real, and if they figured out their odds of death ?
Funny, smart, wickedly twisted and just fun.

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Sep 15, 2018 Manuel Antão rated it did not like it

Shelves: 2018

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

"Let us violate cakes together"

In "Redshirts" by John Scalzi

(*day dreaming*)

I applied for a job to be a licensed fiction writer of sorts last year - it was working on flavour text and copy for the Star Trek Franchise. The interview was heavily focused on my ability to write within the constraints of their authorial voice and existing publications - as stringent as work ...more

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Jun 11, 2013 Mike (the Paladin) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

I started out thinking this would be a 4 star read. As it opens playing on the cliches of science fiction TV (specifically Star Trek) it is funny. In places it's hilarious.

I saw this book reviewed back when it first showed up and I read enough "blah" reviews that I decided I didn't want to put time or money into it. But recently I've had it recommended and seen some "rave reviews" about it so, I decided to give it a try. It's sort of an odd read as it almost travels in an descending ...more

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Sep 06, 2012 Char rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-book, science-fiction, humor

As a big fan of Star Trek in almost all of its incarnations, I thought for sure I would adore this audio book, especially since it was narrated by Wil Wheaton. I was partially right.

I did adore Wil Wheaton's narration. The only problem I had with it were the "he saids" and "she saids". There was one of these tags after (nearly) every single sentence of dialogue. Enough already! I guess this really isn't Wheaton's fault, but maybe he could have de-emphasized the tags a bit?

The stor ...more

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Oct 17, 2014 Emma Sea rated it it was ok

Shelves: auckland-library

So meta I'm astounded my dead tree copy didn't implode under the weight of its own smugness,

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Mar 27, 2017 Evelina | AvalinahsBooks rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: any sci-fi fan

Recommended to Evelina | AvalinahsBooks by: Efka

Shelves: humour, fun-or-funny, books-of-2017, sci-fi

★★★★☆ 4 stars I'm sure most of you have heard of Redshirts. And let's admit, Scalzi is a pretty well-known writer, having received many awards (the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel for this one being among them), as well as having worked as a consultant to the TV series Stargate Universe, if any of you are familiar with that show.

(I have been known as a fierce fan of Stargate SG-1, although I didn't like Stargate Universe that much.)

And yet, despite all the fame (I nearly wrote famousity, what??), this is the first book of ...more

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Sep 09, 2017 Trish rated it really liked it · review of another edition

"Because I need to know. I always needed to know."

This is probably how most Trekkies have felt over the years.

For those here, who don't know, here's a little background information:
In the original Star Trek series (the one with Shatner as Kirk and Nimoy as Spok), there were usually one or two people in red shirts that are sent to some unexplored panet together with two or three main characters. These lowly-ranking people had never been seen before - and never again afterwards either. Because they die. Always. Out of 59 ki ...more

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Dec 01, 2017 jv poore rated it really liked it

Shelves: own-it, fantasy, action_adventure, science-fiction

Wherein Scalzi stretches my mind in the best ways possible.

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Jul 10, 2013 seak rated it liked it

Shelves: audio, 2013

I've been kind of on a Scalzi kick lately. I guess I've needed some light sci-fi without too much brain interaction. And I don't say that as a bad thing. I know so many times "light" and "fun" come off in the pejorative, but I rarely mean it that way. Honestly, I think that's the high watermark of fiction. I'm not trying to learn anything, although I always do. I'm not trying to to do anything but enjoy my free time.

I value other aspects of a novel plenty. I love a complex plot, great character ...more

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Feb 14, 2017 HBalikov rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Scalzi is a top science fiction writer but occasionally, see my review of Agent to the Stars, he takes a more humorous view of the genre. This book falls into that category.

To properly appreciate this yarn, you should have at least a passing acquaintance with the original TV series, Star Trek. The Second Generation and its successors (including the series of movies) are not as directly in his sights. The redshirts referred to in the title are those minor members of the ship’s crew th ...more

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topics	posts	views	last activity
GamersRead: Episode 35: Star Trek Into Dumbness	1	3	Jun 10, 2019 03:35AM
Hugo & Nebula Awa...: April 2019 "Redshirts" <Caution! Spoilers May Be Present!>	19	19	May 12, 2019 03:46PM
Hugo & Nebula Awa...: April 2019 "Redshirts" <No Spoilers>	30	20	Apr 17, 2019 08:57AM
ALN Book Club: February - Redshirts by John Scalzi	2	4	Feb 28, 2019 09:41AM
Play Book Tag: Redshirts by John Scalzi a very strong 3 stars--fun!	4	20	Jan 11, 2019 03:46PM
The Hugo Awards B...: December 2018: Redshirts SPOILERS	9	10	Jan 04, 2019 02:19PM
Play Book Tag: Redshirts by John Scalzi - 5 stars and I want to hug this book for existing	14	20	Dec 29, 2018 07:27AM

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About John Scalzi

John Scalzi

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John Scalzi, having declared his absolute boredom with biographies, disappeared in a puff of glitter and lilac scent.

(If you want to contact John, using the mail function here is a really bad way to do it. Go to his site and use the contact information you find there.)