Welcome to the Speculative Chic Book Club! Each month, we invite you to join us in reading a book that is voted on by YOU, our readers. Following a short review, please feel free to discuss the book in the comments!
Redshirts (2012)
Author: John Scalzi
Pages: 316 pages (Kindle)
Publisher: Tor
Why I nominated this for book club: I struggled for a theme for April’s book club, and eventually settled on comedy sci fi because jokes on April Fool’s are meant to be funny? It’s a stretch. But I like laughing, so here we go. I chose this one in particular because I’d already listened to the audio, knew the story, and wanted a good excuse to go back and read a print version.
Premise:
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 lethal confrontation with alien forces, (2) the ship’s captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations, and (3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed.
Not surprisingly, a great deal of energy below decks is expended on avoiding, at all costs, being assigned to an Away Mission. 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.
Redshirts is the winner of the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
This book club discussion does assume you have read and finished the book. If you want to avoid spoilers, please finish reading before continuing!
Discussion: As previously mentioned, I’ve now been through this book twice, once as an audiobook, having Wil Wheaton read it to me, and once on my Kindle, and I think I actually like it better in print for one very specific reason. This book is great, right? This book is HILARIOUS and meta and interesting and sometimes a little brain wrinkling, but John Scalzi has a fatal flaw as an author, and that fatal flaw is dialog tags. “Dahl said.” “Hanson said.” “Duvall said.” After every single sentence of dialog. You can flow over it a little better when you’re just reading it, but when you’ve got someone reading it to you, it gets a bit more tedious.
But now that we’ve got the negative thing out of the way, we can talk about the things I love, because there are a few of them. Scalzi’s abilities at writing humor were evident in Old Man’s War but clearly made to shine here. I still remember my shriek of outrage at the end of chapter 23 on my first time through the book:
And that’s just what he did, until the day six months later when a systems failure caused the Intrepid to plow into a small asteroid, vaporizing the ship and killing everyone on board instantly. (page 223)
Only to die laughing on the very next page:
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR No, no, I’m just fucking with you. They all lived happily ever after. Seriously. (page 224)
But he also knows how to toy with my emotions and make me cry:
“But I’m going to let you in on a secret. I think this is going to work. Don’t ask me why — hell, don’t ask me why about any of this situation — I just think it will. If it does, I have only one thing I want from you. That you do something. Stop drifting. Stop trying things until you get bored with them. Stop waiting for that one thing. It’s stupid. You’re wasting time. You almost wasted all of your time. You were lucky I was around, but I get a feeling this isn’t something we’ll get to do twice.” (page 285)
This of course is from the second of the three codas, which I loved to pieces, and is Hester talking to the producer’s son, who played him on TV. We don’t get to see if the message lands, though we’re lead to believe it probably does, but I like the way Scalzi found a way to show how the interactions with the Intrepid crew members changed the lives of the real people that played them.
The most interesting part of the book to me was the realization that they’re in a narrative, all of the narrative tropes, and how they fixed their problems. The Box in the science lab was amazing, because it does always work that way. The fact that Kerensky kept healing from his injuries faster than he should. The fact that the captain showed moments of “huh, that IS weird” before being gripped by the narrative again.
In conclusion: This book is hilarious and I’m glad it exists. Good for people who grew up on a steady diet of Star Trek or just those that are cognizant of what happens to the extras when the important narrative is happening.
This book amused me way more than I thought it would. I love meta story lines, especially those that parody context I’m incredibly familiar with, such as Star Trek.
I don’t really remember what my expectations were going into it, but I definitely feel like it hit more layers than I would have expected from a straight parody.
I had a great time with this book. Loved the whole magic box thing where they basically had to tell him, “Just don’t ask questions. It’ll work.” and how they kept thinking Kerensky was going to make out with himself once they met their respective doubles.
The part where the assumed Kerensky made out with his double and then Kerensky told them they were gross had me HOWLING. I loved it. Magic box was also hilarious because it’s just so FAMILIAR.
I loved the concept but the execution didn’t do it for me. My wife played a little of the Wil Wheaton audiobook and he did a great job–he’s proving much better post-Wesley than he was as Wesley. Reading the book, I didn’t notice the dialogue tags, but Robert B. Parker did the same thing–every freaking line of dialogue. They don’t stand out in print, but they’re a huge distraction in the audiobooks. I guess we can turn off our eyes but not our ears.
Wil Wheaton’s narration game is great, it’s even better now, with the new series that Scalzi has started.
What about the execution didn’t work for you?
Sadly, I didn’t have time for a re-read, but I went back to my original review from 2012 to refresh my memory: I apparently read this in less than 24 hours, so yeah, that makes sense. I remember really enjoying it. My original summary from the review:
My Rating: Couldn’t Put It Down
Literally. I read this in less than 24 hours without even realizing I was doing it. Which was a refreshing change from my previous books, all of which were taking a week or so to read, sometimes the book’s fault, sometimes the fault of my own busy schedule. But this one, easy and breezy and a hell of a lot of fun. If you read Scalzi’s blog (and I always recommend potential readers read Scalzi’s blog, just so you know what you’re getting into ahead of time), you know you’re in for a fun time, and this certainly is. There were a lot of giggle-tastic moments, and I was entertained from beginning to end.
Reading about this makes me realize I’m behind on my Scalzi reading and that should be corrected and soon.
I really like his newer stuff a lot. Lock In was great, the Collapsing Empire is going to be really interesting.
I’ve got Collapsing Empire to read, as well as The Dispatcher, and then this year’s latest. I think that’s all.. ?
Probably?
The Collapsing Empire is AMAZING.
This was a re-read for me as well. I liked it, but not as well as his other books. Even though its a short book, I thought the central conceit got old quickly.
I do really like the codas. They made the rest of the book for me.
Agreed. I like the book, but the codas definitely make it what it is.