His excitement at this very prestigious posting quickly wanes as he discovers something odd about his new ship. Redshirts is a Hugo Award-winning novel by John Scalzi which takes the concept of the Red Shirt, examines it, deconstructs it, and tears it inside out, taking an in-depth look at what would happen if the eponymous expendable extras ever discovered why the universe treats them as its own personal Chew Toys.Įnsign Andrew Dahl, fresh out of the Academy, has received his first assignment on the Universal Union’s flagship, the Intrepid.
Jimmy Hanson: Death by shuttle door malfunction.
You can read the first five chapters of Redshirts at Tor.com, or download the first four chapters in a free Kindle edition.Maia Duvall: Within five minutes of getting to my new post I heard three different stories of crew buying the farm on an away mission. Readers old enough to understand and appreciate the book are probably old enough to handle the sort of profanity to which most of us would resort while facing angry Borgovian Land Worms. In terms of content, Redshirts faithfully adapted for the screen would earn a solid 'R' for language and some sexual references, but the truth is it's probably nothing more explicit than you'd hear in a high school hallway. It's a brilliantly funny book with an unexpected amount of emotional heft, and I liked it an awful lot. What Scalzi does, somehow, is explore the absurdity of the redshirt trope without making a mockery of the protagonists themselves, despite the fact that, well, t hey're redshirts. As Dahl, Duvall, Hanson and their fellow low-ranking shipmates begin poking further into their disproportionate mortality rate, their tale briskly moves the action forward and keeps your attention well beyond the usual capacity of a pure send-up. There are dozens of such moments that capture the inspiration and the in-jokes that help build the world of Redshirts – in an interview with GeekDad, Scalzi talked about his approach to the project – and while they're hilarious, they are also surprisingly effective at drawing you into a story that's more than just a spoof. "I’m thinking you should have called bullshit on the ice shark story," Duvall said. "It wasn’t specified at the time," Dahl said, spearing a meat bit on his tray.
"Is it a shark made of ice?" Hanson asked.
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