Redshirts by John Scalzi – 2012
Over the past couple of years, I
have been hearing about Redshirts,
mostly good. There were those that said
it was a fun book, others said that it was hilariously funny. A Facebook friend of mine started reading it
and posted about it a couple of times, so I thought I would give it a try.
First, what is a “redshirt?” As a long time Trek fan, I know that they are
the people from The Original Series that would beam down to the planet with
Kirk and sometimes wound up getting killed in the opening minutes of the show. Apparently, the title has been given to
anyone on any television series, book, or movie that suffers the same fate as
those in the early days of Trekdom.
In Redshirts, we follow a group of junior officers that have been
assigned to the Intrepid, the
flagship of the Universal Union. One
ensign, Andy Dahl, takes the lead as he sees that on every away mission from
the ship, some junior officer meets an ill fate, while it seems that the senior
officers, who are in the same danger, always seem to come out unscathed, with
the exception of one. The one senior
officer that gets injured in some way always pulls through, usually through
some heroic measures that are taken on his behalf. Dahl notices all of this and begins to
investigate what might be taking place.
With the help of others, Dahl
determines that there is some sort of warp causing an old television show from
our current reality to intrude on the Intrepid’s
reality. A junior officer named Jenkins
has made this assumption based on statistics that he has compiled and by
comparing his findings to science fictions shows that have aired in the past. Dahl determines that he must go back in time
and stop the production of the television show so that his reality is no longer
being influenced by it.
Sounds kind of like Star Trek in
the Twilight Zone doesn’t it? That is
what I was thinking whlile I read Redshirts.
I have to admit that it took me
quite a while to get through this story.
I would read a chapter and set it aside for a few days, and then I would
read another chapter, and again set it aside.
At a few points, I would think about reading, and then find something
else to do. I did this until I hit about
the half-way point of the book when the story really picks up in pace and gets
interesting. Before that, I seriously
considered setting it aside for good; from that half-way point on, I finished
the book in an afternoon because it was that engaging.
I think that my problem with
Redshirts was that it seemed like the exposition was never going to come to an
end. The characters in that first half
were slogging around trying to avoid being killed and the reason for the
problem seemed to take forever to get to, then the solution to the problem took
even longer. But once it was determined
what had to be done to resolve the dilemma, and the plan was put into action,
the story moved at a rollercoaster pace, and was well worth the wait.
The author includes three “codas”
that tell more about three of the characters in the story. I found these last three appendices to be
amongst the best part of the book.
Scalzi surrounded this story with a
lot of dry humor that one might expect to find taking place in the midst of any
group of people working together in jobs that are otherwise routine in
nature. Some exchanges are quite funny
and unexpected, and would never appear in a television show. It is the story of what might take place
behind the scenes away from the main cast of a series such as Star Trek or
other space opera. While I would say
this is a good book, I wouldn’t call it a great book. It is worth the time to read, but don’t
expect too much beyond it being good, fun entertainment.
Well, there it is…
QaplaH’!
