Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas Paperback Author: Visit Amazon's John Scalzi Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0765334798 | Format: PDF, EPUB
Download Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas Download Download Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas Paperback from with Mediafire Link Download Link
Review
“John Scalzi sets his imagination to STUN and scores a direct hit. Read on and prosper.”
—Joe Hill,
New York Times bestselling author of
Heart-Shaped Box
“I can honestly say I can’t think of another book that ever made me laugh this much. Ever.”
—Patrick Rothfuss,
New York Times bestselling author of
The Name of the Wind
“Scalzi takes apart the whole Star Trek universe and puts it back together far more plausibly—and a lot funnier too.”
—Lev Grossman,
New York Times bestselling author of
The Magicians
“A real joy to read… It’s hard to imagine a reader who wouldn’t enjoy this one.”
—
Booklist, starred review
About the Author
JOHN SCALZI is the author of several SF novels including the bestselling Old Man’s War and its sequels and the New York Times bestseller Fuzzy Nation. A winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Scalzi won the Hugo Award for Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, a collection of essays from his wildly popular blog The Whatever (whatever.scalzi.com). He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.
See all Editorial Reviews
Direct download links available for Download Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas Paperback
- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Tor Books; Reprint edition (January 15, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 9780765334794
- ISBN-13: 978-0765334794
- ASIN: 0765334798
- Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
- Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
"Redshirts" is founded on a fairly clever conceit. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the original "Star Trek" television series is surely aware of the disposable crew members who were slaughtered in sordid ways when the Enterprise visited strange, new worlds. They were frequently ranked "ensign" and clad in red shirts. In each episode, the viewer could reliably predict the fate of the "away team" members, often by shirt color alone. Scalzi affectionately lampoons this and various other conventions of the sci-fi television series.
In his novel, new crew members aboard the Universal Union flagship Intrepid recognize some alarming patterns, not the least of which is that those of their ilk don't tend to live long... or prosper (sorry!). They slowly discern that there's a "Narrative" dictating the outcomes of their missions. While the more senior crew members have adapted by avoiding recognition and staying off the proverbial radar, the new crew members decide to challenge the "Narrative".
While Star Trek provides fertile ground for this type of satirical treatment, there really isn't enough substance for a novel. The primary narrative of "Redshirts" is only 231 pages, but that's at least a third longer than necessary given the story. The plotting is uncomplicated and straightforward despite the metafictional elements which Scalzi, to his credit, took a bit farther than expected. Characterization, another good potential use of space, was nonexistent. This wasn't a clever metaphor on Scalzi's part (i.e., symbolic that "redshirts" aren't fully-fleshed out characters in the series) but because, rightly or wrongly, he chose to focus on the ideas underpinning the story instead of character-building.
Redshirts by John Scalzi tells the story of the support crew onboard the Universal Union Capital Ship, Intrepid, and all the perils they face on a daily basis. I've been sitting on this review for a while, partly because I've not had much time to write but mostly because it has taken me a long time to come up with the right words for it. I'm a relative newcomer to Scalzi, having heard lots about him and his various sci-fi works but having never sat down and read anything of his until Redshirts. My first impression - if his other work is anywhere near as good as Redshirts then I can see myself devouring the rest of his bibliography in no time at all.
The story follows Ensign Andrew Dahl, newly assigned as a junior scientist onboard the Intrepid, complete with red shirt. Almost immediately he notices something strange - the support crew are very good at hiding, the away missions have an obscene amount of fatalities, and the officers always seemed to survive the most horrific of injuries and are back up within days ready to face the next away mission. Dahl is determined to find out what is going wrong on this ship, before the next away mission becomes his last. This is a book that exploits the concept of the Redshirt, that guy on the away team in Star Trek that you knew was going to die because he was wearing a red shirt. It pokes fun at all those 70′s - 90′s sci-fi TV shows in a number of overt and subtle ways. Decks six through ten always suffer from explosive decompression during a fire fight, consoles on the bridge blow up in a shower of sparks every time the ship is hit by an energy weapon, you know, the little things that make sci-fi TV unique. Redshirts is a book that feels more like a tribute than a parody - I found the whole story heartwarming, and never condescending.
Book Preview
Download Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas Download
Please Wait...