Red Dwarf [Paperback]

Grant Naylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2, 1989

A novel based on BBC2's cult comedy series written by the writers of the "Spitting Image Book". Its humour features the epic adventures of a huge clapped-out old space ship with an equally clapped-out crew.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The first lesson Lister learned about space travel was you should never try it. But Lister didn't have a choice. All he remembered was going on a birthday celebration pub crawl through London. When he came to his senses again, he was living in a locker on one of Saturn's moons, with nothing in his pockets but a passport in the name of Emily Berkenstein.

So he did the only thing he could. Amazed to discover they would actually hire him, he joined the Space Corps--and found himself aboard Red Dwarf, a spaceship as big as a small city that, six or seven years from now, would get him back to Earth. What Lister couldn't foresee was that he'd inadvertently signed up for a one-way jaunt three million years into the future--a future which would see him the last living member of the human race, with only a hologram crew mate and a highly evolved Cat for company. Of course, that was before the ship broke the light barrier and things began to get really weird. -- ROC --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd (November 2, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140124373
• ISBN-13: 978-0140124378
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (87 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,566,785 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great comic adventure tale, December 12, 2000

By 

J. G. Heiser (Sunninghill, Berks) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (Paperback)

No sense ruining a good story by telling you how it turns out. Better to describe it, so you can tell whether or not it fits your tastes.

This is a hilarious, laugh-out-loud sort of book, appealing to the same tastes as the "Mash" series does, but in a dry, British sort of way. It's written in a deadpan, tongue in cheek style not unlike Terry Pratchett, but more sci-fi, like Douglas Adams. In fact, it has quite a bit in common with "Hitchhiker's", and I think that Marvin and Kryton would probably get along marvelously well. Perhaps this is something of a developing genre, the male comic adventure in space unquest. If that's the case, I might lump in "Venus on the Half Shell" (Kilgore Trout, nee Farmer).

For those of us who catch this through BBC Prime or PBS, and didn't have the opportunity to watch the original broadcasts in sequence, this book is a boon. Believe it or not, starting in the middle, I was able to watch a dozen episodes before reading this book and discovering that little incident with the stasis field. Talk about your "AHH! That explains it!" moments. You have a whole new incentive to watch that late Saturday night PBS rerun when you actually know the complete story. It just seems like coincidence layered on top of infinite impossibility..... until you recognize the cosmic plan at work here.

If you buy this book, you might as well buy the sequel, because you won't want to stop, and that way you won't get stuck wanting to know how it turns out and not being able to find part 2. For me, the book was very true to the TV show, and neither one ruined the other for me. If you've seen all the shows in sequence, then maybe the book won't be as much of a treat-but my guess is that most literate fans of the show will like the book.

You don't need to have seen "Red Dwarf" to enjoy the book. I loaned it to a co-worker with a sense of humor and he's having a great time with it-without ever having seen the series.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Careful drivers!?!? Oh smeg!!!, June 13, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (Paperback)

Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers is the first of the four downright twisted and hilarious novels from Rob Grant & Doug Naylor, the collective British writing team, and their sci-fi/comedy creation, Red Dwarf.

This novel covers all there is to know of the first three seasons of Red Dwarf in the best fashion possible: one collective and condensced novel that doesn't lose any of the comical and ingenious writing that the episodes had to offer.

The storyline is simple and easy to follow, the subplots and background conversations and meetings are everything that a Red Dwarf fan could ever want. From the first meeting between Dave Lister and Arnold Rimmer on Mimas to three million years in the future, from your own death (and how to cope with it) and disaster, not to mention the crew's desires in "Better Than Life" and their overall hatred with a passion for each other, this book has everything!

They say that Red Dwarf is the best thing to hit sci-fi since the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- they were damned right! British comedy is definately among the best in the world!!!

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Utterly, belly-achingly hilarious, June 9, 2002

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (Paperback)

Red Dwarf is the funniest science fiction book I have ever read, featuring a cast of unforgettable characters. First there is Lister; he celebrated his 25th birthday by taking part in a Monopoly-based pub crawl on earth and somehow ended up stuck on Mimas, one of Saturn's moons. He desperately wants to return to earth but cannot raise the funds; tiring of living inside a storage locker and stealing taxis to earn money, he decides to sign up for service with the Space Corps and jump ship as soon as he is back on his home planet. First Technician Alfred J. Rimmer is a truly remarkable and hilarious personality. Rimmer is basically in charge of keeping the vending machines operating on the ship Red Dwarf, and Lister finds himself working under and bunking with this incredibly strange and rather pitiful underachiever. Rimmer is the proverbial born loser, failing at virtually everything he does. He desperately wants to pass the astronavigation exam and become an officer, and he works incredibly hard at preparing for the test despite the fact he has already failed it 11 times (actually, two of those times he got an X for unclassified, such as the time he wrote "I am a fish" 500 times on each answer sheet after panicking and convincing himself he did not actually exist). Rimmer's preparation consists of establishing incredibly exact, inclusive schedules for studying; the problem with this approach is that his constant revisions of the schedule take up all of his preparation time, and he usually ends up cramming three months' of study into a few hours just before the exam begins. Lister annoys Rimmer to no end. As fate would have it, an explosion ends up killing everyone on board Red Dwarf. Lister, having been put in stasis for smuggling a cat on board, is reawakened by the ship's computer Holly three million years later when the radiation levels have returned to safe levels. Holly also resurrects the quite dead Rimmer as a hologram, and the fact that he has died does nothing to help Rimmer's attitude. Lister and Rimmer are soon joined by a highly evolved yet fastidious, incredibly vain feline descendant of the cat Lister originally smuggled on board. This incredibly strange crew attempts to return to earth, and their efforts are as funny as they are ill-fated.

Lister is a simple man just trying to get by in life, wishing for nothing more than a basic, happy family existence such as that of George Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life. Rimmer's inferiority complex and stubbornness are unmatched.. His failings and pessimism are comically ridiculous yet somehow plausible, and one can't help pitying a man who fails in life, in death, and even in his own fantasies. I have not seen the Red Dwarf series, so I cannot compare this book to its television counterpart. I can declare this book hilarious; anyone with a sense of humor (even those who hate science fiction) will, I believe, enjoy this book immensely. If you read this book apart from its sequel, though, you will be disappointed by the ending because it is not really an ending at all--I would recommend buying the sequel Better Than Life along with Red Dwarf because you will surely want to follow the comical travails of Lister and Rimmer as far and as long as you can. Only the late Douglas Adams has ever produced such wickedly funny science fiction as Red Dwarf.