Red Dwarf Omnibus [Paperback]

Grant Naylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 9, 1992

Here are the first two novels of the cult series "Red Dwarf" in one volume - "Red Dwarf" and "Better Than Life" - plus the first draft of the original TV pilot script. It all begins, when Dave Lister is celebrating his twenty-fourth birthday on a Monopoly board pub crawl round London, and somehow ends up three million years from Earth, marooned in the wrong dimension of the wrong reality, and down to his last two cigarettes. Together with a dead man, a senile computer, a deranged sanitation mechanoid with an overactive guilt chip and the best-dressed entity in all six known universes, the last remaining member of the human race begins his epic journey home.

Product Details

• Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam~trade; Omnibus Ed edition (November 9, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140174664
• ISBN-13: 978-0140174663
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #74,839 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I love this book, January 20, 2002

By 

Smeghead (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Red Dwarf Omnibus (Paperback)

This book really has to be one of the best books I have ever read. It combines irresistable humour with bittersweet sensitivity, a very powerful combination which made me a huge Red Dwarf fan. I love the way Lister and Rimmer, these seemingly very different people, react to the most impossible stuations so comically.My only objection is that there wasn't more - Last Human was rubbish and Backwards was OK but not quite up to scratch. Read this. You must. Anyone who loves to laugh and cry can will love it - I was hysterical both ways.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Better than the series...., March 22, 2008

By 

D. Colley "daz78" (England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Red Dwarf Omnibus (Paperback)

The book, and the follow up, Better than Life, is better than the series in my opinion. I don't mean that the series were bad, far from it, but the book gives a greater depth of enjoyment in re-telling the 'Red Dwarf' saga (or the initial beginnings of it).

The book has more detail and has more vision and size which is obviously constrained in the then fairly low-budget sitcom-set-in-space made by the BBC that began in the late 1980s. But reading the book AFTER watching at least some of the series actually adds to the enjoyment. When Rimmer, in the book, is his usual petty and unsociable-self, you imagine Chris Barrie's great performance as Rimmer and the way he acts and behaves comes alive as you read.

People have compared Red Dwarf to Douglas Adam's The Hitchiker's Guild to the Galaxy. I felt that Adam's THGTTG never really worked as a good in written form than it did on radio or tv, where as Red Dwarf does.

It is an easy fast read, which will have you laughing out loud, especially the 'rights of the dead' and some of the jokes might not register to those who don't know the specific details of English culture (such as references to football - 'its a funny old game') but there is enough jokes to satisfy everyone (including the odd poke at Star Trek).

4 stars.

5.0 out of 5 stars the smeg goes even deeper (ya gimboid), December 14, 2011

By 

jude pepper - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Red Dwarf Omnibus (Paperback)

ironically, you should listen to me because i DON'T generally go in for this sort of thing. novelizations of what started out as a movies or tv series are (rightly so) rarely mentioned in the same breath as the works of Shakespeare. (unless you count just now.) and RED DWARF is the second greatest series in the history of British television. (just behind DOCTOR WHO, as if you really had to ask.) so add it all up, and the evidence would indicate that we're about to trod into a colossal pile of smeg, wouldn't it?
well, that's what ya get for believing a stereotype. RED DWARF was already the ballsiest snub to traditional storytelling conventions this side of GET SMART (the greatest series in the history of AMERICAN television, of course), and it's accompanying novels offer many a delightful new slant on it's rebellious-and-proud-of-it vision. (is that JUST because they were written by the creative force(s) behind the tv series? let's just say it doesn't hurt.)
it actually manages to expand upon the characters. did you know, for instance, that before Lister was sentenced to stasis, Rimmer used the stasis booth every evening to "save up" life, and subsequently took pride in being a 31-year old with the body of a 30-year old? or that Lister's favorite movie is IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE? not if you've only seen the tv series, you didn't. there's also the matter of the video game "Better Than Life." this was seen in the series, of course, but in the books it gets a delightfully sinister new twist!
someone once called RED DWARF the most bonafide example of British "nonconformist" comedy at it's most audactious since MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS. personally, i think it's even better (which i don't say lightly because i'm a Python fan). it's definitive even EDGIER. Lister is the lazy, sloppy last specimen of the human race, Rimmer is a "hologrammatic" simulation of a neurotic dead man, and Kryten is a robot janitor force by circumstance to become the fusspot science officer. who says catastrophe can't be funny? (to say nothing of science-fiction.)