Other Sellers on Amazon
100% positive over last 12 months
98% positive over last 12 months
67% positive over last 12 months
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle Cloud Reader.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas (Hugo Award Winner - Best Novel) Hardcover – June 5, 2012
| John Scalzi (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
| Price | New from | Used from |
|
Audible Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry" |
$0.00
| Free with your Audible trial | |
|
MP3 CD, Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged
"Please retry" | $8.11 | $9.23 |
Enhance your purchase
Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It's a prestige posting, and Andrew is thrilled all the more to be assigned to the ship's Xenobiology laboratory.
Life couldn't be better…until Andrew begins to pick up on the fact that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces, (2) the ship's captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations, and (3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed.
Not surprisingly, a great deal of energy below decks is expendedon avoiding, at all costs, being assigned to an Away Mission. Then Andrew stumbles on information that completely transforms his and his colleagues' understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is…and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.
Redshirts is the winner of the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Old Man's War Series
#1 Old Man’s War
#2 The Ghost Brigades
#3 The Last Colony
#4 Zoe’s Tale
#5 The Human Division
#6 The End of All Things
Short fiction: “After the Coup”
Other Tor Books
The Android’s Dream
Agent to the Stars
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded
Fuzzy Nation
Redshirts
Lock In
The Collapsing Empire (forthcoming)
- Print length320 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherTor Books
- Publication dateJune 5, 2012
- Dimensions5.96 x 1.18 x 8.56 inches
- ISBN-100765316994
- ISBN-13978-0765316998
Frequently bought together

- +
- +
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
You don’t win by getting through all your life not having done anything.Highlighted by 420 Kindle readers
But then he tripped and one of the land worms ate his face and he died anyway.Highlighted by 352 Kindle readers
“In other words, crew deaths are a feature, not a bug,” Cassaway said, dryly.Highlighted by 259 Kindle readers
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Gripping… A perfectly executed plot clicks its way to a stunningcourtroom showdown in a cathartic finish.” ―Publishers Weekly, starred review, on Fuzzy Nation
“In a genre flooded with bloated epics, it's a real pleasure toread a story like this, as compactly and directly told as a punchto the stomach.” ―Kirkus Reviews, starred review, on Fuzzy Nation
“If Stephen King were to try his hand at science fiction, he'd belucky to be half as entertaining as John Scalzi.” ―Dallas Morning News on The Ghost Brigades
“ Scalzi's captivating blend of offworld adventure and political intrigue remains consistently engaging. ” ―Booklist on The Last Colony
About the Author
JOHN SCALZI is the author of several SF novels including the bestselling Old Man's War sequence, comprising Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, and the New York Times bestselling The Last Colony. He is a winner of science fiction's John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and he won the Hugo Award for Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, a collection of essays from his popular blog Whatever. His latest novel, Fuzzy Nation, hit the New York Times bestseller list in its first week on sale. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Product details
- Publisher : Tor Books; First edition (June 5, 2012)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0765316994
- ISBN-13 : 978-0765316998
- Item Weight : 13.9 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.96 x 1.18 x 8.56 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #242,932 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,918 in First Contact Science Fiction (Books)
- #3,464 in Alien Invasion Science Fiction
- #30,520 in American Literature (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

John Scalzi writes books, which, considering where you're reading this, makes perfect sense. He's best known for writing science fiction, including the New York Times bestseller "Redshirts," which won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. He also writes non-fiction, on subjects ranging from personal finance to astronomy to film, was the Creative Consultant for the Stargate: Universe television series. He enjoys pie, as should all right thinking people. You can get to his blog by typing the word "Whatever" into Google. No, seriously, try it.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviewed in the United States on January 14, 2020
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Sometimes you run into a book that seems tailor made for you. John Scalzi is an author that I have very much enjoyed the works of, including Old Man's War or The Collapsing Empire. He has a delightful appreciation for the absurd and a wonderfully snarky observational humor that reminds me a great deal of my own. His books sometimes go in odd and bizarre directions but that's part of the journey.
Redshirts is half Star Trek parody and half metacommentary on the nature of reality. The premise is that the protagonists are ensigns onboard the starship Intrepid, which is a transparent stand-in for the starship Enterprise that the narrative even acknowledges in the most hilarious way possible. There's something very strange going onboard the Intrepid.
The number of deaths on away teams are horrific and far in excess of what would normally happen. Its ensigns just make stupid errors left and right, often at dramatically appropriate moments. Also, the science onboard the ship is nonsensical as well. The dedicated geniuses onboard don't understand why "The Box" is able to do half the things it does. Finally, there's a deranged scientist living in the ship's Jeffrey's tubes (sorry, cargo ducts), that know's what's going on but has been driven mad by the realization.
The four protagonists are a bit interchangeable with the exception of Dahl and Duvalle. Dahl is a former alien seminary student and Duvalle is the only woman in the group. They're all incredibly snarky, irreverant, and very entertaining but could have used a bit more differentiation. Part of that is the joke, though, that they exist to be interchangeable parts on a ship that values their lives less than a french fry in a happy meal.
This is a book that benefits significantly from your knowledge of Star Trek, especially The Original Series. In fact, I'd argue that the joke for Redshirts doesn't really apply to subsequent series of Star Trek. The "redshirts are disposable" joke started in the Sixties and was so ubiquitous that they actually made two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, to specifically counteract it with "The Bonding" and "Lower Decks." Indeed, the cartoon series "Lower Decks" kind of feels like it took some inspiration from Redshirts since its about the elaborate inner lives of the disposable faceless crew.
Still, bad writing jokes will never go out of style nor will the existential crisis a person would face if they discovered they were secondary to the plotline of someone else. Indeed, all of human life is pretty much us dealing with how we're just bit players to someone else's narrative. Politicians, corporate leaders, and even the ex who decided that we were best to be fired from the show of their own personal romantic comedy.
I would normally give this book a 5 out of 5. It is a Hugo-winning award after all and deservedly so. However, I feel this is a book that suffers from the fact that has way too many endings. The actual story ends roughly 75% way through the book and what follows is a series of vignettes following up on the events. These are done by bit players (ha!) in the story and expands on their story. Honestly, they don't really hold a candle to the main narrative and I wish they'd just been left out.
Redshirts is, for lack of a better description, a science fiction version of Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead. That play dealt with themes of bit characters, unnecessary deaths, being completely confused about what the hell was going on, and in-jokes that only someone who absolutely loves the subject being discussed (in that case: Hamlet) would get. There are much worse things to be compared to. I should note that I listened to the audiobook version and strongly recommend it for the fact it has the meta-casting of Will Wheaton as narrator.
But almost immediately after reporting aboard, Dahl began to discover there was something distinctly off about life aboard the ship. Whenever one of the senior officers walked through the corridors, crewmembers would part ahead of them, disappearing into side passages or through hatches. When the science officer visited a lab, experienced crew would vanish before he appeared and return only after he departed. Crew would invent clever stratagems to avoid being assigned to a post on the bridge or to an away mission.
Seemingly, every away mission would result in the death of a crew member, often in gruesome circumstances involving Longranian ice sharks, Borgovian land worms, the Merovian plague, or other horrors. But senior crew: the captain, science officer, doctor, and chief engineer were never killed, although astrogator Lieutenant Kerensky, a member of the bridge crew and regular on away parties, is frequently grievously injured but invariably makes a near-miraculous and complete recovery.
Dahl sees all of this for himself when he barely escapes with his life from a rescue mission to a space station afflicted with killer robots. Four junior crew die and Kerensky is injured once again. Upon returning to the ship, Dahl and his colleagues vow to get to the bottom of what is going on. They've heard the legends of, and one may have even spotted, Jenkins, who disappeared into the bowels of the ship after his wife, a fellow crew member, died meaninglessly by a stray shot of an assassin trying to kill a Union ambassador on an away mission.
Dahl undertakes to track down Jenkins, who is rumoured to have a theory which explains everything that is happening. The theory turns out to be as bizarre or more so than life on the Intrepid, but Dahl and his fellow ensigns concede that it does explain what they're experiencing and that applying it allows them to make sense of events which are otherwise incomprehensible (I love “the Box”).
But a theory, however explanatory, does not address the immediate problem: how to avoid being devoured by Pornathic crabs or the Great Badger of Tau Ceti on their next away mission. Dahl and his fellow junior crew must figure out how to turn the nonsensical reality they inhabit toward their own survival and do so without overtly engaging in, you know, mutiny, which could, like death, be career limiting. The story becomes so meta it will make you question the metaness of meta itself.
This is a pure romp, often laugh-out-loud funny, having a delightful time immersing itself in the lives of characters in one of our most beloved and enduring science fiction universes. We all know the bridge crew and department heads, but what's it really like below decks, and how does it feel to experience that sinking feeling when the first officer points to you and says “You're with me!” when forming an away team?
The novel has three codas written, respectively, in the first, second, and third person. The last, even in this very funny book, will moisten your eyes. Redshirts won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2013.
Ever wonder what it would be like on a starship like the Enterprise? Where the crew members FEAR going on away team missions because someone ALWAYS dies? Or why some bridge crew members get beaten extremely bad once a week only to be in perfect health the next? Or how in the vast expanse of the Universe a terrorist your ship is ordered to stop just so happens to be a former Academy roommate? What are the odds?
Well a group of new crew members slowly come to the conclusion that the high mortality rates and bizarre, extremely unlikely coincidences can only mean one thing: they exist in a very badly written sci-fi TV show and they decide they want out.
Now you might think this is just another GalaxyQuest that spoofs on Star Trek but it isn't.... well it does spoof on Star Trek but it does go a bit beyond that.
If you are looking for a typical Scalzi sci-fi book like the Old Man's War series this isn't it. This book is nothing more than comedy with a small bit of an existential crisis added in. It's funny and a very lighthearted.
Top reviews from other countries
“Every battle is designed for maximum drama... This is what happens when the Narrative takes over. Things quit making sense. The laws of physics take a coffee break. People stop thinking logically and start thinking dramatically.”
Now this whole idea of a future powered by a Star Trek rip off, might seem extremely unlikely. But before we get too dismissive, let’s remember the past, where leaders and politicians, in the interests of a heroic narrative, have often sent rationality on repeated and lengthy coffee breaks. Much of what we know as history is less a succession of facts, more a narrative designed to support political considerations of the present day. Just a few examples - Hitler made up stories of persecuted German minorities to get World War 2 going. Churchill, in retaliation spun a stirring tale in which 1940s Britain, a dour place, short of money, remains a superpower where Henry V is continually winning the Battle of Agincourt. And as of late 2019, a prime minister carries on with Churchill’s narrative, which makes him look like a strong leader, at the cost of creating destructive trouble and drama in our relationship with Europe where none need exist. Looking at the past and present we see storytelling impinging on real life all the time. There is no reason to think that the future will be any different.
So the idea of Redshirts does have its own veracity. It might be unlikely that present day television could directly influence events hundreds of years hence, or that characters could freak out their LA screenwriters by taking on a life of their own, but reality and drama do exist in an odd relationship. The stories which people find compelling might be corny, unlikely, over sentimental and confusing, qualities which all apply to Redshirts at times, but they are still powerful enough to frequently win out over mere facts.
In summary, this is an ambitious book, looking at the various ways fiction and real life collide. It is generally written in an attractive, humorous style, although there is a strange approach to dialogue. There are dialogue tags - as in, Dahl said, Duvall said - after virtually every line of speech which makes for a stilted feel. Also, given that the novel’s characters are causing their author a bit of a breakdown by taking on a life of their own, some of them are not clearly drawn. They all tend to communicate in the same quippy style, which sometimes makes it hard to tell one from another. But apart from these reservations, I would recommend Redshirts as an interesting and amusing meditation on fiction.
You will probably get more out of this book if you are familiar with original series Star Trek. But anyone who picks it up probably will be, so that shouldn't be a problem.
The book runs for three hundred and six pages. It has a prologue. Twenty four chapters. And then three long codas to finish it off.
It does contain some strong language and adult references.
Main character is Ensign Andrew Dahl. Just assigned to the starship Intrepid. The best ship in the fleet. Seemingly the best posting. But one where strange things happen. Every away mission, a low ranked crew member dies. The senior officers always survive. And strange solutions can be found to scientific dilemmas.
Andrew might be done for. But then comes up with a plan....
The prologue is a pitch perfect parody/pastiche of Star Trek, getting laughs out of a perfectly created Star Trek style scene, playing that just right but picking at it at the same time.
The main narrative starts after that. The prose is short and sweet, and there are a few characters to get used to quickly. But it sweeps you along, occasionally coming back to the style of the opening but steadily developing it's plot as it goes. And getting the occasional laugh out of that.
That kind of parody pastiche can only go so far, before needing something more to keep things going. And the plot does then develop very nicely about a third of the way in, moving the story up to a different level.
What happens is an idea that is a tiny bit familiar. But the story still keeps you interested. And comedy does still come along, well done out of character interaction.
All this time though it is playing with some very big philosphical questions, and making the reader think about them as it goes.
All of which leads to a satisfactory conclusion. In a book that's only as long as it needs to be. Which is nice to see, in these days of long series and trilogies.
The familiarity of that second half does stop this from going up to five stars. But then along come the three codas. Which wrap things up for certain characters. These are superb. Really well written. Really thought provoking, and very good character drama with it. They have a power that the second half of the main narrative slightly lacks.
Perhaps 4.5/5 is the best rating to give. Ultimately there is a lot to like in here, and it's a very good read. So it's well worth a look.










