Book Review - Redshirts, by John Scalzi

After being underwhelmed but intrigued after reading Zoe’s Tale earlier this year, I’ve been meaning to start John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series from the beginning (I’ve even bought the whole series since then). Instead, I picked this book up on an impulse, after hearing so many good things about it. I vacillated for a while, wondering if maybe Redshirts is a little too smug for its own good. Overall, though, the book’s concept is strong and the story is legitimately exciting and often hilarious. Mild spoilers ahoy.

The title of the book refers to the random crew members on Star Trek (especially the original series) that you can tell aren’t going to make it past the second commercial break. You know what I’m talking about. When a routine away mission to perform an ostensibly boring task on a nondescript planet is revealed to be made up of Ensign Bob and three senior officers, at least one of whom should be on the bridge of the ship, it’s clear right away that things aren’t going to end well for Bob. The book uses this established truism to launch a transparent parody of sci-fi television tropes.

The story revolves around a group of fresh-faced Universal Union cadets, newly assigned to the UU flagship, the Intrepid. Once there, however, they quickly realize that something is amiss. The ship’s crew goes out of its way to dodge away-team duty, which has a consistent track record of random accidents and bizarre fatalities. The senior officers often act inexplicably strange, and people take every opportunity to dodge them. Even the laws of science tend to go a little weird on the Intrepid, from time to time. Investigating these odd occurrences leads to a crazy theory on what the Intrepid really is, and the newest redshirts embark on an equally crazy mission to possibly save themselves from an early, meaningless death.

Redshirts appeals to the same group of people who enjoyed the brilliant satirical movie Galaxy Quest: those who love science fiction television enough to poke fun at its glaring flaws. Scalzi uses metahumor for this purpose, to great effect. The first half of the book is packed with in-jokes, and the second half plows right through the fourth wall and makes a determined assault on the fifth. This element of the writing is consistently funny, but it also gave me pause in the first few chapters. Scalzi’s trademark wit in both narrative and dialogue is present here, and combined with the emphasis on metahumor, there were quite a few moments where I felt a little stir of annoyance even as I smiled. Golly gee, I would think to myself, isn’t this book just so goddamned clever. Look how clever you are.

The thing is, though, it really is clever. The concept never strays into being the one-trick pony it could easily be; Scalzi gets a lot of value out of the “we’re expendable” meme, but he deftly sets it up as an integral part of the plot, so it never feels tired. Instead of repeatedly going for the same joke, he layers a bunch of other metafictional elements on top of it. The result is a mishmash of gleefully absurd and unexpectedly somber moments that create a fast-paced, engaging story; in other words, a classic pulp science-fiction plot. I couldn’t put this book down, and since it’s pretty slim to begin with, I tore through it much quicker than most of the books I read.

It does have its problems, though. You may notice that I did not mention any specific characters in my synopsis above. That is because the main characters are largely indistinguishable from one another. The narrative of Redshirts is enormously reliant on dialogue, and Scalzi eschews any sort of physical description of the protagonists, except for mentioning that one of them is a woman. The hero, Andrew Dahl, has black hair in my mind’s eye, but I can’t remember if he’s written that way or if I just did it on my own to make him stand out. Anyway, this can be an effective writing tactic if the characters' voices are distinct, but all of the heroic redshirts (and a good number of the supporting characters) repeatedly fall back on the same sardonic wit for which the author himself is known. They all quickly started to bleed together, and that honestly made me care a bit less about them. One could argue that it’s another satirical reference, but it doesn’t feel that way.

The codas at the end of the book are the big payoff, and they are solidly written and emotionally powerful. They are also radically different in tone and format than the rest of the book, and while I wasn’t overly bothered by the shift in gear, I kind of wish all of that interesting, affecting stuff was somehow integrated into the main story.

All of those issues circle back to the general tongue-in-cheek tone, though, which taken as a whole is what makes the book work so well. There’s a genuinely gripping story and hints of existentialism hiding underneath the snark, too, which ensures that the book transcends mere parody. I can definitely see where it might lose some readers; hard science-fiction fans will probably be annoyed by the blurry, completely nonsensical plot mechanics that drive the last part of the story. I took my cue from the general tone of the book, though, and didn’t get bogged down in the details. This is quick read that has a lot of pathos lurking alongside its deft satire of genre tropes, and is required reading for anybody that has ever attended a sci-fi convention or can rattle off actual episode names of their favorite series. Also, it comes with a companion song from Jonathan Coulton, which only adds to its credibility.



Verdict: 4 / 5