Brilliant. Everything I read Scalzi for.
Funny. Clever. Funny. Read the whole thing in an evening.
I Loved it.
The author takes his signature Scalzi Laser Wit(tm) and focuses it on the beloved Original Series of Star Trek.
The goofiness, the bizarre plots. Everything that made it great.
Scalzi completely takes the piss in the way only a long time fan could.

I reviewed this book on Goodreads ten years, just before starting my book review blog, and while I liked it well enough, I had only given it 3 stars. But do you recommend a 3 star book to friends and family?

Tor Books has rereleased the book, now as a "Tor Essential" - meaning (from the Tor website) "Tor Essentials line was created to give readers new editions of science fiction and fantasy titles that have stood the test of time, and to bring back ones current SFF fans might have missed out on in the past."

And with this rerelease I was able to get an ARC (is it still an Advanced Reader Copy if it's a reprint?) which motivated me to read this classic, this 'essential' again.

The valiant crew of the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid have suspicions that there is something uniquely unusual going on with their ship and their senior crew. That senior crew - those bridge officers, mostly - will survive the worst disasters ever faced by man or beast, whilst the lower deck crew members are more likely to be killed while on an away mission than not. The Intrepid, in fact, has an unusually high mortality rate for the lower-ranked ship members. Enough so, that some enterprising crew members have rigged a system to let them know when a senior crew member might be in their area on the ship so that they can be avoided. One perhaps paranoid member has even taken to hiding out, now living with the bowels of the ship, never to be assigned to duty again.

The most widely-accepted theory among the ship members is that they no longer have free will, but are living out the exploits of a badly written science fiction television show from Earth's 20th century. They believe this so strongly that they abduct one of the senior officers, go back in time to Earth's mid-to-late 20th century and confront their doppelgängers - who are, in fact, actors - and producer of the show to convince them all that for the health and safety of these future explorers, the characters on tv have to stop dying at every confrontation.

There's more to it than this, of course, and my favorite aspect of this story is "The Box" and the Captain's need to find a problem with The Box's solution (you'll get it when you read it).

I think that there's good reason that Tor Books has this on the Essentials list and I will upgrade my rating a bit. This is goofy but clever and there's more meat here than one might expect. It's more than just a satire of Star Trek. It's ... well, it's 'essential" reading for the scifi fan.

Looking for a good book? If you read Redshirts by John Scalzi when it first came out, it's time to read it again. If you haven't read it, then it needs to go right up on top of your 'to-be-read' list.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Redshirts by John Scalzi has been a favorite of mine for a while. I loved the chance to review it again for Netgalley. If you haven't read Scalzi's work yet and want a good place to get started on him, and don't mind a little irreverent humor at Star Trek, then this is the book for you.

Excellent and unique novel that at first appears to be a standard poorly written sci-fi pulp novel. Appearances are describing. This book take some wild twists and turns. From a routine space novel it unwinds into a thought provoking romp. Fun and quick paced it is a fast enjoyable book to read.

I am very late to this Scalzi party, clearly.

I remember when Redshirts first came out and a lot of discussion about it. But although I'd seen all the Star Trek movies to that point, I'd never watched any of the tv, and I didn't feel that much affinity for the show - and given all the talk was of this book being a riff on that, I didn't feel compelled to read it.

Now, though, I have watched all of Voyager; and all of Discovery and Picard to date; and even, perhaps most relevantly, most of Lower Decks. So really, for me, this is the right time to read this book.

I also, at the original publication, had read zero Scalzi. I know, this is kind of amazing for someone so into the genre. But he just never really came across my radar. And then I finally came across the Interdependency trilogy, and gave it ago, and fell very heavily in love with those books. So, now I can say that I like what I've read of his work. Again, this timing was good for me.

So, what of Redshirts? Having read Mary Robinette Kowal's introduction, I was expecting this to be hilarious. And... it wasn't. At least, not for me. That is, there were some funny bits, mostly in dealing with expectations and stereotypes, sometimes in the language, and such things. But I didn't laugh out loud. So in that way I was a bit disappointed. As a narrative, though, it really is very clever and very well done; as Kowal also said, it takes an idea at the start - the lowly types of Star Trek etc who never get much screen time - and develops them into characters, and THEN completely turns what you're expecting not only on its head, but sideways and inside out and into configurations I couldn't imagine. So all of that was surprising, intriguing, and enjoyable. I will admit that the very end I found ... not disappointing, exactly, but perhaps bewildering? That is, I didn't feel like it added much, if anything, so I was left feeling blinking and a bit confused - there was a lack of resolution, because too much had been added on (perhaps this is the complaint about the "too many endings" of Return of the King...).

Is this a fun book to read? yes. Did I actually have to watch a lot of Star Trek to enjoy it? No; but I think a bit of knowledge does deepen the appreciation of what Scalzi is doing. Does my slight disappointment mean I'll never read another Scalzi? Oh heck no. I don't think he'll ever be a "must buy now" author for me, but I will always be keeping an eye out for his work.

This is my first time reading this book, and I feel I’ve been missing out! I picked it solely because of the title and hoped that it would be everything my Star Trek-loving heart desired. I wasn’t disappointed as this was entertaining, funny, and a nice ode to TV science fiction.

Did I request this book just as an excuse to re-read it? Yes. This book is everything Scalzi is and it's fun, clever, geeky ^4. Honestly Scalzi is the President of the Nerds, and it's for good reason - his writing is generally a fun kind of clever romp but he's polarizing for a reason.

It's pretty meta as a book, and you kind of have to have the right mindset to just go along for the ride. I first read this in 2012ish, and I remember absolutely loving it. Did I love it as much this time? Honestly not quite, but what I did love is that it's just a fun book to read, and it holds up really well after a decade.

I wanted to like this. I love Star Trek and a POV from the redshirts should be hysterical. But while this can occasionally be funny, it's not clever. The characters literally say that they're in a parody of Star Trek. This reads as a smarmy, prolonged aside on a blog. Trust your audience! We don't need handheld through the redshirt tropes. Stop mugging and tell your story--we can follow you without the constant "LOOK AT HOW FUNNY AND FOURTH WALL-Y I AM!"

Honestly, redshirts deserve better.