Redshirts by John Scalzi
Tor, $24.99, 317 pp., hc, 9780765316998. Science fiction.
A few years ago, I found myself in a quandary when it came to the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. I loved the book, and wanted to recommend it to a friend who I thought would love it as well. The problem was that I couldn’t tell him why he had to read it. The reason he would love the book was a major spoiler, revealed about halfway through the story, and if I told him about it I felt it would ruin the joy of discovery I myself experienced when I got to that point in the book.
By now, it should be obvious why I’m starting my review of Redshirts by John Scalzi this way. Reviewing a book like Redshirts is very difficult. The point of a review, after all, is to explain to the reader not only if a book is a good read, but also why; and to a great extent, the “why” of Redshirts is something that a reviewer should not reveal. Hints and clues are sprinkled around the first part of the book before the great reveal is announced, but the pleasure of the book should be in the discovery of what these clues mean, and I in my capacity as a reviewer should not give that discovery away. (Some might even argue that telling you there’s a major spoiler in the book is in fact a major spoiler, but I have to start somewhere.) In the future, once the statute of limitations on spoilers has run out (which, in Internet time, will probably be next week), there will undoubtedly be blog posts, articles, and essays dissecting the novel and reveling in all the plot points. But until then, delving too deeply into these plot points, even if I had hated the book, would be rude to both the reader and the author. So—what can I tell you?
Redshirts begins with a premise that would be familiar to any casual fan of the Star Trek universe. Already, the concept of a “redshirt” crewmember who is considered expendable and dies off quickly is pretty well-known in our culture. The book focuses on Ensign Andrew Dahl, who is assigned to the Intrepid, the flagship of the Universal Union, along with a few new colleagues. Dahl and his low-ranking friends soon discover that the life expectancy of an ensign or other low-ranking officer on an away mission is pretty much measurable in hours, if not minutes or seconds. Dahl and the other officers decide to investigate the mystery, and what they find is, well, pretty much John Scalzi’s commentary on the concept.
From what I could see, there were two directions in which Scalzi could have taken the story. I was expecting one direction, but in the end, I was pleasantly surprised that he chose to take the other. This is a very funny book. Obviously, as I was reading it, I thought of Star Trek, but as I continued reading the novel, the Hugo- and Nebula-award winning film Galaxy Quest also came to mind. Scalzi’s writing is clear, crisp, and amusing; I can easily see Redshirts adapted for the big screen with a minimum of changes in dialogue and setting.
After the main part of the novel comes to an end, the book concludes with three longish “coda” sections. Some might find the codas weak or unnecessary; personally, as a writer myself, I appreciated the first coda the most, and I felt that the other two did help bring even more closure to the book, although it can be hard to see how the third coda really affects what came before.
(One final note: when you get to page 113, and reach the middle, italicized paragraph, for “Kerensky” read “Jenkins.” The book will make much more sense that way, and I hope the publisher will remember to fix the error in the next printing.)