Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas
Summary
Publisher: Audible FrontiersI remember staying up late, when I was a kid, so I could watch the premier of Star Trek: The Next Generation on TV. Before that I was a huge Star Trek movie, Star Wars movie fan. I had all the action figures my parents would allow me to have. So now you know there is a special little place in my heart for “good” sci-fi. I couldn’t pass up an audiobook homage parody of one of my favorite story lines. I really did not know what to expect from the audiobook other than it was going to be funny, this is my first experience with John Scalzi, funny because I have another audiobook to review by him, so I hope this is good.
I really enjoyed listening to Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas, a very strange and yet somehow very familiar galactic adventure. I found myself wondering where in the universe is this story going with as many plot twists and turns to keep a psychic guessing. This audiobook is action packed planet jumping, time traveling, ridiculous situationing, pure and complicated sci-fi story that cult classics are made from. Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas has the main story, Redshirts, and then 3 codas at the end of the recording. Each of the codas is a strange first, second and third person prolog and epilog. I think it may have been more of a writing exercise for Scalzi, or space filler, or something, not really sure why they are there and found them equally painful and intriguing to listen to. One this I did not care for at all was all of the, I know there is probably an industry term for this, he said, she said. It seems after every other sentence either he said something or she said and just found it distracting.
Wil Wheaton did a pretty good job on the narration for this audiobook. For a Star Trek parody, I couldn’t imagine any one else. I found some of the characters difficult to distinguish and overall generic. However I loved Wheaton’s narration of Ready Player One, I did notice that Wheaton does much better with that style of audiobook, as Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas is full of dialog and sometimes he seems he is just as lost as I was trying to remember who is talking.
Publishers Summary
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 facts 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 expended on 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.
©2012 John Scalzi (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Disclosure
Audiobook downloaded from Audible.com
