From the top of the large boulder he sat on, Ensign Tom Davis looked across the expanse of the cave toward Captain Lucius Abernathy, Science Officer Q'eeng and Chief Engineer Paul West perched on a second, larger boulder, and thought, Well, this sucks.
"Borgovian Land Worms!" Captain Abernathy said, and smacked his boulder with an open palm. " I should have known."
You should have known? How the hell could you not have known? thought Engisn Davis, and looked at the vast dirt floor of the cave, its powdery surface moving here and there with the shadowy humps that marked the movement of the massive, carnivorous worms.
Description:
John Scalzi's Redshirts is a delightful, challenging, and very odd sci-fi novel that seems vaguely familiar in plot, characters, and actions. After a few pages I realized the book portrayed life aboard a futuristic rocket ship similar to the starship Enterprise from the old Star Trek television shows. See what you think.
Ensign Andrew Dahl and his fellow crewmates have been recently assigned to the Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union star fleet, a plum job they are excited and honored to accept. But almost immediately Dahl notices certain oddities happening around them. One of particular interest to them: the crew, especially ensigns, are dying at an alarming rate.
Each time there is an Away Mission where a landing team is selected to leave the starship and visit some alien planet, an ensign (or several) ends up dead. Even more alarming is that they are always killed by some unusual means such as Borgovian Land Worms, ice sharks, killer robots with harpoons, and humans with exploding heads.The captain, first officer, engineer, and other senior officer in the landing team always return from these missions unharmed or else recover quickly from any injuries, plagues, infections, or battle scars. But the ensigns are dead, to be replaced by new crew members like Dahl.
He also notices that crew members hide whenever a senior officer strolls down the ship's corridors seeking available crew members to join another landing team. To insure self-preservation, ensigns have created a secret tracking system for these officers so they can be forewarned of the officers' presence and hopefully avoid being assigned an Away Mission team.
What exactly is going on? Ensign Dahl and other new ensigns (who wear uniforms with red shirts) realize they have to understand the situation and deal with it before they, too, are assigned to a mission and probably "accidentally" killed.
Author Scalzi's tongue-in-cheek writing style keeps the action going with ironic, funny situations. Without spoiling the fun, let me just say the solution to Dahl's peril involves:
Ensign Andrew Dahl and his fellow crewmates have been recently assigned to the Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union star fleet, a plum job they are excited and honored to accept. But almost immediately Dahl notices certain oddities happening around them. One of particular interest to them: the crew, especially ensigns, are dying at an alarming rate.
Each time there is an Away Mission where a landing team is selected to leave the starship and visit some alien planet, an ensign (or several) ends up dead. Even more alarming is that they are always killed by some unusual means such as Borgovian Land Worms, ice sharks, killer robots with harpoons, and humans with exploding heads.The captain, first officer, engineer, and other senior officer in the landing team always return from these missions unharmed or else recover quickly from any injuries, plagues, infections, or battle scars. But the ensigns are dead, to be replaced by new crew members like Dahl.
He also notices that crew members hide whenever a senior officer strolls down the ship's corridors seeking available crew members to join another landing team. To insure self-preservation, ensigns have created a secret tracking system for these officers so they can be forewarned of the officers' presence and hopefully avoid being assigned an Away Mission team.
What exactly is going on? Ensign Dahl and other new ensigns (who wear uniforms with red shirts) realize they have to understand the situation and deal with it before they, too, are assigned to a mission and probably "accidentally" killed.
Author Scalzi's tongue-in-cheek writing style keeps the action going with ironic, funny situations. Without spoiling the fun, let me just say the solution to Dahl's peril involves:
- Time travel
- Black holes
- Mind manipulation
- An unseen crewman hidden on board the Intrepid
- A box that looks and acts like a microwave, but used to solve all complex problems
If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
Scalzi, John. Lock In
A pandemic influenza outbreaks affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Some recover with no ill effects, but others are permanently paralyzed, "locked in" to their bodies. They adapts by mentally controlling robots and other humans, including one who may have forced his human host to commit murder. (previously reviewed here)
Lem, Stanislaw. Tales of Pirx, the Pilot
Another off-beat sci-fi story of the novice rocket pilot, Pirx, and his odd and humorous adventures throughout the galaxy with other life forms and his own species (previously reviewed here)
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