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John Scalzi: Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas

sparkchaser

sparkchaser

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Redshirts

Released yesterday, ordered just now, and I can't wait to read it.

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 fact 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.
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Kindle folks (and Kindle app folks, too), you can read the first four chapters for free.

I am almost 20% though Redshirts and I love it. I have found myself chuckling more than a few times.

I give you this excerpt:

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 Ensign 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.

“I don’t think we should just be waltzing in there,” Davis had said to Chen, the other crew member on the away team, upon encountering the cave. Abernathy, Q’eeng and West had already entered, despite the fact that Davis and Chen were technically their security detail.

Chen, who was new, snorted. “Oh, come on,” he said. “It’s just a cave. What could possibly be in there?”

“Bears?” Davis had suggested. “Wolves? Any number of large predators who see a cave as shelter from the elements? Have you never been camping?”

“There are no bears on this planet,” Chen had said, willfully missing Davis’ point. “And anyway we have pulse guns. Now come on. This is my first away mission. I don’t want the captain wondering where I am.” He ran in after the officers.

From his boulder, Davis looked down at the dusty smear on the cave floor that was all that remained of Chen. The land worms, called by the sound of the humans walking in the cave, had tunneled up under him and dragged him down, leaving nothing but echoing screams and the smear.

Well, that’s not quite true, Davis thought, peering farther into the cave and seeing the hand that lay there, still clutching the pulse gun Chen had carried, and which as it turned out had done him absolutely no good whatsoever.

The ground stirred and the hand suddenly disappeared.

Okay, now it’s true, Davis thought.
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Yeah, I want to read this. A pity it seems the e-book is only available in the US. :/ I applaud that he's distributing it without DRM, but ironically that just means I really don't want to pirate it, even though I can't buy it...
 
That'd be great, thanks! I'd still need it in EPUB format rather than Amazon's, though, if you have some way of figuring that out. (Ironically, it seems Amazon are the only ones selling it in Europe... I really can't understand how it makes sense to people that it's OK to sell a paper book to suspicious-looking foreigners, but not an e-book.)
 
All those shops returned the result "You're a rotten commie unworthy of American literature". But somehow I'd forgotten about Calibre, d'oh. I'll try to get it from Amazon and get back to you if I can't, thanks!
 
OK, I finished this last night. I loved it. I thought it was brilliant.

I really do not want to give away any of the plot for fear of giving away too much. I kinda saw what was coming but that didn't make the trip and delivery any less enjoyable. I will say that throughout most of the book I had this stupid grin on my face. The three Codas each provide some thought provoking reading. I especially enjoyed how the First Coda was told in the first person, the Second in the second person, and the Third in the third person.

John Scalzi hit a home run with this one and if you have even a passing interest in SciFi, you should definitely check this out.

:star5:



beer good, were you able to get a copy?
 
Reading Redshirts: hilarious.
Reading Redshirts right after finishing The Elegant Universe: hilarious squared.

“But define ‘completely ridiculous shit,’” Duvall said. “Does space travel count? Contact with alien races? Does quantum physics count? Because I don’t understand that crap at all. As far as I’m concerned, quantum physics could have been written by a hack.”
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OK, so that was hilarious, and clever, and pretty much the novel version of TVTropes, and does for serialized SF what Cabin In The Woods does for horror, and... is it wrong that the Jenkinses almost made me tear up?
 
Here are a few more outlets to try.
Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas - goHastings

Redshirts by John Scalzi eBook by eBookMall

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi - Powell's Books

Search: John Scalzi - Kobo

John Scalzi's home site--Red Shirt page w/links to stores
Redshirts: Now Out!

The ebook will be available in outside US/Canada in November. Apparently ebook vendors were adding this information to their denial notices when the book came out in June.

Some buyers succeeded in buying the audio version outside the US market.
 
Thanks! None of those sell the book to mainland Europe, though. Theoretically, the book should only be unavailable in the UK - Scalzi himself has claimed that they've contacted retailers to let them know it's OK to sell it to other countries outside the US/Canada, but it looks like Amazon is the only retailer who can be bothered to make money. And they wonder why Amazon dominates the market...
 
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