2024 the best sci fi novels review

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(as of Dec 04, 2024 13:56:13 UTC - Details)

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.

Reviewer: JTF
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Redshirts - a strangely thought-provoking funny book.
Review: It's a familiar meme: don't wear a red shirt on the deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise; if you do, you're likely to be killed before the first commercial break.This not-so-inside Trekkie joke became the basis for novel of the same name by John Scalzi. Heck, there's even a Redshirt song by Jonathan Coulton (of Code Monkey fame; speaking of which, there's a graphic novel Kickstarter project and a related album of Coulton's). Clearly, Mr. Scalzi is jumping onto a fairly main-stream meme (hey, even I heard about it).So, I hunkered down, ready for some inside Trekkie references and some serious fun. Redshirts does not disappoint on that score. It begins as expected with funny, light banter about junior officer life in space and fodder for various life forms they encounter; away missions and survival tend to be mutually exclusive for the junior officers. Soon, however, it dives a bit deeper - the senior officers go from normal to cliché in 7.6 seconds and then, flip back. Even Star Fleet officers typically don't do that. You get the picture; to say more, I'll need to leak some of the story. Before I continue on to the spoiler version of the review below, let me say a few things I'll attempt to substantiate below:- Mr. Scalzi does a good job building the relationships and defining the characters in the first half of the book. Those characters grow considerably in the second half of the book.- Speaking of the second part of the book, a relatively surprising shift takes place that moves the dialog onto a bit more speculative and less comical ground.- The three Codas at the end of the book are a non-trivial; they address some very interesting and often overlooked issues and perspectives. Do not blow by these. My view is that they take a really good book to the next level of excellence.- I believe that you could enjoy the book without being a Star Trek (or even SciFi) fan. Most who read it will be both, but it's not necessary to lock in.- I went between listening to the Audible book, ably read by Will Wheaton of Wesley Crusher fame on Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) and the Kindle edition. Mr. Wheaton is able to convey both the humor, the action and the issues equally well. (If you don't already, follow him on Twitter @wilw. He's both funny and has some interesting insights; mostly funny. Pet Peave timeout - my dear developer friends at Audible, please get Whispersync for Voice working on Windows Phone 8 so that I can pick up where I left off on my Kindle Paperwhite. It's a fabulous feature. Overall, I love the app, but it could stand that improvement. Thanks. Now, back to our regularly scheduled program.- My one disappointment: while I understand that Mr. Scalzi is reflecting military life (and that this isn't his father's Star Trek), the language was overly foul. All that needed to be accomplished could have been done so with brief forays into foul language land, instead, we move in and occupy it.****SPOILER ALERT****It turns out that our intrepid crew, yes pun intended, of the U.U. Intrepid, were really part of a future show that used Star Trek as its basis; a sort of Star Trek remix. The writers often used cheap dramatic tricks of death, destruction and mayhem to keep their audience interested; the tricks were typically played on the Redshirts. The book goes from mere fun to interesting when the junior officers, led by Ensign Andrew Dahl, figure out that they are part of a show. Now, not only do they know the challenges of going on away missions in red, they are cognitive of the fact that they're bit players in a show. Mr. Scalzi handles this awareness very well, and he takes it head on. He has Dahl and friends meet the show's producers; they come into contact with their doppelgängers and attempt to right many wrongs and make the alternate universe safe(r) for democracy. This is adroitly done with no over-long back-story; rather Mr. Scalzi takes you from what you think will be the main, light fun meat of the book and uses it to build the characters and relationships so that, by the time awareness dawns and producers are met, we know the characters, care about them and their relationships and are ready to walk with our new friends in unexpected directions.The characters now become involved with the lives of the "real world" folks; albeit some involuntarily like Lt. Kerensky and some more intimately like Jasper Hester. I do want you to read it, so I won't say anything more other than, it works. That's saying a lot. A character meeting themselves in the real world when they were a bit part the "real" person nearly forgot they played is nearly the embodiment of "awkward". Yet they meet and move on.Some of the most interesting parts comes in the codas - what would you do if, as a script writer, you discovered people actually died, in some alternate world, when you killed your characters off? You couldn't very well continue knocking them off. Now what? You still need tension and story. But wait, what if even angst over this question is covering up a deeper issue. Now, we're talking. Yes, John Scalzi goes there.What if your characters meet and, for the first time, you receive "tough love" feedback from someone you can trust, your other self. He goes there too.Finally, what if the "story" dead spouse of an unhinged husband has a counterpart who drifts because she knows there something else, a sense of loss or missing connection?All of these are examined in the context of story, not simply self-reflected dialog.So, while I thought Redshirts would be fun, and it was, it was also thought provoking, had some drama going down and some characters growing up. Well done Mr. Scalzi.

Reviewer: Julie W. Capell
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Nerd paradise, with gravitas and soul
Review: Like most Scalzi books, Redshirts is a breezy read, so I was easily able to finish it in just a few hours. Other Scalzi hallmarks, great dialog and snappy repartee, were also present throughout and had me laughing out loud in many places. The first few chapters seemed a bit slow, the situations awkward, and the science questionable, but my faith in this inimitable author was rewarded as I got into the middle section and an explanation for all of that presented itself . . . or at least the characters thought they had found an explanation. The reader, clued in via meta-meta-meta winks and sleights of hand, is in a better position than the characters to judge what is really going on, despite all the knotty plot twists, time travel, and alternate universes, but not by much. Readers who are able to suspend disbelief and simply enjoy the ride will be rewarded by a really surprising ending that adds a welcome dose of gravitas and soul to what otherwise could have been a mere romp in nerd paradise.John Scalzi was at my local independent bookstore just days after this book was released, and I was present when he took some time to visit with a small scifi book club at the store prior to addressing a larger crowd. Although one or two in the group contended it was not "scifi" enough for them, most of the folks in the club liked the book and would highly recommend it. Interestingly for a scifi book club, several individuals professed to have very limited knowledge of Star Trek, yet still said they had found the book accessible and enjoyable. Scalzi said he tries to write so that anyone can appreciate his books, not just geeks. One person asked Scalzi if he had found it difficult to keep the different time frames and universes straight. To my surprise, Scalzi said he did not do anything special, just kept it all in his head and kept on writing. He said his writing method could be called "fractal drafting" in which he writes some, goes back a bit, revises, goes forward, goes back, revises, keeps writing, and so on until the book is done. He told the group the three "codas" at the end--which were loved by some in the group (myself included) but not by others--were not something he had originally thought about including in the book, but once he got to the end, he sort of felt the characters needed to say something from their points of view. He appended those three short stories at the last minute, giving his editor a four-for-one. I, for one, am very glad he did.Post Script: I read this book just days after finishing "How to live safely in a science fictional universe" and couldn't help but notice there were many synergies between them. This book felt like the manifestation of the "narrative" that Yu alludes to, yet never fully describes, in his novel (which was FANTASTIC)Post Post Script: The audio book is read by Wil Wheaton, and although I have already read the book, I think I may have to download it and listen to it because the karmic nature of Wesley Crusher reading a book called Redshirts is just too great to miss.Post Post Post Script" Scalzi was great in person. I highly recommend you see him if he is every in your city. One of the things he talked about last night was his short story "Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One- The Dead City." He wrote this as an April Fool's joke, after some website (?) declared these were the most-frequently-used words in the titles of fantasy novels. To his (and his publisher's) surprise, the story has now been nominated for a Hugo. On Scalzi's website there is a video of a guy reading this story--possibly one of the best videos I have seen all year. Takes about 14 minutes but is well worth it. Listen to the end.

Reviewer: Grejam
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: classic
Review: Great read from one of my now favorite authors. Redshirts is a classic Star Trek concept that is explored wonderfully in this book. What to do when you realize you're in a badly written sci-fi novel? Read on to find out!

Reviewer: Karina
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Amei cada parágrafo desse livro e qualquer pessoa que goste de ficção científica deveria lê-lo.Precisa ter visto algo de Star Trek tbm pra não ficar perdido nas referências.

Reviewer: Aniket
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: He had a good idea and a decent plot, upto a point. You can really feel when the story runs out.I picked up another book of his and it’s written in the same voice. The same “catcher in the rye” voice that gets grating after a while.Remember to respond with compassion instead of useless frustration at an injustice.

Reviewer: Married to she who must be obeyed
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: John Scalzi is my go to author for Sci-Fi. Since i discovered him at the beginning of C19 lockdown I have spent a fortune on buying and reading his books. Redshirts is just another example of how he takes an idea and just makes a damn good story from it. His brain must on on over load with plots. For those of us old enough, there used to be a joke in the era of the original Star Trek that every time an away team beamed down to a planet the security guy (the Redshirt denoting security detail, when we played Star Trek in school in the 60's no one wanted to be the Red Shirt because they always had to die and never got the girl.) would be the first one killed , but the away team which always consisted of the most senior officers on the ship would (like really, the top guys who run the ruddy ship, I mean we always asked what would happen if they got killed, but they never did because the script writers weren't allowed to kill them. They could get flesh wounds or serious diseases but they would be cured by the Dr who would have a great cure 'extrapolated' in the last five minutes, and the heroes would be able to do it all again the next week. Well, Mr Scalzi has taken the idea and made it into a brilliant 'what if the script writers from the past sci fi shows were influencing the future?' Its a brilliant brilliant story on that theme. Lots of twists, lots of banter and loads of fun.

Reviewer: Andrea
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Loved this book on multiple levels, especially the humour and the Star Trek references. At first I thought that the "Soon to be a major tv series" announcement on the back cover was a joke but apparently it's really going to happen, which could then be the subject for the sequel, at which point minds will explode.This book is a kind of spoof of science fiction series where the lead characters always survive, but the extras die tragic, often pointless deaths. Redshirts is about those extras. But the extras are real people with real lives in this case. But are they? I love Scalzi's sense of humour, his easy-going style and the deeper layers hidden behind the humour. His work makes me think of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but more entertaining and more intelligent.

Reviewer: Peter Eerden
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Original, funny and so inventive that it just sucked me in and drove me along for the ride. Most of all though for me was the almost impossible spin of an idea that through the fist few pages sounded so implausible that it took a while to grasp the concept and run with it. Run I did and so glad to have done so.