Redshirts (originally titled Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas) is a space adventure by science fiction writer John Scalzi that capitalizes on tropes from Star Trek and similar television series. The book was published by Tor Books in June 2012. The audiobook of the novel is narrated by Wil Wheaton. The book won the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel and Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
This audiobook takes place in an alternate universe very similar to Star Trek: TOS. The plot line is along the idea that the ship's captain, doctor, first officer and other "main characters" never seem to get hurt seriously, but the lower deckers, the red shirts all die whenever dramatically appropriate. It's the story of these low-profile folks trying to find out why. As weird as that seems, it gets even odder when the crazy conspiracy theory that they are actually a part of a really bad science fiction show turns out to be correct. As much as that sounds like a spoiler, it's not. It's really out there, it's really bad, but it's really good at being bad. You know that going into a story with such a preface, and for what it is, it's certainly an expansion on philosophy of fandom and science fiction, it's the "birds of …
This audiobook takes place in an alternate universe very similar to Star Trek: TOS. The plot line is along the idea that the ship's captain, doctor, first officer and other "main characters" never seem to get hurt seriously, but the lower deckers, the red shirts all die whenever dramatically appropriate. It's the story of these low-profile folks trying to find out why. As weird as that seems, it gets even odder when the crazy conspiracy theory that they are actually a part of a really bad science fiction show turns out to be correct. As much as that sounds like a spoiler, it's not. It's really out there, it's really bad, but it's really good at being bad. You know that going into a story with such a preface, and for what it is, it's certainly an expansion on philosophy of fandom and science fiction, it's the "birds of a feather" conversations of Penguicon brought to life.