Monday, September 23, 2013

The Hugos: Redshirts

Over the past two years, I split my blogging self in two like those darn urSkeks in The Dark Crystal

One half contributed (barely) to THIS blog, falling impossibly behind in Hugo Award reviews and disturbing insights on Robot Porn (or whatever it is I do here) while the other half devoted every single day to a certain Paramount Pictures sci-fi property which this summer celebrated its 47th anniversary and highly profitable 12th motion picture.

That selfsame SF property is very much at the heart of the 2012 novel which won the 2013 Hugo: Redshirts: A Novel With Three Codas by John Scalzi. As just about everyone already knows, "Redshirt" is a jesting term for the poor devils in Starfleet security who so often find themselves stuck halfway down the business end of an acidic space amoeba.

In the 25th century, Andy Dahl learns a little too much about the life expectancy for those of low rank aboard the space cruiser Intrepid. Dahl and his new friends live in terror of the day their number will be called up for an exciting away mission alongside the handsome, impossibly lucky bridge officers. But it is when they resolve to do more than cower- when they actually seek the source of their tribulation- that the real adventure begins.

Redshirts was my favourite book of 2012. Hands down. 5 stars out of 5. I read it twice as fast as my usual speed, and resolved to find more stories by this author post-hence. His Old Man's War series is really fantastic, as my good chum Bookmonkey will attest. And realized the author'd been one of the minds behind the blink and you already missed it Stargate Universe I was enjoying. But I imagine Mr. Scalzi found the Hugo more rewarding than any of my thumbs up.

As a distant relative of John Wilkes Booth, John Scalzi is therefore distantly related to fictional FBI Agent Seeley Booth from Bones! You would certainly benefit immeasurably by contemplating his insightful blog Whatever or becoming one of his 52,700 stalkers on Twitter!

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