Redshirts was published by Tor Books in 2012 and won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. The title references the Star Trek phenomenon of unnamed crew members in red shirts being killed on away missions to demonstrate danger without sacrificing main characters. Scalzi’s novel asks: what if those redshirts figured out what was happening to them?
Ensign Andrew Dahl is assigned to the flagship Intrepid of the Universal Union and quickly notices that away missions are inexplicably fatal for junior crew members while senior officers survive absurd situations through impossible luck. He and his fellow “redshirts” investigate and discover that their reality is being shaped by a bad television show from another universe — their deaths serve narrative purposes they cannot control.
The novel is extremely funny in its deconstruction of television science fiction conventions, but its genius lies in the three codas that follow the main narrative. Each coda examines a different person affected by the “show” — a writer, a secondary character, a background extra — and asks serious questions about the ethics of creating fictional people, of treating lives as disposable for entertainment, and of what it means to be “minor” in someone else’s story. The comedy becomes genuinely moving.
Collecting Redshirts
First edition (Tor Books, New York, 2012): Hardcover with dust jacket. Hugo Award winner.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $30–$75
- Signed firsts: $50–$125