![\"Redshirts](\"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/13055592.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nRedshirts\u00a0<\/em>by John Scalzi<\/a> is a science fiction piece riffing on the fate of the infamous\u00a0Star Trek<\/em> “redshirts” – those hapless crew members that beam down to the planet with main cast members and always seem to die. The book starts by looking at the situation from the crew member’s perspective, as a group of new recruits begin to realise that their superior officers seem to be miraculously surviving while all around them anonymous crew are slaughtered week after week. The rest of the crew has developed survival techniques to ensure that they are never, under any circumstances, selected for an away mission.<\/p>\n There have been a lot of reviews about\u00a0Redshirts<\/em> and I’m not going to be able to add anything particularly insightful in this one. It was\u2026 OK. Writing was good (better than anything I could have produced). Story was interesting enough. I liked the three codas at the end. It gets very cleverly “meta”. It was\u2026 OK.<\/p>\n If the previous paragraph feels like I’m damning the book with faint praise, it is entirely possible that I am. I didn’t hate it, but I was never really grabbed by it. The writing was good, but not compelling. The premise was clever, but in some ways a bit too clever. It seemed to get in the way of a stronger story.<\/p>\n Coincidentally, I watched another “meta” work over the last couple of days –\u00a0Joss Whedon’s\u00a0The Cabin in the Woods<\/em>. I found it interesting to contrast the two works. With\u00a0The Cabin in the Woods<\/em> the story seemed to be more strongly embedded, the meta elements woven in a bit more tightly.\u00a0The Cabin in the Woods<\/em> is by no means perfect, but it did feel like the story was being put first.\u00a0Redshirts<\/em> felt a bit more like the clever conceit was being put first.<\/p>\n Look, this book is up for many awards, and there are a lot of people that love it. It’s a pretty quick read, and is one of those books that has got a lot of “buzz”. I think it might be one you just have to try for yourself – its “meta” elements are different enough that I’m not sure other people’s opinions are as helpful as normal. If you do read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below. I can’t shake the feeling that I might be missing something.<\/p>\n I also reviewed this book on Goodreads.\u00a0View all my reviews<\/a>.<\/p>\n Update 3\/9\/2013:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>Redshirts<\/em> just won the Hugo, further proof that I’m probably missing something!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>Hi,\n Welcome to Mark Webb’s author website. At this point the site is rather sparse – I’ve only recently started writing and there isn’t a lot to show for it right now. You can check out\u00a0my biography<\/a>, see …<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[102,14,15],"class_list":["post-2179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-john-scalzi","tag-review","tag-specfic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2179"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2205,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179\/revisions\/2205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwebb.name\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nThis\u00a0work\u00a0by\u00a0Mark Webb<\/a>\u00a0is licensed under a\u00a0Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"