I loved it, even with my surface knowledge of Star Trek

Okay, so my full knowledge of Star Trek can be summed up thusly: Picard face-palms, that one dude sits in chairs like he’s hurdling, and redshirts are cannon fodder. And honestly? That’s all I needed to know to enjoy the hell out of Redshirts. Those with an encyclopedic knowledge of Star Trek (which I’m willing to bet is more than a few of you) will probably fall head over heels in love.

The title may pretty quickly clue you in – Redshirts takes place in a world much like the Enterprise, but with the focus decidedly off the bridge. Meet the actual crew of the Intrepid. Watching the show, it’s unlikely you’d ever know their names and they exist mostly to die brutally, demonstrate danger, and allow for real pathos from the main cast. But they’re real people and they’ve started to realize the patterns in crew deaths on away missions. And they don’t like dying.

I think the book even makes reference to Stranger Than Fiction, in which a character in a novel confronts his author, as these characters go to find their creator and plead to be spared. It’s a book that takes a certain amount of joy in pointing out the ridiculous deus ex machinas of really bad sci-fi, because really good sci-fi deserves so much better! It’s largely free of unnecessary, shoe-horned love triangles (yay!) with a wonderful cliff-hanger ending and codas that actually add to the overall value of the story. And while I imagine that a deep knowledge of Star Trek enhances the overall experience, it’s still delightful from the lay(wo)man’s perspective.