Redshirts

Redshirts
By John Scalzi

Perhaps because there are so many conventions and clichés attached to it, SF has always been ripe ground for self-parody. In Redshirts John Scalzi takes the basic Star Trek episode plotline and spins it into a zany, humorous, and sometimes sweetly sentimental metafiction. The corollary of Wilde’s dictum that life imitates art, at least in our time, is that life imitates bad art, a fact that Scalzi has a lot of fun with in this story of starship ensigns in the twenty-fifth century who are six time-traveling supporting characters in search of an author.