Death... the Final Fate...

These are the voyages of the Starship Intrepid.

Its continuing mission,

to kill naive new crewmembers,

to seek out cheap thrills and easy lamentations,

to boldly go where no redshirt has gone before!



I knew since some time ago about this novel but until now I had been able to read it, and I am truly glad that I did it!



One of the best Star Trek novels without really being about Star Trek.



It's a common knowledge but again for those neophytes to the topic, let me explain th

Death... the Final Fate...

These are the voyages of the Starship Intrepid.

Its continuing mission,

to kill naive new crewmembers,

to seek out cheap thrills and easy lamentations,

to boldly go where no redshirt has gone before!



I knew since some time ago about this novel but until now I had been able to read it, and I am truly glad that I did it!



One of the best Star Trek novels without really being about Star Trek.



It's a common knowledge but again for those neophytes to the topic, let me explain that "Red Shirt" is a term that people started to use refering for those poor crewmembers, sometimes even without a proper name, accompanying the main officers of the Starship Enterprise, in the Original Series of Star Trek. Usually they wear "red shirts" due that Security Officers wear uniforms with shirts colored in red. And to add a feeling of "danger and realism" to the series, the scriptwriters decided to kill some low level crewmember in each away mission while visiting some dangerous planet or some mysterious space station.



This recurring gag became so common in the Original Series that the term of "Red Shirt" or "Redshirt" is usually apply to any "extra" killed in any TV series and/or film to obtain thrills from the audience.



John Scalzi, the author, came up with this brilliant story merging smart humor, nasty dangers and wonderful science fiction, consolidating a great novel, obviously appealing to any Trekker, but also to any reader interested in science fiction in general or even looking for an amusing book.



Without a doubt, one of the most polemic topics in any story is when a character is killed off the narrative. People may think that killing a secondary or even tertiary character cannot do a negative effect to the audience, but one has to think about that for some people may be a non-important character but it may be relevant even the reason of why the reader is keeping up with the story. Also, giving less value to the "life" of a character just because he/she wasn't important on the story, in a way, is like provoking an effect of not value a life if they haven't acomplished something worthy of mention in history.



Killing characters always is controversial.



If they became extremely popular, it can't alienate audience to keep up reading/watching any series. Also, it's sad to think about all the lost potential for that character since he/she is no longer in the story. Even worse if one realizes that he/she was killed off just to avoid to became a character more popular than certain other key character that the writer may appreciate more. But definitely, the worst of all is when a character is introduced, giving him/her a lot of developing but is killed off before of acomplishing anything of value to the story.



And of course, we have the issue of returning back from the dead. That happens when the characters are too important to keep them dead and/or to make an event about the resurrection of the characters. That certainly has its positive and negative repercussions.



Getting back to the novel, while it's basic premise is to exploit the recurring gag of killing off characters to get cheap thrills, also this excellent book is a great example of a crafty story with priceless science fiction and fantasy.



The only "bad" thing that I can think of is a section once the story ends, with three "codas" telling like side-stories about some characters whom appeared on the book. Honestly, I didn't need that, it was like anti-climatic having finished the novel and then finding those "codas", that they didn't give me any info of importante to change my impression of the novel. I don't know if they were included only to reach a 300-page level, that in previous times I have commented that if a story is good, it's doesn't need lot of pages to be seen as a worthy material. But again, if you opted of not reading those additional "codas" to the book, well, don't do it. You won't miss much.



However, the novel is indeed a fine masterpiece of crafty reading.



Highly recommended.