Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers

Red Dwarf
First edition cover
Author(s)	Rob Grant & Doug Naylor
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	Red Dwarf
Genre(s)	Science fiction, Comic novel
Publisher	Penguin Books
Publication date	2 November 1989
Media type	Print (Paperback & Hardback)
Pages	304 pp (first edition, paperback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-14-012437-3 (first edition, paperback)
OCLC Number	30363896
LC Classification	PR6064.A935 R4 1989
Followed by	Better Than Life

Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers is a best-selling science fiction comedy novel by Grant Naylor, the collective name for Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, co-creators and writers of the Red Dwarf television series, on which the novel is based. First published in 1989, the novel presents the plotline of the TV series as a cohesive linear narrative, providing expanded backstory of the Red Dwarf world and more fully developing each of the characters, particularly Lister and Rimmer. The book incorporates elements and scenes from the first and second season episodes The End, Future Echoes, Kryten, Me² and Better Than Life. In 1990 the book was followed by a sequel, Better Than Life.

The book has also been released in a 1992 Omnibus Edition and as an Unabridged Audiobook, read by Chris Barrie.

Plot summary

The book begins in 2180. Commercialism is still rife, and most of Earth's natural resources have been depleted. Most of the solid planets and moons in the solar system have been colonised. Having ended up in a supply port on Saturn's orbiting moon Mimas after celebrating his 25th birthday by binge drinking on a Monopoly Pub Crawl in London, Dave Lister is trying to earn enough money for a shuttle ticket home by working as a taxi driver.

After an incident in which he meets a Space Corps officer, Lister decides to sign up with the intention of getting on board an Earth-bound ship. He is assigned to Red Dwarf, a mining ship that will return to Earth, he learns, after a journey of four and a half years. Lister's roommate, also his supervisor, is the intolerable Arnold Rimmer.

Five months later, Lister has settled into the dull, monotonous routine of life aboard Red Dwarf, brightened only by his brief love affair with Kristine Kochanski. Having devised a plan to be put in 'stasis' for the duration of the journey to earth, Lister is sentenced and confined shortly before one of the ship's nuclear reactors explodes, killing everyone on board except himself.

Upon release from stasis, the ship's super-computer Holly explains that he piloted Red Dwarf out of the Solar System to prevent radiation contamination. Holly could not release Lister until the radiation had reached a safe background level. However, because the leaked Cadmium II had such a long half-life, Lister was kept in stasis for 3 million years. During this time, Holly has gone a little computer senile.

Faced with the possibility that he is the last human alive, Lister falls apart. Eventually he collapses, and wakes up in the medical unit to find Rimmer, who has been selected by Holly as the person most likely to keep Lister sane, and is now generated by the ship's computer as a hologram. Having collected himself, Lister instructs Holly to chart a course for Earth. Meanwhile, the crew discovers another life on board, an intelligent humanoid who comes to be known simply as The Cat, a member of a race of cats evolved from Lister's cat Frankenstein and her kittens after having survived the radiation blast deep in the ship's enormous cargo hold.

Due to three million years of constant acceleration, Red Dwarf breaks the light barrier, complicating things aboard as the crew begin to experience 'future echoes,' brief glimpses of events that have yet to happen. Eventually the ship slows and Holly succeeds in turning around and heading for earth. Enroute the Red Dwarf crew retrieves the Nova 5, a crashed ship and its mechanoid service robot, Kryten. Work begins to repair the Nova 5's more advanced engine systems for the return to earth.

The crew soon believes that they've safely returned to a warm welcome on an inhabited planet Earth. It gradually becomes clear, however, that they're each living out their own improbable fantasies, and Lister, Rimmer and The Cat must accept the fact that they've not returned to Earth, but are trapped within an addictive virtual reality game called Better Than Life, a game which is killing them, but is incredibly difficult to escape from...

Other versions

• Red Dwarf Omnibus

Released in November 1992 by Penguin Books, the Omnibus contains the novels "Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers" and its sequel "Better than Life" together in one volume, both of which are slightly corrected and/or expanded. In addition, the omnibus also includes a jokey reproduction of the text that appeared on the infamous beer mat that the premise for the series was originally written on, a script for an episode of "Dave Hollins: Space Cadet," and the original script of the pilot episode The End.

• Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (Audiobook)

A complete unabridged audiobook, read by regular cast member Chris Barrie (who plays Arnold Rimmer in the series) was released by Laughing Stock Productions in 1992. It has a total play time of about 8 hours and 15 minutes, and is now available in a variety of formats, including digital download from Audible.com. A much shorter abridged version also circulates.

• BBC Radio 7 Abridged Reading

In December 2009 BBC Radio 7 broadcast an abridged version of the audiobook, read by Chris Barrie as a series of six half-hour episodes. This version was originally broadcast on the BBC World Service in the mid 1990s.^[1]

See also

Novels portal

• Red Dwarf
• Simulated reality

References

1. ^ "Red:Dwarf Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers". BBC 7. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pbnnj. Retrieved 4 January 2009.