Red Dwarf

Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers

By: Rob Grant, Doug Naylor

Narrated by: Chris Barrie

Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

When Lister got drunk, he really got drunk!

After celebrating his birthday with a Monopoly-board pub crawl around London, he came to in a burger bar on one of Saturns moons, wearing a lady's pink crimplene hat and a pair of yellow fishing waders, with no money and a passport in the name of "Emily Berkenstein".

Joining the Space Corps seemed a good idea. Red Dwarf, a clapped out spaceship, was bound for Earth. It never made it, leaving Lister as the last remaining member of the human race, three million light years from Earth, with only a dead man, a senile computer, and a highly evolved cat for company.

They begin their journey home. On the way, they'll break the light barrier. They'll meet Einstein, Archimedes, God, and Norman Wisdom...and discover an alternative plane of reality.

©1989 Rob Grant and Doug Naylor (P)1992 Laughing Stock Productions Ltd

Finally!

I've been wanting to find this book unabridged for years! Chris Barrie is an awesome narrator, and I wish he read more books. The way he can do the voices of all the RD characters is nothing short of amazing! Thank you, Audible, for making this book available. Let's hope that Better than Life is coming soon!

In Space No One Can Hear You Smeg!!!

A classic Audio Production that needs more like it in the series to be offered on Audible.

Chris Barrie does a spectacular reading and does the impressions of his cast members don to a T.

We would welcome more of this to Audible

A great Sci-Fi parody classic.

If you liked "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", "Airplane" the movie, Naked Gun or anything like them you'll probably like this too. If you hate them you'll probably hate this. I loved this series, I loved this book when I got it as a kid as one of my first science fiction books from the sci-fi book club in the mail. When I first read it I didn't realize it was parody until I was well into it. This was probably my first exposure to parody sci-fi/fantasy stories and warped me. With Chris Barie's, one of the actors from the TV show based on this book reading it is a real delight since he is very talented at doing different voices for the characters. A must buy for parody and Red Dwarf fans.
Lister gets frozen for 3 millions years to save him from a radiation leak on the mining ship Red Dwarf and ends up as the last living human in the universe. With a creature that evolved from his pet cat and the hologram program of his dead annoying roommate Rimmer and a senile computer of the ship named Holly he decides to turn the ship around and find out what happened to humanity in 3 million years and survive with his sanity intact.

Not a very good story, but a wonderful performance

The one star is for the book. The narrator gets five.

I would only recommend this book to fans of the television show for the sake of hearing the narration by Mr. Barrie, which is the best reading of a fictional work I have heard, in terms of acting skill. He precisely impersonates the other actors he starred with on the BBC program. It is truly impressive.

But I found the story to be a disappointment, so I wouldn't recommend this one to those unfamiliar with the show.

Simply OUTSTANDING.....

Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers

Narration by Chris Barre Himself who Played Rimmer in the Original BBC TV Show, does an unbelievable job, and despite only him Narrating he does the voices of Holley, Lister, Cat and of Course Rimmer beautifully.

"Red Dwarf" serves as a companion novel to the British science-fiction television series produced by Grant Naylor Productions, by Doug Naylor and Rob Grant.

The plot of the book loosely adapts episodes from the first 2 Seasons of the BBC Show, and uses the novel format to explore the characters backstory more than they ever could in the half-hour episodes while expanding existing scenes far beyond the means available to them on the television series' budget and runtime.

Red Dwarf Started in 1989 and just finished production on Series XII Releasing in 2017

Fans of the show will enjoy this, though they should read it after watching the series as it contains spoilers, and reenacted scenes from the Show with more details, and it will appeal to those who enjoy similar works such as

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
And "Dr. Who"

Highly, Highly Recommended..

For serious fans only.

If you're a fan of the series, it's a great review of things, and has some enjoyable bits to it. If you're not, there's a lot not to recommend--in particular, the chapters are bookended by an instrumental rendition of the show's theme...done at the end and beginning of the chapter. Yes, this means that you have to listen to it twice, back to back, in order to get to the next bit of the story. Still, if you're a fan, it's worth enduring some rough patches to enjoy the story.

Helped if you watched the TV series

My wife and I loved the Red Dwarf television series so this review is very biased. This audiobook's content actually filled in some of the gaps in the storyline of the TV series so I'm not sure how this book will appeal to anyone who is not already familiar with the series. The narrator actually played Rimmer in the series and voices the other characters impeccably like those on TV.

Must Listen for RD Fans!

Totally hilarious, just like the show in its glory days. Chris Barrie, Rimmer on the show, is the perfect narrator. Of course he can do Rimmer, but his impressions of Lister, the Cat, Holly and Kryten are spot on as well. This isn't just a novelization tie-in, this is a very enjoyable story in its own right. Do not miss!

A fine treat for Dwarfers everywhere!

I saw a documentary once in which I learned that Chris Barrie is in fact an excellent impressionist. I heard moments of his impressions of his castmates from Red Dwarf and was very impressed with how good they were. In this audiobook, I was first excited to see an actual Dwarfer was going to narrate. That was bliss enough - or so I thought.

Now, the description says that this is read by Chris Barrie. It does not mention any other contributor. Nevertheless, and this with knowing Chris's vocal talents, I actually stopped playback and went back to re-read the description when I heard Lister. About halfway into the book, I had heard just enough "not quite" moments of Lister, Cat, and Holly to decide they were impressions. Or most of them were. I had second thoughts when I heard Kryten, but again, there were moments.

The odd side character here and there that I knew would have been voiced by Chris helped somewhat. Though all the Dwarfers were done well (with Rimmer quite obviously being on point, given it's Chris's own character anyway), I would have to say the next best is likely Lister or Holly (depends on the scene), then Kryten, then Cat.

I'm still not convinced there wasn't an uncredited cameo or two in there somewhere. 😊 I have been a professional audio technician/engineer doing live house reinforcement plus stagework and recording, trained audio for newscasting while working on the production crew at a television station, and spent some time as an audiobook technical editor.

I'm still not sure Chris did it all - but I suspect he did. And yes, he's THAT. GOOD.

As for the story, what can I say? I have two copies of this book (now three, including the audiobook), all the RD episodes on DVD and Series 1-8 on VHS, blooper reels, two volumes for the roleplaying game (which I have never played but have been given as gifts by family), shirts, buttons, an RD episode guide, and of course, the next book (which I now have in multiple formats). Every time I read written RD material, I "hear" it in the character voices. Now I get to actually HEAR it in the character voices, or a nearly indistinguishable replica of it. All in all, listening to this with my headphones on while doing cleaning, or in the car during my daily commute was just about Better Than Life.

(Sorry. I had to. )

Highly recommended for any Dwarfer or RD-curious. If you've only seen the shows, this is the back story and covers a good number of the seasons with broad strokes, weaving them into a unified story. Definitely worth a read - even if you end up imagining scenes from the show as you listen and find yourself reciting certain bits of dialogue along with the playback, as I did. This one is staying in my library for frequent re-listens. But for now, I'm off to begin BTL, and we'll see if I ever come out. 😉

audio control

You'll need to stay on top of audio control. Whenever​ the theme song and introductions come into play. If you are using a pair of headsets or close to the speakers.

A must for Dwarfers!

Chris Barrie makes this book his own. His knowledge of the characters and his vocal prowess shines through and really animates the narrative. Obviously his Rimmer is first class but his depictions of Lister, Holly, Cat and Kryten are all spot on.

As the previous reviewer noted this book takes some of the plot lines from the TV series and jumbles them up a bit and adds new elements and back story. Whilst this might warp the listeners expectations slightly it in no way lessens the quality of the story. In fact I think it adds to it and delivers a more in-depth exploration of the characters.

An absolute must for any Red Dwarf/Sci-fi/Comedy fan.

Great narration and fun to listen too

Chris Barrie narrates this novel with skill and vocal dexterity. His character voices are spot on faithful to the TV series. This book has most of the plot lines from the Red Dwarf series but more of the back plots are explained, especially the time before Lister joined the space corp. The material is great and the narration is excellent. Sometimes the book deviates from the characters that were developed on the TV series, but put this to one side and accept that this book was the start of the whole Red Dwarf series and all will be well. A good spend of this months credit!

Do not listen on public transport

I have laughed out loud at this a number of times, not a good idea on the bus on the way to work! The tone of the narration is spot on. A must listen for all Red Dwarf fans

Brilliant! Chris Barrie Genius!

I love it, it's fantastic! Chris does such an excellent job of doing all the voices it's almost creepy. I'm sure it must annoy the rest of the original cast because Chris Barrie could comfortably pull off a one man radio show!

Superb story, which I've read before, and yes I will be buying the next book but will try and delay for as long as possible because there are no more after that one :-(

Super annoying music 3x louder than the rest

Super annoying music played at the beginning/end of each part. Unnecessarily long and played 3 times louder than the rest of the book.

They're All Dead Dave

What a great buy this was. It's the story of how Red Dwarf came to be. Chris Barrie has an amazing knack of impersonating the whole team, though Listers scouse was a little too pronounced !. I thoroughly enjoyed this and would recommend to any smeg head !!

It's Rimmer doing Red Dwarf, Of course it's great!

I finished this today, having not read this book in about a decade. I'm so glad I'd forgotten almost all of it, because hearing it all over again with the voice of Chris Barrie was just wonderful!

He gets all the intonations just spot on, except, ironically, for Rimmer, which he has a tendency to over-compensate and make a little high-pitched, to disassociate it from his own voice. However, it's infrequent and doesn't detract from the experience.

The story is as good as it ever was, aside from a few misses in the future-tech front (the ships photo development lab for example!) but somehow it adds to the charm of the book, capturing the utter mundanity of life, even hundreds of years from now. And anyway, their comedy writers, not Michio Kaku!

The only problem is this was my free download and now I'll actually have to fork out for the sequel!!

Hilarious

Fantastic, but I always did like Red Dwarf.

Wow for the voices

I think this is as funny as any comedy sci-fi can be - just as entertaining as HitchHikers Guide. Chris Barrie's performance and impersonations are perfect - what a star

What a great choice of narrator

He's always been a good mimic and really brings the story to life. For anyone who doesn't know the TV series, I won't spoil the plot but don't be put off by it sounding too like a sci fi novel its hysterical The only thing that spoilt it is the volume of the music compared to the narrative