I’ll be honest, I’m not sure there has been a book that I’ve looked forward to as much as the release of Red Dwarf Titan for a long long time.
In this review, I’ll deep dive into the story of the book as a book is only as good as it’s story, but I’ll also review the audiobook version, as I have both.
I got the book and audiobook the day it released, and as I read through the book across a few evenings, I also decided that I’d get the audiobook to listen to in the car as I had many a long drive where I knew Lister, Rimmer and company could keep me company.
I was especially excited to hear Chris Barrie read the book and give another flawless performance reading Rimmer, and his usual spot on versions of Lister and other characters.
I have a separate article about Red Dwarf Titan that focuses on the story behind the story, and is just my thoughts around the somewhat controversial nature of this book and story existing in the first place. Without going into it too much, it focuses on the fact that the Red Dwarf co-creators Rob Grant and Doug Naylor haven’t worked on Red Dwarf together since the 1990s and that the release of Red Dwarf Titan was following a legal dispute to resolve a conflict over the rights to Red Dwarf.
And of course, it is worth noting that shortly after this book was announced at the start of 2026, Rob Grant, who co-authored this book with Andrew Marshall suddenly passed away. It’s difficult as a Red Dwarf fan to read this book completely separated from the story behind the story, as not only is this book the final posthumously released Red Dwarf work from one of it’s creators, but looking at the book itself, there are lots of questions that can be drawn onto why certain things were written.
I’ll save most of that discussion for the Red Dwarf Titan Story Behind the Story article.
But onto the book itself!
What can I say? It was a bloody fun Red Dwarf caper!
Rob Grant took the story back to its roots, and this serves as something of a prequel. And yes, I do mean ‘something of a prequel’, but more on that shortly. I expect that because there had been several series of the TV Red Dwarf that Rob Grant wasn’t involved in, the plan here was to go back and create a prequel that would establish its completely separate timeline and continuity.
That way there would be little risk of fan confusion or legal gurglings over what is or isn’t allowed to be used or referenced. The book is advised as one parallel dimension to the left as well as being three million years in the past compared to the TV Red Dwarf.
The story seems to take place very shortly before the events of the first TV episode which is called The End. If this were an episode, it could fittingly be known as The New Beginning.
When I first heard that this would be a prequel, I imagined that it would be set two or three years before the disaster that killed the whole crew of Red Dwarf and Lister went into stasis.
Oh, by the way, at this point I’ll acknowledge that I assume if you’re reading this you are a big Red Dwarf fan, as I intend to refer to lots of things from the franchise’s lore without continually adding loads of context. So, if you don’t know Red Dwarf’s premise of a man being frozen in time on a giant space ship where all the crew died and being awoken three million years later, I would suggest that you watch at least series 1-6 of the TV and then continue reading this article…or if you don’t want to be partially clueless and want to follow it all, just continue through series XII of the show to be all caught up.
So, where was I? I thought this book would follow the daily exploits of Rimmer and Lister aboard the Red Dwarf as regular crew, or maybe even show them as younger cadets in some kind of training. I guess similar to how the JJ Abrams Star Trek movies start off with the characters in training.
Actually, this book is a good comparison to those “rebooted” Star Trek films, because like Abrams Star Trek, the book Red Dwarf Titan isn’t actually a prequel.
Probably around half way through the book, Rimmer and Lister have met up with a mechanoid called Carzon who basically fills the role of Kryten. When he first showed up it made me smile, as the plot has already included Lister getting his pet cat Frankenstein, and with this earlier model mech, it now felt like there was still reverence for the original show’s characters Cat and Kryten, who surely because of this being a prequel, would not be able to appear…or at least that is what I thought.
You see, the very basic plot of the book is that Rimmer and Lister are chained together (as are everyone else from the Red Dwarf crew) when visiting Saturn’s moon Titan where there is a futuristic city. Rimmer wants to find some technology to help him cheat at his Astro Navigation exams so he can try to become an officer, just as was his main motivation within the first episodes of the TV show.
Lister meanwhile is sadly pining after Christine Kochanski, and we learn that Lister’s scheme of bringing a cat he smuggled on board Red Dwarf was done with the intent of getting him put in suspended animation so he doesn’t have to put up with being Rimmer’s bunk mate for years until they get back to Earth.
These points are the basic plot.
The more complicated plot is that there is some kind of issue effecting multiple dimensions and a message comes from the future to warn Lister that there will be a disaster on Red Dwarf and that he will get trapped three million years in the future. There is something called the Destiny Engine which kinda works like the movie Final Destination where it seems to be trying to force fate to follow a pre-determined path. In this case to get Lister to repeat his fate from another dimension and wind up stuck as the last human.
We learn that this message is from Kryten from three million years in the future as he is able to have his future personality loaded onto the earlier model mechanoid in Curzon. I guess this would be like trying to run a PS5 game on a PS2. As such, Kryten can’t stick around for long which is somewhat plot convenience as his future knowledge would have been able to help them a lot more.
But it’s this inclusion of Kryten from the future from during the course of the adventures of the TV show that means that this book isn’t strictly a prequel at all. Just like JJ Abrams Star Trek that featured original Spock played by Leonard Nimmoy and had a time travel story that explained that things in the past were changed and therefore created a new branch of a timeline, Red Dwarf Titan does the exact same thing.
This is taken a step further when Lister’s pet cat goes through a process that turns her into a version of Cat from the TV show. The female Frankenstein becomes a the adult male felis sapien matching Cat’s description, speech pattern, and if you hear the audio book, delivers dialogue in the exact same way as Danny John Jules version when voiced by Chris Barrie.
Towards the very end we learn that this new Cat, who technically isn’t the exact same character even has some of original Cat’s memories encoded into his DNA from this process that created him from Frankenstein. So yeah, two characters connect this to the future series of Red Dwarf and ultimately make the story not technically a prequel.
The book does take quite a long time get to the whole Destiny Engine plot, and interestingly doesn’t start with Rimmer and Lister at all. Whilst they are the undisputed main characters of the story, the book does focus on the exploits of other characters a reasonable amount.
At times chapters follow Kochanski, others follow Captain Hollister and Todhunter, and some follow Olaf Petersen who are all familiar names and faces from the TV show. Oh, and then of course there is Holly, who is clearly referenced as being back in his Normon Lovett version, and plays a somewhat small but vital part of the proceedings.
You see, Holly is spoken of as something of a line of products which make him sound like a home smart device with the version on Red Dwarf being the full fat pro edition. With realities from different dimensions bleeding in to one another a lot of what Holly has to do in the story is notice and be overwhelmed by multiple versions of characters popping into this reality.
Kochanski’s storyline is that she has broken up with Lister and is now on her hen do before she will go on to marry a new love interest called Eric. Of course, this story doesn’t give Kochanski and Lister their happy ending, and with the book having something of a cliffhanger ending, there is still definitely a big possibility that their relationship would get explored more in the future.
Coming onto the ending, to avoid destiny catching up to them, the crew have to make the decision to fire themselves away from Red Dwarf in a garbage pod. The ending does come abruptly after a false finish that they had resolved an issue with Holly that was making them thing they’d already saved the day and fixed the future for theirs and all realities.
They say that the pod they’re jammed into has no navigation controls and that it’d crash land into Titan, so this ending isn’t quite the same as them stealing a Starbug and jetting off for traditional Red Dwarf style episodic adventures.
In fact, I do quite wonder where the story of this would have taken them, or still might take them if there is the possibility that it could be continued in the wake of Rob Grant’s passing.
I’m inclined to believe at this point that it probably won’t continue, but can’t quite see how the crew of Lister, Rimmer, Cat and Curzon would have a reason to stay together beyond any sequel where they crash back into Titan. For one that would put them in the same basic setting as this book so would be something of a retread immediately, and secondly, you’d have to believe that they’d pretty much all go their separate ways with Lister and Rimmer possibly facing being arrested for abandoning their posts and high jacking a garbage pod.
Still, in the fullness of time we may learn more from Andrew Marshall what his and Rob Garnt’s plans were for the future of this strain of Red Dwarf.
Forn what this is, it’s full of all the silly over the top shenanigans that you’d expect from Red Dwarf. Apes driving cabs, clones of people running around, Rimmer almost getting eaten, and a cool idea of a tunnel system that humans would walk lost in forever. Luckily their having a cat at the time means the non human could lead the others out.
The wit and descriptive insults and things always seemingly going wrong for Rimmer make this feel exactly what any Red Dwarf fan would hope it to be. There are also plenty of references to things that will perk up die hard Dwarfers. You’ll spot names like Billy Doyle and Duane Dibbley being used in different contexts to how they were previously used on the show. You’ll probably also note that Captain Hollister has been changed to have the first name Randy for some reason.
In terms of the audiobook, Chris Barrie does a stand up job. Rimmer of course sounds the most natural and spot on for him, which is no surprise as he’s the actor who originated the role. His Cat hits the spot for exactly the right energy for a version of the early era Cat as well. Curzon specifically isn’t quite Kryten, but you can almost feel him trying to break his programming as he becomes more independent as the book goes on. Chris Barrie gives him a suitable ‘not quite Kryten, but not not Kryten’ voice. This is highlighted even more when we hear Barrie’s actual Kryten voice.
One thing on the audiobook which I found equal parts charming and annoying was that almost every chapter started with the roll out of where the chapter was set so the amount of times I ended up mouthing along to up town or down town and Xanadu was a bit silly. It just highlighted to me how in a paper book you’d just skim past these moments.
In Conclusion
This is a must for Red Dwarf fans. The book is genuinely very funny throughout and has enough excitement, action and mystery to make this stand out as a very novel Red Dwarf novel. It’s soft reboot nature also makes this very intriguing as any fan will try to puzzle out what still counts in the new continuity. Who knows if the story will continue, but if it doesn’t Red Dwarf Titan will still serve as a suitable new beginning from the Rob Grant side of the show for fans to imagine of the new adventures of Rimmer, Lister, Cat and Curzon.
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