The Books

The majority of these books are published by Penguin Books.

Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers
By Grant Naylor
    Yes, this is the story.  It starts out that Lister got himself really drunk and ended up on Miranda, with only a false passport, a woman's MacDonald's uniform, and no memory of how he got there.  He wants to leave, but has almost no money.  He has to steal hoppers (hopping Taxi cabs) to earn some money, but he almost always blows it on Larger (beer).
    One day he meets a man from the Space Corps by the name of Todhunter.  He wants to go to a restaurant that just happens to be at the same address as a brothel.  Lister soon realizes this is not the man he claims, but one Arnold Rimmer.  But this sparks an idea of how to get home.  He joins the Space Corps, only to learn the only available ship, Red Dwarf, is going to have an 18 month mining trip.  Although there is no turning back, Lister decides to smuggle a cat on board which puts him in stasis for the whole journey.
    Needless to say, he wakes up three million years later and starts to go crazy with loneliness.  Holly, the ship's computer, resurrects Rimmer as the ship's hologram.  They discover the Cat, and, almost exactly like the show, Kryten.  They salvage the Nova 5 and find in it a special drive which can take them home. They repair it efficiently and return to Earth.  But something is not right, when Lister discovers the symbol U=BTL on his arm.

Better Than Life
By Grant Naylor
    Lister, Rimmer, and Cat are still in Better Than Life, even though they know they are in it and dying outside in reality.  Through a series of events (that are far to long to relate and are fun to read on your own), they decide to leave and have to figure out a number of puzzles to return to reality.
    When they emerge, Lister and Cat are barely alive and need to rest for weeks. Not just that, but while they were gone Holly was alone and bored, so he decided to repair Talkie Toaster and Talkie talked him into giving himself an IQ of 6'000 at the expense of reducing some of his life span.  However, Holly makes a miscalculation and makes his IQ 12'000 and his lifespan 2.34 minutes.  Holly curses the Toaster and shuts himself down, taking the engines with him.
    After about two weeks, Kryten discovers they are on a collision course with a frozen planet.  So the crew is bundled up and prepare to leave, but what about Holly? They ask him what to do and Holly formulates a plan of sending a flare into a nearby sun, causing a solar flare to hurl a planet on a collision course to collide with the frozen one.
    Lister decides he can make the shot himself because he claims Holly is going to miss.  He makes the shot and succeeds, sending it into a new orbit, but Lister and Rimmer in Starbug, crash on the frozen planet.
    Rimmer can re-project himself on Red Dwarf and, promising Lister he'll be right back, goes aboard the ship for help.  Suddenly, aboard Red Dwarf, time becomes distorted and they discover they are heading towards a black hole.  They ask Holly, and he tells them how to cause the engines to move so fast they can sling-shot around the black hole.
    They go to pick up Lister, Talkie and Kryten going south on the planet and Rimmer and Cat searching north.  Rimmer finds Lister as an old man and living with giant cockroaches.  This planet is Earth, covered to the sky in garbage and beginning only now, to come to life again.  The distorted time caused Earth's time to move quicker.
    They return to Red Dwarf and communicate to Talkie and Kryten.  But they have a half-dead Lister as well.  The real Lister declares they have a polymorph on board.  The polymorph steals everyone's emotions on board and they decide to kill it.  But Lister is still old, and even though the polymorph is killed, Lister has a heart attack and dies.
Rimmer consults Holly and he has an interesting idea.

Red Dwarf Omnibus
By Grant Naylor
    Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers and Better than Life put together in one book. Also includes the script to the first episode of Red Dwarf, The End, and the script to Dave Hollins, Space Cadet.

The Last Human
By Doug Naylor
    Ever since returning from the backwards Earth that he was dropped off on to save his life, Lister has been in a deep sleep only to be awoken by Kryten because they are almost at the rendezvous with Red Dwarf.  He has trouble remembering, but the sight of Kochanski (came with Lister from the backwards Earth), the Cat, and Rimmer (especially Rimmer) helps him out. However, they discover another Starbug, complete with dead Kryten, Cat, and Rimmer, and Kochanski is in stasis.  They theorize they are in the wrong universe.  The other Kochanski asks them to find the missing other Lister and then dies.
    They go to find him, but end up in forbidden GELF space and are arrested.  They are set free after some, ahem, arrangements.  Kryten learns the other Lister is in Cyberia, a place where, like BTL, you are sent to Hell the way your mind makes it.  The crew has to make arrangements with a different tribe, the Kinatiwowie, to break in.  The GELFs supply different needed items and some simulants to protect them (since simulants are invincible to 99% of all weapons).
    They half-successfully succeed and Lister is left alone with his other self.  He discovers that his other self killed the crew and is very evil.  The other Lister, now known here as Lister 2, buries Lister alive and leaves with Starbug.
    Kryten discovers later that this is not Lister and disposes him, thanks to the Kinatiwowie.  They set course for a planet they think Lister might be on.
    Lister is found and sent to Cyberia, then after a couple of months, is released if he agrees to test a planet that will pass through the universal barrier.  He agrees and is allowed to spend 24 hours with a symbi-morph, who will do whatever Lister pleases.
    The symbi-morph, Reketrebn, is upset and does not want to be a sex slave to Lister, because she is not yet "broken" from her previous master.  Lister assures her his attentions are benign, and they escape together, only to end up on the experimental planet anyway.
    There they meet Michael McGruder.....Rimmer's son.  He was given a lifespan of thousands of years, if he agreed to do a special mission.  McGruder is a toughed-up, Space Corps Special Agent (reminiscent of Ace Rimmer) and was brought up thinking his father was just like him, if not better.
    They have trouble with the Rage which is the planet's guardian, but needless to say, Starbug crashes on the planet. Lister thinks he is saved, when Lister 2 shows up again, covered in weapons and armed to kill.

Backwards
By Rob Grant
    This is another version of what happened after BTL.  It starts out as a chase. Lister is being chased around by cops on the backwards Earth and Cat, Rimmer, and Kryten are brought in.  (Kochanski isn't in this story)
    They manage to get back to Starbug, only to find it damaged.  Kryten makes an error and forgets time runs backwards, so they miss they're flight window and have to wait 10 years for the next.
    The next section is basically describing Ace Rimmer's dimension and how he jumps to this universe.  It's very complicated, but I can say this about Ace...what a guy!
    Starbug manages to make it through the next flight window, but it is all in vain. Holly had grown so impatient, he had stopped watching the sensors and agonoids (simulants) invade the ship, tear out Holly, and remodel the ship to become a human death trap.  One agonoid kills all the others (or so he thinks) and waits.
    Meanwhile , Ace's ship hits Starbug and causes a breach and almost sends everyone hurling into space.  But he helps out and Rimmer is, of course, appalled by this newcomer.  Lister, being a teenager, decides he can fix the hull himself and goes outside.
    An agonoid that was sucked into space by the back stabbing agonoid manages to grab Lister, and is about to kill him, when Ace rockets himself and the agonoid into deep space.  Ace loses the rocket pack and, in fury of losing Lister forever, the agonoid kills him.
    Kryten gets sucked out into space and is recovered by the other agonoid.  Kryten manages to eject him into space, but not before the agonoid transmits the Armageddon virus ('Gunmen of the Apocalypse') into the computer...sending them out of control through space.

'Red Dwarf Quiz Book' and 'A Question of Smeg'
By Sharon Burnett and Nicky Hooks
    It's a quiz book about Red Dwarf. It includes Jigwords, Word Searches, Crosswords,
Number searches, and more. Oh, and quizzes.

Red Dwarf Programme Guide (Also in Revised edition)
By Chris Howarth and Steve Lyons
    This has character profiles, all the stories, a 'every word associated with Red Dwarf' dictionary, a 'every person who had anything to do with Red Dwarf' dictionary, all the freebies and books. Also has the US pilot for Red Dwarf in it. 
Plus tons of pics.

Primordial Soup
By Grant Naylor
    This has the "least worst" scripts or 'Polymorph', 'Marooned', 'Dimension Jump', 'Justice', 'Back to Reality', and 'Psirens'.

Son of Soup
By Grant Naylor
This is the sequel to Primordial Soup. It has 'Me2', 'Kryten', 'Backwards', 'Camille', 'Holoship', and 'Gunmen of the Apocalypse'.

The Man in the Rubber Mask
By Robert Llwellyn
Imagine a guy who thought he would never make the big time. Imagine a guy who still believes he hasn't made the big time even though he is the favorite character aboard Red Dwarf. Now imagine getting the chance to participate in a million dollar payroll Amercian Red Dwarf with fans seeping everywhere and an un-creepy agent. Now imagine that it doesn't work and you have to go home. Read the book with an author who truly understands.

Red Dwarf Space Corps Survival Manual
By Paul Alexander
    Formatted like the acclaimed "Mr. Bean's Diary", the author makes it seem like this is actually a
Space Corps manual that the crew have written in.  Although this author has a bizarre sense of humour (like surviving off crew member's bottoms) it delivers quite a comic punch to those who have always wanted to know what the crew thought.  I wonder if the actors contributed...

Random Abstract Memory
By Hattie Hayridge
One night, a 40 year old woman was rushed to the hospital with a suspected case of appendicitis. She came back home with a baby girl and named her Hattie. Join her as she grows up contemplating the old washroom's mysteries, the new washroom's flush, and boyfriends who run up trees to avoid a second date. Travel with her as she is chased by elephants, sleeps on top of a decaying dog (in a sleeping-bag of course), hits old ladies accidentally with tent poles, eats pork 'n' beans over top of an overflowed toilet on an overflowed cross-continentinal train. Listen to her relate her continual secretarial jobs working for nutcases and cookie-obsessed men. Join her as she begins to get comedy gigs at places with insane bubble comics and constant hagglers. Hattie relates her story through life to Red Dwarf where computers have hair too long. She does have quite the strange life. If you don't believe me, ask the monkeys who mugged her...

 
 
 

 I will update this as I learn of more books.

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