Hi everyone! I hope you’re all well. Today is Friday, and it’s time for another review. Today, I’m sharing my review of Red Dwarf: Titan by Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall.
Red Dwarf: Titan was released on 16th July 2026 by Gollancz and is 416 pages long.
The Plot
We’re a long way from the show as we know it here: three million years earlier, before the accident, before the Cat, before any of it. The Red Dwarf is parked in orbit around Titan, and everyone’s itching for some much-needed shore leave.
Rimmer, naturally, isn’t interested in doing any of the usual shore leave stuff. He’s too busy plotting to cheat his way through an exam so he can finally wangle a promotion. Lister’s got his own thing going on — moping over Kochanski, his ex, rather than making the most of shore leave. Then a message turns up from the future, dragging the pair — along with Kochanski and a handful of other familiar faces — into a genuinely reality-threatening conspiracy.
From there it escalates into a fast-moving chase through Titan’s criminal underworld, complete with shapeshifting hotel staff, dangerous new adversaries, and encounters with their own future selves, turning what should have been a normal relaxing shore leave into a race against time to stop reality from unravelling.
Characters
Dave Lister
Lister is still the Lister we know and love from the show. He’s a slob, unambitious, and endlessly likeable — but I noticed he’s given a bit more going on under the surface this time. The pining after Kochanski isn’t played purely for laughs; there’s something a bit tender under it, which I wasn’t expecting and quite liked.
Arnold J. Rimmer
Rimmer is as insufferably self-important and quietly pathetic as ever. His doomed scheme to cheat his way up the ranks is classic Rimmer: petty ambition undone by his own incompetence. The push-pull dynamic between him and Lister — equal parts contempt and dependence — is still the emotional spine of the book.
Kristine Kochanski
Kochanski gets noticeably more to do here than in earlier Red Dwarf prose outings, with a fuller arc and more interiority than the “unattainable object of Lister’s affection” role she’s sometimes been reduced to. That felt like a deliberate and welcome correction to how she’s sometimes been used.
Carzon
Carzon is a new addition to the Red Dwarf universe. He’s an eager, overly helpful mechanoid who becomes an unlikely and endearing ally to the crew as the book’s conspiracy widens.
Kryten (briefly)
Kryten, the mechanoid we’re used to in the previous books and the TV series, shows up briefly as a data chip that, when plugged into Carzon, allows a copy of his personality to temporarily take over and deliver some vital instructions.
Cat (formerly Frankie)
In this story, we get a ‘version’ of the Cat we know and love. He is genetically engineered from Frankie (Frankenstein), a cat Lister plans to smuggle on board to have himself put into stasis deliberately. This Cat has the same mannerisms and personality as ‘our’ Cat—and although he has no memory of Lister and Rimmer, unlike Kryten, who sent his personality back in time and a universe over, certain memories were encoded in his DNA.
Writing Style
Stylistically, the book’s got that same restless, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink energy as the old Grant/Naylor books — fast dialogue, absurd sci-fi ideas piled on top of each other, hopping between characters at pace. I won’t pretend it doesn’tget a bit complicated in places — there’s a point in the middle where I had to stop and mentally retrace who was where and why, and I think that’ll hit harder if you’re not already steeped in the show’s lore.
But what saves it is how small the characters stay, even when the plot goes cosmic. Facing down gangsters and identity theft on a moon of Saturn, Lister and Rimmer are still, at heart, two blokes who’d rather be in the pub. That’s always been the actual joke of Red Dwarf, and it’s intact here. It also clearly benefits from not being shackled to a TV budget — some of the set-pieces feel bigger and stranger than the show could ever have pulled off.
Final Thoughts
Red Dwarf: Titan is a fast, funny, occasionally overstuffed prequel that clearly delights in expanding the mythology rather than simply replaying old beats.
I came away genuinely fond of this. It’s messy in places, and I think a reader coming to it completely cold might be put off by the sheer amount going on — but as someone who already loves these idiot characters, it felt like a proper, worthy return, not a cash-in. And knowing it’s Grant’s last one gives the ending a weight I didn’t see coming.
I’m giving Red Dwarf: Titan a good 9/10.
Have you read Red Dwarf: Titan? What did you think?
As ever, thanks for stopping by!
Until next time,
George
© 2026 GLT
Categories: Book Reviews, Reading
GEORGE L THOMAS 
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