May Books 2) Redshirts: a novel with three codas, by John Scalzi
"...the most rational explanation for what does go on in this ship is that a television show intrudes on our reality and warps it. But that's not the worst thing about it."
"Jesus Christ," Finn said. "If that's not the worst thing, what is?"
"That as far as I can tell," Jenkins said, "it's not actually a very good show."
This is by some way the most widely owned of this year's Hugo nominees, and it ticks a lot of fannish boxes so will probably win. I myself will put it last. This is basically a two-joke book, and the punch line to the second joke (above) is delivered less than a third of the way through; all the characters sound the same; and we don't ever get an Explanation for what is going on. Having said that, the third of the three codas, a time-travel parallel worlds love story, is far superior to the rest and I would have given it a much higher ranking if it were nominated on its own in some other category.