From: doctor8@jhuvms.hcf.jhu.edu (Jason Abner Miller)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.drwho
Subject: Re: _Transit_ ... YUCK!
Date: 28 Jan 1993 00:28 EST
Organization: The Johns Hopkins University - HCF
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: jhuvms.hcf.jhu.edu
Keywords: Don't buy it!
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article <18187@umd5.umd.edu>, jblum@hamlet.umd.edu (Hi ho -- Kermit the Frog here...) writes...
>In article <26JAN199311163306@jhuvms.hcf.jhu.edu> doctor8@jhuvms.hcf.jhu.edu (Jason Abner Miller) writes:
>>	Yuck.  Yuck yuck yuck.  Would somebody who actually thinks that
>>the cyberpunk theme actually has a place in the once-literate "Doctor
>>Who" please defend this book over the net?  Otherwise, it looks like
>>I'm forever going to be trashing it.  Thanks.
> 
>I haven't read 'Transit', so I can't really defend it yet... but I can
>defend cyberpunk in general.
> 
>Yes, most cyberpunk is grim and depressing.  It also contains more powerful
>images per moment of reading than just about any other future-image.

	I can see images in _Transit_ that are supposed to be powerful,
now that I've, in a workmanlike manor, gotten up to page 85.  But it
doesn't work on me.  All this sex and drugs stuff, the power images
Aaronovitch is trying to create, makes me say more of "This is bad
fiction, the Doctor just doesn't get laid" than "Oh wow, that was 
an intense cyber-sex scene" ... 

>Read Gibson's "Neuromancer" (if you dare), or even some of the early
>chapters of "Cat's Cradle: Warhead" for examples of this impact.  Yes,
>it can get grotesque, but it is HIGHLY literate.

	Regrettably, I've never been able to obtain _Warhead_, but
I did try to read _Neuromancer_ last year, and had immense trouble
working through the first chapter, and eventually gave up without
ever getting a real good idea of what it was supposed to be.
	
>There's a stereotype that cyberpunk is "post-literate fiction", meaning that
>anyone could write it (just like anyone could write a punk rock song).
>That's almost true... just about anyone can write REALLY BAD cyberpunk.
>And a lot of people do. 

	Agreed.  My first exposure to cyberpunk came last year, when a
friend of mine who was really into it tried to show me a story he
had written (a story which is mimiced early on in _Transit_).  I wanted
to puke ... _Transit_ seems to be written in the same style.  Granted,
I wouldn't be able to discern between good and bad cyberpunk.  I just
get the impression that it's all bad.

> But people have written a llot of other kinds of
>lousy SF too.  Judging the style by its cliches (and it's true, there are a
>lot of really excremental pieces of work out there) is like the way
>mainstream writers judged SF by the pulpy crap of '30s magazines and '50s

>B-movies.

	My father is an avid collector of 1950's sci-fi, and I always
had the impression that stuff really was literate.  "Forbidden Planet"
is still one of the best sci-fi movies ever made, IMHO (and was an
apparent source for "Snakedance"), and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"
and "The Incredible Shrinking Man" were powerful, intelligent films
once you got past the bad special ef
fects and dramatic overkill.
	I've viewed Cyberpunk as being more reminiscent of 1930's pulp,
which featured bug-eyed monsters and such and was deservedly forgotten.
But I'm sure people out there have quite different opinions on both
these types of sci-fi; you can't please everyone.  But cyberpunk just
doesn't fit in with the type of science fiction "Doctor Who" has come
to represent over the past 29 years.w

>That said... "Transit" may turn out to be exactly that sort of literary
>roadkill.  But that would be the fault of the book, not of an entire genre.

	I've always held Aaronovitch to be a good writer.  So I would
assume, that since I hate _Transit_ with every passing page, it's

more of my fault for not appreciating the genre than with his writing.

							Jason Miller
							"some doctor guy"