Transit Ben Aaronovitch
Love And War The Highest Science
#10 December 1992 ISBN 0-426-20384-4 264 pages
cover art © byPeter Elson
Front cover
Wallpaper
Back cover
Spine

Reminiscent of his cover for Cartmel's Warhead. It's a pity Elson wasn't given the opportunity to depict scenes on the surface of Mars, which would have made for a far more interesting cover. Still, this was the early '90s, when the cyberpunk subgenre was all the rage, and Virgin undoubtedly was trying to tap into that.

An newly-built interstellar transit-tunnel network is infected by a hostile entity from another dimension.

worthwhile

Full of creative ideas and interesting settings, the novel suffers terribly from being jumbled and incoherent. It also squanders the new companion, Benny, by having her possessed by an alien intelligence for almost the entire story. But what it lacks in focus it makes up for with its vividly-drawn local color, and by fully immersing the reader in the setting.

  • Prelude — from Doctor Who Magazine #195

  • Aaronovitch wrote the Seventh Doctor stories Remembrance of the Daleks (1988) and Battlefield (1989) for the television series. He became a notable but infrequent contributor to the New Adventure range.
  • Aaronovitch is one of the few Who authors who is clearly a fan of mainstream SF literature. This novel seems to draw elements and themes from the works of American-Canadian SF writer Crawford Kilian, particularly his Chronoplane Wars series. Similarly, his later novel The Also People was a homage to Iain M. Banks' Culture novels.
  • The Prelude for this novel was unique, featuring no accompanying artwork (see above). Also, whereas most Preludes were 2 pages, the Preludes for Transit and Parasite were only one page.
Love And War The Highest Science