I’m not sure I agree with this Dx. To be sure, there’s irony at play (I don’t think you could shout “1.21 jigawatts!” without ironic intent) but the appreciation on the whole for the media – especially among the original consumers – I would wager is largely in earnest.
The problem I see with Cline’s writing is not so much the earnestness as it is general cack-handedness at graceful narrative and prose. It comes off as the broadest Marty Stu wish-fulfillment fantasy. Every longing the main character feels comes to fruition, every hunch they have is borne out, every piece of knowledge needed to advance the plot is conveniently at hand for them. Every beat is telegraphed from the moment it’s introduced. References are wedged in left and right until the suitcase can’t be zipped closed anymore. No consideration is given to whether it even makes sense to fit the references together – it comes off about as gracefully as the idea of making a vehicle that’s part Delorean, part KITT, part Ectomobile, and part Banzai jet-car. The whole is very much less than the sum of its parts.
Nor does he trust his reader to follow along: each time he drops a reference, he spends words – occasionally whole sentences or paragraphs – contextualizing why that reference is a reference and why it’s significant to him. This suggests that he thinks his reader needs this explanation – which, if you needed that level of explanation for every reference in his books, or even a plurality of them, then you probably wouldn’t appreciate the premise of the book. Not only that, the whole approach is a fundamental violation of “show, don’t tell”.
RP1 skated by on its relative originality and nostalgia-farming, but a moment’s reflection (or a reread) makes it read painfully like mediocre fanfic. Armada was an unreadable abomination. That said, RP2 might be atrocious enough to make a good hate-read, especially if those snippets are any indication.
