PLUTO

Reviewed by Steven H Silver

When Ben Bova died in 2020, he had completed Neptune, the twenty-seventh novel of his "Grand Tour" series, which included novels for each planet of the solar system (sometimes multiple novels) and some moons. Neptune would be published the year after his death and seemed to form a conclusion to the series, despite being billed as volume two of the Outer Planets trilogy. However, Bova's estate eventually reached out to Bova's occasional collaborator, Les Johnson, who had co-written Rescue Mode with Bova in 2014, and invited him to write the final volume of the series: Pluto. Johnson accepted, despite the fact that Bova had not left notes or an outline for the volume, so Johnson is really the author of this final book.

As the title implies, Pluto is focused on the planet discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, and the research vessel that is exploring the planet as the novel opens is named in Tombaugh's honor. The action opens with a scientific crew from the Tombaugh sending a mission to the surface of Pluto. One of the scientists, Allan Mikelson, was injured by an artifact discovered on one of Uranus's moons and has essentially downloaded his intelligence into a computer system. Arrogant to begin with, his cyborg existence has only increased his feelings of superiority over his colleagues. When he discovers an artifact on Pluto, he, and his team, find themselves stranded and in need of rescue by an American military space craft. Larry Russell finds himself appointed as the liaison with the science team and finds himself seconded to the Tombaugh when the artifact is brought on board.

Told mostly through Russell's point of view, which married the military and the scientific worldviews as well as cultures, Pluto's actions moved to Charon, Pluto's largest moon, was an inexplicable mass concentration, or mascon, has been discovered. Another expedition led to near injuries, but also the discovery that the mascon caused a subsidence in Charon's surface and a surge of self-replicating nanobots, which seemed intent on altering Charon's nature. While the scientists on the Tombaugh attempt to learn more about the Pluto artifact and the Charon mascon and replicants, they also learn that military vessels from Russia and China are en route to Pluto to learn what they've discovered and see what else they can learn about the situation, which may turn into a first contact situation.

Just as Bova relied heavily on the discoveries of the Pioneer and Voyager missions (as well as later uncrewed probes and flyby missions), Johnson was able to use the initial discoveries of 2016's New Horizons flyby of Pluto to inform his depictions of Pluto and Charon. The depictions of Pluto, and even more, Charon, are more complex than previous depictions, taking the new discoveries into consideration. Johnson is able to offer descriptions of locations on the two bodies which are not only named, but which have been photographed and studied with a variety of sensors aboard New Horizons, making Pluto and Charon real worlds rather than merely the imaginings of the authors.

His handling of the characters varies more broadly. Some of the characters, such as Russell, Mikelson, and Abigail Grigsby, are reasonably well fleshed out and complex in their interactions with each other, however other characters have one or two traits to identify them. Part of this may be the size of the crews and scientific complements of the various ships makes it difficult to flesh too many of the characters out, but even those who are set up as a foil to Russell, like the Tombaugh's pilot, are given a few traits to set them apart, but with little depth.

There are numerous similarities between Pluto and Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 and 2010. Scientists in both find an alien artifact buried on another world (The Moon and Pluto, respectively), which leads them to another artifact (near Saturn/Jupiter and on Charon). Both works include a malevolent artificial intelligence. Van Neumann machines begin to alter the nature of the second location. American, Russian, and Chinese missions play a role in exploring the second artifact in both works and both see a character seemingly metamorph into something new.

Ultimately, the ending of Pluto is unsatisfactory. As in life, certain mysteries are left unresolved and not all of the storylines have neatly tied up endings. Johnson has left plenty of room to continue Bova's Grand Tour and the adventures of Larry Randall should the Bova estate elect to continue the series.

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