When the astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930, the writer H. P. Lovecraft recognized that this piece of late-breaking news could give one of his far-fetched tales a hint of ripped-from-the-headlines authenticity. He was drafting a story called “The Whisperer in Darkness,” a blend of horror and science fiction that involves lobster-like aliens, human brains encased in metallic cylinders, and “the dark planet Yuggoth, at the rim of the solar system.” (It’s better than it sounds.) Lovecraft was striving to improve the story, and he hit upon the idea of making Yuggoth a stand-in for Pluto. In a letter to a friend, he expressed his excitement about what Tombaugh had spotted in the skies: “I have always wished I could live to see such a thing come to light — & here it is!”
I know how he feels. As a boy, I tracked Voyager 1 as it zoomed by Jupiter and Saturn, and then Voyager 2 as it transmitted stunning images from Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. They filled my head with wonder, making it a fertile place for the words of authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, and Lovecraft, as well as the scenes of Star Wars and its progeny. If I’d been any good at math, I might have become one of those people who now devote their careers to detecting planets that circle distant stars. Or perhaps I would have joined the team behind New Horizons, the NASA probe launched in 2006 and scheduled to reach Pluto on July 14. It promises to send back the first close-up look at a previously unvisited major body in our solar system since 1989, when we saw the majestic blues of Neptune.
Comments