Pluto Rising: Discovery

by David J. Russell, David Russell

A discovery is made on the tiny dwarf planet Pluto via the New Horizons probe in June 2015. It stuns Earth into starting a new space race to send people and reach the distant world as quickly as possible. Ross and Jane are given this epic task with the aid of an unusual computer called Archimedes. They make plans for a future generation of space travelers. Along the way they are continually thwarted by the insidious shadow group The Few which uses time as a weapon to complete their objectives. Upon finally reaching Pluto there are more questions than answers and the expedition gets caught in an epic battle between mammoth space vessels and time itself. What secrets does Pluto hold? Does the crew successfully fight off The Few? With the plot twisting and turning, this fast-paced adventure will have you at the edge of your seat, ending in an epic crescendo that will leave you crying for more. Pluto is beckoning; answer the call.

237 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 31, 2015

Reviews

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've actually asked for this book to be included on a list of SF pertaining to Pluto and Charon, and there are so few on the list, and the Pluto scenes are so well realised, that I'm adding a star to my review. This is one of those books which shows a good imagination, plenty of broad concepts and hopefully, the start of a good line of work.

A sinister few people of off-Earth origin are manipulating a space travel race to get to Pluto for their own purposes.

As yet though we don't have well developed characters, there are wallpaper scenarios and plots, and plenty of items which the picky, like me, just know are wrong.

Example: on a US spaceship with several crew, the captain asks "I don't suppose anyone speaks Russian?"
The captain would know the skills of every crew member; they would all have trained together long enough against stiff competition and would know the other members' strengths. The current state of space work means that all trips to the ISS are by Soyuz, and speaking fluent Russian is the best way to get picked to go into space.
This kind of error can be rectified by reading some good factual books so I suggest An Astronaut's Guide To Life On Earth. There's also no mention of radiation: solar, Jovian or background.

As for the trope of the supersmart computer: every real techie likes backups and redundancy. Maybe this was created from a meteorite but nobody puts all their nation's data or processing on one computer. The Archimedes is confusingly used to refer to a computer and a ship, and is something like HAL or Zen.

I'm pleased with concepts like the solar sail being explained, but not with the lack of security on Earth, or the simple way in which a man decides to hand over secrets every week. The writer also needs to learn to use colons and semicolons as some sentences are comma-laden run-ons. I'm hoping to see better from this writer in the future and I was glad to see Pluto getting a starring role.

[Kari Ramadorai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Firmly in the "Liked it" category. If you like your scifi on a mission, and with a quetsionable government, this fits the bill. The world building dominates the first half of the book with the plot picking up speed in the second half, but not exactly as expected. That's a good thing. I don't want to give everything away, but I will say that the story is exciting and that though I didn't connect with the characters personally, I did like the overall feel and read.

[Marcus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very good book for me. It brought back to memory those days of scifi pulp magazines where all the heroes were dashing fellows out to save the universe. The first part of the book developed the plot and characters and to me, did an admirable job. The second part established the action which kept building, and the climax/Cliff hanger at the end. It really is a cliff hanger. Have fun reading it.