Percival's Planet

by Michael Byers

A novel of ambition and obsession centered on the race to discover Pluto in 1930, pitting an untrained Kansas farm boy against the greatest minds of Harvard at the run-down Lowell Observatory in Arizona

In 1928, the boy who will discover Pluto, Clyde Tombaugh, is on the family farm, grinding a lens for his own telescope under the immense Kansas sky. In Flagstaff, Arizona, the staff of Lowell Observatory is about to resume the late Percival Lowell's interrupted search for Planet X. Meanwhile, the immensely rich heir to a chemical fortune has decided to go west to hunt for dinosaurs and in Cambridge, Massachussetts, the most beautiful girl in America is going slowly insane while her ex-heavyweight champion boyfriend stands by helplessly, desperate to do anything to keep her. Inspired by the true story of Tombaugh and set in the last gin-soaked months of the flapper era, Percival's Planet tells the story of the intertwining lives of half a dozen dreamers, schemers, and madmen. Following Tombaugh's unlikely path from son of a farmer to discoverer of a planet, the novel touches on insanity, mathematics, music, astrophysics, boxing, dinosaur hunting, shipwrecks—and what happens when the greatest romance of your life is also the source of your life's greatest sorrow.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, Space, Astronomy, Ebooks, Literature

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Michael Byers is the author of the story collection The Coast of Good Intentions, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the acclaimed novel Long for This World, winner of the First Novel Award from Virginia Commonwealth University. Both were New York Times Notable Books. A former Stegner Fellow and Whiting Award winner, he teaches at the University of Michigan.

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Searching for the ninth planet was no picnic. The mind-numbing drudgery of making long-exposure photographic plates of the stars, of the eye strain induced by meticulous examination of thousands of pin-pricks of light, day after day — how could you make an exciting novel out of this? Well, you can't. And Michael Byers, in "Percival's Planet" (weirdly underrated on this site) wisely doesn't try. Although Byers' fictional account of Kansas farmboy Clyde Tombaugh's discovery of "Planet X" at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona is the hook, he populates the tale with interesting characters on the periphery of the find, and in fact crafts a beautiful tale of love, discovery, madness and loss that at times is as meticulous in its how-it-was-done research as the actual search for the planet, but does not descend into that drudgery.

It took Byers seven years to craft his follow-up to his excellent debut novel, "Long for This World"; it's evident that much of that time was spent in research. Even after reading this, you might not understand how to grind a telescopic lens on a Kansas farm or precisely understand how the photographic plates are used in the discovery of Pluto, but the information isn't daunting. And in crafting a tale of patient search, Byers concentrates more on the characters than on the history. Weaving four main plot threads, he doesn't even bring the major players together until more than half the novel is behind us. We get Tombaugh as an itchy farmboy without a college education who writes a letter to Lowell Observatory and gets invited to help find a planet that might not even be there. Alan Barber, at the observatory, falls for a colleague's woman, naming a comet after her just at about the time the two get married. Oops. Barber later hooks up with Mary, a woman descending into madness and leaving behind her boxer suitor. And there are the wealthy DuPries, son and mother, at the center of a dig for fossils near the observatory. Byers doesn't goose the plot along unnecessarily; instead, he lovingly reveals these characters while sprinkling in details of the search for the planet from 1928-30. Byers mixes in the meddling of Mrs. Lowell, widow of famous astronomer Percival Lowell; a nation falling into the Great Depression; and Tombaugh's conflicted feelings at becoming the only man then alive to have discovered a planet. Byers' prose is lovely, though in the first half there is a tendency toward the oblique and cute in his dialogue.

Those not expecting a fast-paced plot — but, seriously, why in hell would you? — and who can roll with the details of astronomy, and, particularly, readers who like a beautifully told, deep tale will find much to love in "Percival's Planet." Pluto's designation as a planet didn't last, of course (I like the Mental Floss T-shirt that reads, "Pluto 1930-2006. Revolve in Peace") but Byers' accomplishment here just might. Two-for-two now, Byers would have a chance to be among my favorite authors, though I suspect the level of his research will make his novels few and far between.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

The prose of this novel arrives like a well-cooked steak, a whole steak dinner actually. No one taste or aroma dominates, which is not to say the meal is uneventful. Yet the food is incredibly satisfying, and at some point you realize the chef has carefully chosen each ingredient and maintained remarkable control over the cooking process. Such was my experience digesting Percival’s Planet by Michael Byers.

The story follows a small ensemble of characters who find themselves in orbit around the astronomical mythology of Percival Lowell. In real life, Lowell popularized Mars (at the expense of good science) and also hunted unsuccessfully for Planet X. His posthumous influence pervades the plot. It proves a wonderfully engrossing context in which to place a cast of workaday astronomers, an upstart archaeologist, and a beautiful but mentally ill woman--one of the novel's few pronounced characters. This novel reminded me a great deal of Willa Cather’s writing: subtle, restrained, and reliant on carefully tuned aesthetics.

Inasmuch as Percival’s Planet is laced with mysticism and moments of outright spookiness, I kept waiting for the plot to cut loose and get crazy. Byers definitely understands the need for suspense and provides it in ample quantities. Nevertheless, much of this novel transpires with nothing in particular happening. Except for obligatory cliffhangers at the ends of chapters, and a heavy-handed instance of foreshadowing involving a son and mother, Byers’s product remains tantalizingly reserved and refined.

Yet, by letting so much of the plot occur as realistic drudgery and indecisive fretting, Byers achieves a heightened reality that art forms such as film and theatre rarely have the patience to fully develop. And Percival’s Planet does have its spine-tingling moments, its revelations, and its high drama. Still, no one subplot, not even the hunt for Planet X, ever gains supremacy. That might undermine the novel’s refined strength. In a world full of slight variations and small but profound perturbations, the closing of a window can make your heart stop.

Percival’s Planet is the kind of novel I want to read more often. This is a compelling story of realistic humans facing realistic dilemmas. It provides much to care about. It also wonderfully mingles science and fiction without being science fiction. I love sci-fi but it generally neglects characters in favor of techno-thrills. Percival’s Planet, however, is truly about the characters. When each of them has their final moment, the sense of poignant farewell is visceral and fulfilling. The hunt for Percival’s mythologized world does not disappoint.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

[Full disclosure: Michael Byers was a college professor of mine at Michigan.]

Byers manages this piece of historical fiction, about the discovery of Pluto without making the history seem inevitable and by drawing well-rounded, interesting characters. I didn't like it quite as much as his debut novel, Long For This World, because I thought it needed a bit more editing, paring down, but a good read, and highly recommended for anyone who likes fiction that focuses on scientific discovery.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

A pretty light weight, average, uninspiring narrative for the bourgeoisie faux intellectuals....not a waste of time...a nice, light, unperceptive read. Good summer fare ... for the beach or summer house ... but no weight...no gravitas.

[Brenda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started this one but I gave up after about a 100 pages. I was hoping for more story about the discovery of Pluto but all I was getting was a lot of back story. I wasn't sure who these people were or how they would be part of the story. I found I didn't really care to stick around to find out. The writing style was off for me; there were times that I was pulled out of the story to re-read some sentences/paragraphs to try to figure out what was being said. I really wanted to like this but was disappointed instead.

[Johnny · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is finally done! Thank God! What a disappointment. Never before have I been so misled by a back cover blurb. It could have been so interesting, so funny, so lovely and romantic even but the reality of reading this novel feels more like trudging through Melville's neverending whale descriptions in "Moby Dick".

I can hardly believe that Michael Byers actually teaches creative writing. His general writing is okay, not bad but not brilliant either. But then he often includes what I call "sci-talk", describing processes in the field of astronomy, juggling with scientific terms as if he takes for granted that all his readers have a university degree in this particular field.

His dialogues, however, are his strong point. When his characters are conversing, the language is very natural, crisp, real. The dialogues really stand out against the other, lesser passages I have just mentioned.

There are many interesting characters in this novel, and Byers shows how their lives change over time, but in the end I must admit it's all actually pretty boring and as I closed the book I had absolutely no idea what had actually become of them all - nor did I really care.

I'm sure many other people will find this book captivating and more interesting, but I for one expected a lot more.

[Ilyhana Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is a writer who engages the reader deep into the moment, and the moment becomes the present no matter the time period. And such a sassy tone of expression! Very matter of fact but with the feeling sense embedded, and enhanced with a little ironical humour.
Always the context is fully presented, the detail entirely relevant. I love the way the narrative wanders in and out of the characters' thought spaces without writing it as an actual dialogue in quotes.
Three separate stories run parallel for a time then coalesce with a natural ease.
The telling of Mary's mental illness is chilling, quite awful to contemplate and works well in this novel due to the author's skilful handling.
The technical data re astronomy supports the narrative rather than overwhelming it, and makes for an easy read even if it goes over the head of the reader.
The narrative engages front to back of this novel. The movement between characters is seamless and holds the overall context in integrity.
This is a very polished work. I loved it. I finished this novel with a tremendous admiration for the author.

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fictional account of the discovery of Pluto, among numerous sketches of other plots. It is readable and a passably-told story. A number of times, however, the author has the characters react in uncharacteristic ways; I feel he did this simply because he had a bit of phrase or reaction he’d always wanted to describe for a character and therefore used it whether it was really a fit or not.

[Makayla MacGregor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Byers is an expert at research. Unfortunately, he just didn't distill it quite enough. I found myself skimming over pages because many of them were just in-depth descriptions of twentieth-century and astronomical details that I couldn't bring myself to be interested in.

[Grumpus · Rating 1 out of 5]

I give up...

[Lisa Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Percival’s Planet” by Michael Byers is a beautifully written, richly imagined historical novel that captures the wonder, ambition, and obsession behind one of astronomy’s most remarkable milestones, the discovery of Pluto. With elegant prose and sweeping emotional depth, Byers transports readers to the late 1920s, weaving together multiple storylines that are as human as they are cosmic.

At the heart of the narrative is Clyde Tombaugh, the self-taught Kansas farm boy whose quiet determination and raw brilliance reshape astronomical history. Byers portrays Clyde with authenticity and warmth, making his journey from grinding lenses in a barn to achieving scientific immortality both inspiring and deeply relatable. The Lowell Observatory scenes are especially engaging, offering a vivid portrait of the passionate, sometimes chaotic world of early American astronomy.

What elevates this novel further is its ensemble cast, dinosaurs hunters, troubled lovers, former boxing champions, and brilliant scientists, each living on the edge of discovery or personal unraveling. Their stories intersect with cinematic clarity, giving the novel a layered emotional texture and a sense that every character, like every star, has its own gravitational pull.

Byers masterfully blends fact and fiction, creating a narrative that feels both historically grounded and poetically expansive. The book explores ambition, madness, love, and loss with equal sensitivity, capturing a transformative era in American history while reminding readers of the fragile brilliance of human dreams.

“Percival’s Planet” is a luminous, intelligent, and deeply moving novel, perfect for readers who love historical fiction infused with science, heart, and unforgettable characters. Highly recommended.

[Ron Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's nice to see Pluto getting some love. You might remember that after years of nasty rumors, the International Astronomical Union kicked Pluto out of the planet club in 2006. And then came those mocking novelty T-shirts: "It's okay, Pluto. I'm not a planet either." We still don't know much about that little chunk of ice and rock orbiting billions of miles away on the edge of our solar system, but an endearing new novel by Michael Byers takes us back to its discovery at a backwater observatory just as the Roaring Twenties were falling into a black hole.

Although Byers isn't a scientist -- he teaches English at the University of Michigan -- this is his second book about a laboratory quest. His first, "Long for This World" (2003), followed a geneticist hoping to cure a fatal childhood disease, and now "Percival's Planet" peers up at the stars. But there's nothing geeky about Byers's novels, or if there is, it never dominates the story. (Let his characters make "a normative calculation of least squares"; you don't have to.) Like Allegra Goodman's "Intuition" and Richard Powers's "Generosity," "Percival's Planet" calculates the moral dimensions of scientific investigation, the whole system of people drawn into orbit around a mystery, sometimes without even realizing it.

The breadth of Byers's field of vision is a saving grace because searching for planets is not like prospecting for gold in the Amazon jungle or tracking down a lost child in Sarajevo. It's a mission of mind-numbing tedium carried out in the dark. In the 1920s, if you wanted to boldly go where no man had gone before and discover what was referred to as Planet X, you needed two quiet rooms. In one room sat the computers -- that is, a bevy of mathematically gifted women toiling away on regression analysis with sharp pencils. In the other room sat a "blink comparator," something like the photo album from hell. This machine presents two tiny exposures of the sky taken a week apart. If the gods were smiling on the weather and the telescope and the film, and you weren't even the least bit distracted after staring at these pinholes of light for months on end, you might notice that one of those objects has moved ever so slightly between the two photos. And that's how a self-taught Kansas farm boy named Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930.

The most charming section of the novel comes early, when young Clyde is grinding his own lenses in a barn and dreaming of going to college. But that's just one of several story lines that Bryers picks up long before they all wind together at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz. "Something in the desert air is drawing them by the carload," he writes. "Tubercular patients in their last visionary days, half-mad desert seekers, white gowned proponents of psychical truth, sunstruck mummy hunters prospecting in the Grand Canyon, dog-nipped Navaho dreamers, earnest ethnographers with their wax-cylinder recorders. . . . Put these oddballs alongside the genuine cowboys and second-generation frontier sheriffs and you have a funny mix, all right."

From this rich collection of characters residing in different universes, Byers has chosen and created about a half-dozen, fleshing out their strange stories like a desert version of Doctorow's "Ragtime": An amateur heavyweight in Boston falls in love with a gorgeous, unstable woman who believes a horn is growing out of the back of her head; the scion of a chemical fortune dapples with metaphysics before deciding that he and his mother should hunt for dinosaurs in the American West; and, finally, there's Alan Barber, a Harvard-trained astronomer who names a newly discovered comet after a young woman just hours before she tells him she's engaged.

Byers patiently draws this whole constellation of eccentric people to Flagstaff, revolving through them chapter by chapter until their paths intersect with the vision of the late Percival Lowell, who left his fortune to the observatory, "a second-rate place, it is generally agreed, staffed by old men and with a notorious history of crackpottery." Lowell is represented by his grasping widow, but I'm sorry he died before the novel opens. His exotic combination of brilliance and nuttiness -- "his assertion that the canals on Mars were built by a race of benevolent superbeings" -- would have fit right in with the amateur dinosaur hunter and the horned madwoman.

Still, Byers is not in this for laughs or ridicule. He's a careful mathematician of the heart when calculating the trajectory of affection. Just as the planets influence one another, tugging and stretching their orbits as they sweep around the sun, so all these characters cause perturbations in each other's lives. And Byers writes with a sweet mixture of humor and sympathy about lunacy and manhood during a period of extraordinary disruption.

So what makes "Percival's Planet" such a sedentary, well-behaved tale? It seems as though Byers's ruminative temperament eclipses the natural drama of his story. He shuts down almost every opportunity for excitement the way my grandfather used to yell, "Cut that out before somebody loses an eye!" every time my brother and I picked up a stick. And there are plenty of sticks lying around these pages: He's got a mother and son lost at sea in a dinghy! An insane woman tries to cut off the back of her head! Gangsters move in on the archaeological dig! But these are framed as mere minor incidents compared to the energy and space devoted to Alan Barber's endless ruminations on his dim love life or the novel's climactic scene: a formal dinner party at the observatory during which (gasp!) Percival's widow behaves rudely. I worry that these nicely phrased sentences about odd, sympathetic people won't be enough to pull readers through more than 400 pages -- particularly toward a foregone conclusion (sorry again, Pluto). But for a certain kind of reader, a contemplative, sensitive reader with a sense of wonder at the mysteries above and within us, "Percival's Planet" will prove a subtle, satisfying adventure.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fictionalized account of the discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory. Told as a flashback through his life, we first see his frustrations in Kansas to build a telescope and his unlikely progression to Lowell. Several prominent characters are fictional, including Alan Barber. Florence represents the many unrecognized women at Harvard who were human calculators for the astronomy world. The relationship with Mary and her descent into madness were clearly a deeply personal part of the author’s own history, but sometimes distracted from the actual story of the discovery. Sometimes the competing storylines pulled the book in too many directions.

[Diana (diana_reads_and_reads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a slow read, but not a bad one. There were a lot of weird side stories going on, at least one of which I don’t really know how it connected to the main tale. But it was a worthwhile, interesting read for the most part. It was on track to be a five star read until about the last 100 pages. The way some of the side stories were wrapped up was just…odd. I really enjoyed Byers’ writing style. Going back to read other goodreads reviews, it looks like people either love or hate this one.

I’m looking forward to reading How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming as a nonfiction pairing to this book. Definitely some of the doubts about Pluto are planted in Percival’s Planet.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating read centred on the discovery of the planet Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. It’s much more than that though as several stories, some factual, others created and of varied impact, intersect providing a fascinating insight into late-1920s USA. Evocative descriptions of farmland Kansas as well as the Lowell Observatory and the desert add to the effect as young Tombaugh locates Planet X but it’s the fully fleshed characters, particularly fellow astronomer Alan Barber, who help make an impressive narrative

[Dakota · Rating 4 out of 5]

The subject matter and story lines of this were interesting, but at times the language was so florid that I found it hard to stay with the story and not skip to the next sentence or paragraph.

Having said that, this is definitely not a bad book, and the multiple story lines keep it relatively fast paced and interesting. You don't get bored with one character before moving to the next, and by the book's end, everything comes together and you know why the individual lines are relevant.

[T Palmer · Rating 2 out of 5]

A frustrating, occasionally pretentious book that too often allowed itself to become distracted. The author neglected his characters by his obsession with unnecessary facts, no doubt the result of detailed research. But this is a novel not an academic paper.
Too many plot lines, too many facts and too sluggish a pace. Too much left said unsaid despite the 400 pages.

I fear I have adopted Salieri famous, ill-fated criticism of 'too many notes'. He was wrong. Perhaps I am too.

[D · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't hold my interest.

"A little while after, an invisible thing spoke thus to him: Timarchus, what dost thou desire to understand?

And he replied: Every thing: for what is there that is not wonderful and surprising?"

Author's Note

Needless to say, all errors and omissions, conscious or otherwise, are my own damn fault.

[Halina Goldstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I liked most about this book is the presence and the language of the narrator. What vibrant, brilliant language and insight-fullness. Unfortunately, the story itself did not speak to me. Way too much detail (scientific, mental, emotional) clouding the journey. Eventually, I left the planet so to speak, and that's a pity.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed but the pace was slow and sometimes the prose went off on metaphysical and philosophical rambling. Four story threads with one not clearly fitting with the others. Could have been it’s own book.

[Sue Eklund · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the first 90 pages and then realized I just wasn't going to like this book. Skimmed over the rest of the book. Strange characters + too many storylines. This was a Rancho Mirage Library book discussion- for April.

[Shirley · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Lizbeth Hart · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldnt get in to this story and gave up trying after chapter seven it just didnt float my boat

[Inese Uljane · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book is very very bad

[H.L. Gibson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read my full review at: https://hlgibsonauthor.com/2022/09/05...

[Neal Fandek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Held my interest, which is no easy thing, but ti wasn't the search that held it. It was the characters, esp. poor Mary. Also vivid language.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the way this was put together. Good example of the whole "separate storylines eventually intertwining" done well. It had an effective mix of fiction and nonfiction. I enjoyed it for the most part... Just felt that some of the dramatic flair (scorned love, dying mother) was unnecessary filler.

[A.L. DeLeon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Difficult to follow until about halfway through, Percival's Planet wasn't what I expected. I did learn some things of the history on how Pluto came to be discovered, but I didn't feel the story tugged at me. The author's strongest writing was in the dialogue, so I may visit other works by him to see how well he does with other novels, but this one fell short of the mark for me.

[Mark Schomburg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super-welcome humanistic and detailed Pluto tale to counter the populist stodginess of astronomical purists such as NdG Tyson. Kind of Emma Donoghue meets Ray Bradbury.

[Cass · Rating 1 out of 5]

Clyde Tombaugh is the man who discovered Pluto. This book is the fictious true story about his discovery. Clyde begins the book as an old man telling his story to a bunch of amateur astronomers. He has told this story a thousand times before, however nearing the end of his life he wonders if it is time to tell the true story behind the discovery of the planet.

Allow me to summarise the true story, do not be afraid of any spoilers for the only spoiler is that the true story is boring.

A farmhand and amateur astronomer, Clyde, for reasons that are never explained has been making telescopes using techniques that are explained, but not understood by me, to sell to a relativie who buys them for reasons unknown to the farmhand. He is saving to go to college and must get a job. He writes to an observatory and asks for advice, and is offered a job. His job is to compare slides to try and spot moving objects in the sky. He does this for months. He finds the planet. The end.

Initially I enjoyed the book. I liked the first couple of characters introduced and I liked the writing style. It reminded me of Hemingway in the frugalness of the words. It made me realise I have been reading too much crap lately.

However the more I read the less I felt connect to the book. The stories and the characters seemed to become less and less relevent. There was the wife of the man who worked with the man who worked with Clyde before Clyde arrived, she was a mathematician and also interested in finding the planet. There was the ex-lover (and the ex-lover's lover and ex-lover's housekeeper and the brother and the brother's gay lover) of the woman who married the man who worked with Clyde. There was the mother of the man, who was rich but flighty, who was able to marry together the man who worked with the man who worked with Cylde with the mathematician.

I feel like I am reading the story that Jack built. Each of these characters deviated more and more from Clyde. They all had very interesting and colourful stories but they just did not have anything to do with Clyde and his discovery of the planet Pluto. I liked the story of Clyde and want to read more about him. When I think back over the book there was very little about him in it at all. Every time a new interesting character was introduced the chapter would switch and change focus to another character. In a sort of reverse logic the most appealing and interesting characters seemed to have the least amount of time devoted to them.

I finished the book completely bewildered. What did all these people have to do with Clyde... or Percival for that matter?