Spring 2007 by Subterranean Press

Author:Subterranean Press
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-04-14T22:00:00+00:00

Fiction: Pluto Tells All by John Scalzi

Pluto Tells All

By Pluto, ex-planet, 4,500,000,000 years old

As told to John Scalzi

• I don’t want to sound like I was surprised, but yeah, I was surprised. Because just before, they were talking about adding planets, right? Me and Eris and possibly Ceres, and it looked like that proposal was getting good play. So it looked good, and Charon and I thought it’d be okay to take a break and get a little alone time. So there we are relaxing and then suddenly my agent Danny’s on the phone, telling me about the demotion. And I say to him, I thought you had this taken care of. That’s what you told me. And he said, well, they took another vote. And then he started trying to spin the demotion like it was a positive. Look at Phil Collins, he said. He was an ex-member of Genesis but then he had this huge solo career. And I said, first, Phil Collins sucks, and second, I’m not exactly the lead singer of the solar system, am I? This isn’t the Phil Collins scenario, it’s the Pete Best scenario. I’m the Pete Best of the goddamn solar system. So I fired Danny. Now I’m with CAA.

• No, really. Phil Collins does suck. I’m sorry, but there it is. Good drummer, but a lot of his sound is from his producer, Hugh Padgham. You want to sound like Phil Collins? Have your producer drop in a noise gate. Done. And his singing. Oy. Funny thing is, in the 80s, Phil was in talks to play me in a science fiction comedy. He dropped out of it and made Buster instead. The movie deal fell apart after that. I lost some money on that. I have some issues with Phil Collins.

• The funny thing about the demotion is that I never actually wanted to be a planet, you know? I was out here minding my own business and then suddenly Clyde Tombaugh is staring at me. And the next thing I know, people start calling me and telling me I’m the newest planet. And I remember saying, I don’t know if I want that responsibility. And they said, well, you can’t not be a planet now, Walt Disney’s already named a character after you. That’s really what made me a planet. Not the astronomers, but that cartoon dog. People loved that dog.

• Ironically, I’m a cat person.

• I’m not going to sue. Who am I going to sue? You think the International Astronomical Union has any money to speak of? There’s a reason the most popular event at an astronomer’s conference is the free buffet.

• I try to look at it philosophically. Seventy-six years a fine run. And now I’m sort of the spokesperson for an entirely new class of objects: The dwarf planets. I understand it’s meant to be something of a consolation prize, but you know what, there are more of us dwarf planets out here than anything else.

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