I Luv Pluto

          I Luv Pluto

NH:

If a picture of Pluto with a heart-shaped feature on it had appeared on the cover of a Golden Age science-fiction magazine, then the story it illustrated would have been either very, very good, or very, very bad.

I would like to read that story, either way. Would you like to write it?

LF:

Heheheheheh.  Alas, I have two novels, two novellas and a short story in the pipeline ahead of it, so It’ll be awhile before I can even consider it.  Hey, ‘tis your inspiration;  why don’t you write it?

NH:

Aaak! you got me good. Have I saddled this tightrope assignment on myself?

So... “I Luv Pluto” as an Underfable? Centered around or culminating in the heart on Pluto? Starring who, doing what, what’s the ironic Undermoral?

A cryogenic world, but what - or who - made all that molten ice? Hades and Persephone? A love-rape tale; how... charming. Like I said, very good or very bad.

Yeesh. Love-and-death is what Rudy Rucker calls a power chord. Both sublime and ridiculous. John Campbell never assigned anything this over-the-top to any of his writers; but it turns out that God-or-Nature has an even broader sense of humor.