Pluto: New Horizons for a Lost Horizon: Astronomy, Astrology, and Mythology

Encompassing astronomy, mythology, psychology, and astrology, this anthology offers a wealth of knowledge about our most famous dwarf planet. Pluto, once defined as the ninth and final planet, is now the first dwarf planet in the second Kuiper Belt region of our solar system. Discovered as a new planet in 1930 and "demoted" in 2006, Pluto and its discovery and reclassification throw a unique light on how we generate meaning in science and culture. Pluto is the target of a July 2015 assignation with NASA's New Horizons spacecraft and will be the last of the original nine planets of the solar system to be imaged. This anthology is timed to appear in concordance with New Horizons's approach to Pluto. The astronomical aspect of the anthology also explores Pluto's moons (including Charon, a moon rivaling Pluto's own size); the orbital resonances of the Plutonian moons; the characterization of Pluto as a swarm with a barycenter as opposed to a single world orbited by individual satellites; the plutinos (small planets sharing Pluto's orbit at different trajectories and positions as a result of Neptunian resonance); other Kuiper Belt dwarf planets (the 14 or so other worlds, including plutinos, similar to Pluto in size, composition, satellite(s), and increasing distance from the rest of the solar system); the demotion of Pluto from planet to dwarf planet; and the prospective possible discoveries of New Horizons. Certain astronomical features pertain to Pluto in terms of its distance from the Sun, coldness, and barrenness. These also inform its mythology and astrology as befitting a planet named after the God of the Underworld. Among the issues central to this collection are the meanings of darkness, loss, grief, inner transformation, rebirth, reincarnation, and karmic revelation, all of which are associated with the astrology of Pluto. Pluto also embodies the meaning of true wealth as being nonmaterial essence instead of property, conventional accolades, ego identity, achievement; it is the marker of negative capability.

About the Author :
Since the issuing of Solar Journal- Oecological Sections by Black Sparrow Press in 1970, RICHARD GROSSINGER has published some 35 books, most of them with his own press, North Atlantic Books, but also titles with Harper, Doubleday, Sierra Club Books, and J. P. Tarcher. These have ranged from long explorations of science, culture, and spirituality (Dark Pool of Light, Planet Medicine, Embryogenesis) to memoirs (New Moon) to experimental prose (Book of the Earth and Sky) and science fiction (Mars- A Science Fiction Vision). Grossinger received a PhD in anthropology from the University of Michigan in 1975 and lives with his wife, writer Lindy Hough, in Portland, Maine.

Review :
"This richly and diversely celebratory collection gives us back Pluto, previously and sadly consigned to historical triviality by a one-dimensional science mind that reclassifies it as not even a planet but a dwarf, mere sky fuzz. Grossinger's assemblage and introductory remarks show us how and why we never consented to let it go, in fact could not dispense with it, given the profound place it holds in individual and collective mind. Pluto, like death itself, is interactive with self-realization, an essential dynamic within our range of sciences, systems, psychologies, and arts, critical to our thinking. A book that clarifies while inevitably complexifying, it's one to read on sleepless moonless nights which open sky mind to its further reaches, where Pluto lives to die another day." --George Quasha, author of Axial Stones: An Art of Precarious Balance and Glossodelia Attrace (preverbs) "Plutonic thrills galore underlying everything, this anthology is a blue- or blackprint for someone's new onyx and translucent Pluto-world Moby Dick, relegating poor old Ken to some unimaginably darker, colder Kuiper belt, teeth chattering ... me and Pluto howling at every passing moon." --Kenneth Rosen, author of The Origins of Tragedy