I'm after the title of a novel about an adventure set on Pluto

Question

I read an ex-library book in the mid-1980's (so suspect it was written pre-1975) and the story was set on Pluto.

The protagonist was a space pilot who, for a reason I can't remember, lands / crashes on that distant world - and dies ... Only, some time later, to reawake - alive!

It turns out that a great deal of time has passed. And an alien civilisation, living on Pluto, has found the pilot's body. These aliens clone the body, and then duplicate man's mind.

The pilot 'wakes up'- but can't see anything. He's told not to worry. As time passes, he realises something is amiss. It's then that the aliens explain things: while they've successfully duplicated his mind, so far they've not inserted it into the cloned body - so he exists as pure consciousness.

Finally, both body and mind are joined. The man is thankful for being alive. He now sets about living amongst the aliens. But he's drawn to his old ship, and wants to head off to distant Earth ...

My memory of some of the details regarding the plot of this story are hazy, but I've outlined what I can remember. I've no idea when the book was first published, nor what its title is.

Anyone know?

Answer 1

This sounds like the 1973 novel The Tenth Planet by Edmund Cooper. Though they are on a hithero undiscovered Tenth planet called Minerva, not Pluto.

In it a man from 50 centuries in the past has his consciousness revived by the future descendants of humans who leave Earth after a devastating war first to Mars, and when that society collapses they travel further afield in search of a new home, eventually discovering the tenth planet of our solar system.

A full summary with spoilers can be found here

"Overpopulation and melting glaciers kick off the end of Earth. The population gets more and more violent and it’s time to leave for the Moon or Mars. The last spaceship from Earth takes off from Australia. In command is Idris Hamilton. The mission ends in disaster.

Fifty-three hundred plus years later Hamilton wakes up on the tenth planet Minerva just past Pluto. It’s a frozen planet five billion miles from the Sun and everything is underground. Hamilton goes through a combination brain transplant and cloning operation."

In the end of the story:

a group of volunteers is leaving Minerva the tenth planet in a spaceship kept in mothballs by the founder of the colony. Perhaps, eventually, the other ships that Garfield Talbot in his wisdom had preserved would follow. Perhaps not. But one, at least would discover whether Earth, the third planet, would bloom again. Suddenly, Idris had begun to believe in magic. When one flower dies, another is born.