How the Crown Prince of Jupiter Undid the Universe, or, The Full Fruit of Love’s Full Folly by P. H. Lee (Tor.com, 12th October 2022) opens with the Crown Prince of Jupiter becoming infatuated with the Princess of the Sun:
He was in love, and his heart knew no persuasion. “Oh look at her,” he would say, admiring the tiny portrait, “what radiant beauty!”
“Her radiance,” commented his advisors, “is due entirely to her nuclear fusion. If your royal highness was in her presence, even a moment, then by those self-same processes you would find yourself instantly annihilated.”
“Are we not all slain by the self-same arrows of true love?” answered the Prince. Which, of course, was not any sort of answer, except to a young man in love.
The Prince subsequently stops eating and drinking, so his advisors implore his Aunt to intervene. She initially reiterates what he has already been told but, when she sees he is smitten, tells him that his only hope lies with Ursula, a witch who lives on Earth.1
In the second part of the story we see the Prince and Alisterisk (an advisor) journey to Earth suitably attired in pressure armour. There they meet Ursula and the story takes a meta-fictional turn:
Ursula’s eyes came at last on the Crown Prince and on Alisterisk beside him. In their pressurized armor, they looked to her as bluewhite gleams in a beam of sunlight. “Ah,” she said, relaxing. “I see now that this is a science fiction story. And I suppose you want me to write the end of it. All right then. What’s the matter?”
There is more of this kind of thing when (after the Prince tells his story and Ursula tells him that he should seek out the wizard Stanislaw) Alisterisk momentarily stays behind to thank her:
“Do not thank me yet,” said the Earth Witch. “For the matter is not done. I am afraid, Alisterisk, that you shall come to no good end in this affair. The side characters seldom do.”
The final section sees the Prince and Alisterisk meet Stanislaw1 who, after hearing their story (spoiler), tells them he can help, but that there may be consequences:
“I have in my possession,” said the wizard Stanislaw, “a Metaphoricator, left for me by the Constructor Trurl when he sojourned in my company these many years ago. A Metaphoricator is a most particular device. Operated properly, it can transform any real thing into a metaphor, merely a story meant to illustrate its point.”
“So you mean to transform us into metaphors?” asked Alisterisk hesitantly.
“Oh no!” said the wizard Stanislaw, “You are quite clearly metaphors already. Just think of it! How could there be such a thing as a real Crown Prince of Jupiter, a real Princess of the Sun? Your entire narrative is quite clearly a farce.”
“But then what do you intend to do?” asked Alisterisk
“By means of a few simple re-arrangements and jerry-rigs,” said the wizard Stanislaw, “my Metaphoricator can be transformed into a Demetaphoricator. And that is the machine I intend to operate.”
“What good is a Demetaphoricator to our present difficulties?” asked Alisterisk.
The wizard snapped his fingers. “With a single application of a Demetaphoricator, I can transform all of your story—the Crown Prince, Esmerelda, the Coreward Palace, Ursula the Earth Witch, even myself the wizard Stanislaw, into real people and real events, actually existing in the world beyond this story. At such time, both your Crown Prince and his beloved Esmerelda shall be rendered as real people, with no physical impediments to their romance. Of course, they may still encounter other difficulties, but that is simply the course of being human.”
The story ends with the characters having escaped the story and the writer quizzing the reader as to whether or not they have ever known archetypes like the Prince or Princess (the boy who became infatuated with a girl who could do nothing but destroy him), whether they helped, and what their role was, if any (were they like Alisterisk the advisor?)
This story probably sounds like an unlikely and unsuccessful combination of elements, but the quirky beginning, the meta-fictional development, and the story-transcending ending makes for an original, entertaining, and accomplished piece.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 3,650 words. Story link.
1. Ursula the Earth Witch is obviously Ursula K. LeGuin (the Earthsea series), and Stanislaw is obviously Stanislaw Lem (Trurl is from The Cyberiad).