When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi

Published by Tor Books on March 25, 2025

John Scalzi usually displays his sense of humor in his science fiction novels. He’s churned out a bunch of science fiction comedies, the most successful being Redshirts. The stories tend to be amusing and Scalzi typically uses comedy to make a serious point. Even when he writes more serious novels (like Old Man’s War), he adds generous doses of humor. And he always remembers that the word “science” is in “science fiction” for a reason. Well, nearly always.

When the Moon Hits Your Eye is another sf comedy. It has sufficient merit to earn a recommendation, but it’s also disappointing. I had the impression that Scalzi wrote himself into a corner as he milked laughs from his premise and couldn’t come up with a credible way to ground the story in science.

The premise is ridiculous. One day, the moon turns into cheese — or at least into an organic matter that has the characteristics of cheese. Not only does the moon transform, but so do space rocks displayed in museums and kept in NASA’s vaults.

Scalzi brings a fair amount of science to the project, explaining that the cheese moon needs to be physically larger than the old moon to retain the same amount of mass. Mess around with the moon’s mass and tides get thrown out of whack. But a larger-than-moon-size cheese must compress as it orbits the Earth, so Scalzi imagines the cheese moon erupting as it squirts water from its innards. This is all very sciency, as a reader would expect from Scalzi, but it dances around the question of how the moon changed into a sphere of cheese.

Scalzi explores how the moon’s transformation is greeted by politicians, the media, scientists, wealthy business leaders, members of the clergy, the movie industry, and others. In fact, each chapter tends to focus on new characters who are caught up in the moon crisis. A cheese-related sex scandal involving a congressman and a retired sex worker might be the strangest response.

A chunk of the cheese moon breaks off during an eruption and is projected to smack into the Earth in about two years, causing an extinction event. Some people decide it’s time to start executing their bucket list. Scalzi imagines that bankers will use AI to keep their banks running after all the tellers decide they don’t want to be working during their final days of existence.

The funniest bit involves a company that designed a moon lander for NASA. The company’s CEO is jealous of, and in competition with, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. He makes an unlikely plan to take the lander on an unsanctioned mission to visit the cheese moon.

But back to the science. I wondered how Scalzi was going to pull this off, given the lack of any credible explanation for the moon’s sudden transformation into a cheesy mass. While at least one of his books flirts with Intelligent Design as a rational explanation of life on Earth, Scalzi is a scientist at heart. He nevertheless includes a preacher in the plot and gives the preacher a chance to encourage his parishioners to cling to their faith in times of trouble.

I won’t spoil the ending, but I will say that it disappointed me by failing to provide a definitive resolution of the mystery. Scalzi presents (but does not endorse) a theory, popularized on conspiracy websites, but the theory doesn’t explain how the moon rocks on Earth transformed. The silly premise and the absence of a legitimate (even if farfetched) explanation to support it undermines the novel as a work of science fiction, so maybe the book is best seen as a comedy fantasy sprinkled with bits of science. As a funny look at how people might respond to end times that are still a couple years distant, the story generates enough chuckles to make it a good beach read.

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Starter Villain by John Scalzi

Published by Tor Books on September 19, 2023

Starter Villain is more a crime/conspiracy novel than a science fiction novel, but John Scalzi writes science fiction so it needed an sf hook. Which is, talking cats.

Scalzi has written dramatic science fiction that is notable for its pathos. Some of his work is lighter. Starter Villain is meant to amuse. It made me smile consistently. I even laughed out loud a couple of times, but it’s not the kind of work that puts a reader through a gamut of emotions.

Scalzi focuses the novel on a decent man who happens to like cats, probably a man who is a lot like Scalzi. Charlie Fitzer is unlike Scalzi in that Fitzer lost his career as a writer — a journalist who covered the business world — when the economy tanked. Fitzer is working as a substitute teacher and falling behind on his bills. His father bequeathed his childhood home to a trust for Charlie and his half-siblings but gave Charlie the right to live in the home provided he paid the insurance and utilities. His half-siblings believe their father’s intent was that Charlie should get back on his feet before the house is sold out from under him. They are irked that Charlie is making insufficient progress toward that goal.

Charlie has a wealthy uncle he hasn’t seen since the uncle had a falling out with his father at his mother’s funeral when he was five years old. Charlie learns from watching a financial network broadcast that his uncle has died. His uncle’s assistant, a woman named Mathilda Morrison, shows up unexpectedly to tell him that he’s in charge of his uncle’s funeral. Charlie responds dutifully. The only other people who show up at the funeral are the designees of wealthy criminals (think oligarchs) who want to stab the uncle’s corpse to make sure he isn’t faking his own death (again).

After someone blows up Charlie’s house, Mathilda explains that his uncle was a successful criminal. She provides temporary housing for Charlie and reveals that his cats have been genetically modified, enabling them to communicate by keyboard. Charlie’s uncle used modified cats to spy on his enemies, Charlie, and pretty much every important person who owns a cat.

Charlie is soon introduced to a criminal organization to which his uncle belonged, or joined and left, or never joined, depending on who is telling the story. Ian Fleming loosely based SMERSH on rumors of the organization and loosely based Blofeld and his cat on one of its members. The plot concerns the organization’s belief that Charlie, as successor to his uncle’s criminal enterprise, owes the organization billions of dollars because his uncle either stole property belonging to the organization or competed unfairly with its members or breached an agreement to tithe his profits to the organization. Charlie takes a casual approach to their demands but proves to be a smarter businessman than any of the criminals, all of whom have a sense of entitlement but no business sense at all.

While I prefer Scalzi when he’s telling stories with more drama than talking cats can provide, I can’t fault the entertainment value of his lighter fare. His novels are often a roadmap for how to behave decently even when surrounded by people who behave selfishly. Charlie is easy to like and Scalzi rewards the reader’s interest in the character. The plot is surprisingly coherent for a book that features talking cats and unionized dolphins. Starter Villain moves quickly, seasons a pleasant story with amusing moments, and reaches a satisfying resolution.

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The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Published by Tor Books on March 15, 2022

John Scalzi spent two months of his pandemic knocking out an amusing novel. When he’s being serious, Scalzi can be an incredibly moving writer. Even when he knocks out a two-month pandemic wonder that is written for laughs, he’s a good storyteller who makes me smile.

Jamie Gray has a tech job for a niche startup that competes with food delivery apps like Uber Eats. After he’s fired, he signs up to make deliveries because there aren’t many jobs available during the pandemic. After making several deliveries to a customer who has sympathy for Jamie’s situation, the customer offers Jamie a job. His new job, as he frequently explains, is to lift things.

Until he arrives in Greenland, Jamie doesn’t realize that he will be working in another universe. It’s possible to cross into that universe (and for very large and nasty creatures called kaiju to cross into ours) when the dimensional barrier is weakened by nuclear explosions. Unfortunately, the radiation from those explosions attracts the kaiju, who are basically powered by their own naturally occurring nuclear reactors.

The kaiju are not so much animals as ecosystems. They maintain symbiotic relationships with parasites that keep them from exploding like a nuclear bomb. Every now and then, their system breaks down and the kaiju die a spectacular death.

Most people don’t know about this alternative universe, although rich people are in on the secret because they’re helping the government fund its study. Jamie’s team is one of three that periodically enter the universe through the Greenland portal. Most of his colleagues are scientists but they still need someone to lift things.

Scalzi explains enough of the science underlying the alternate Earth to fool me (a nonscientist) into believing that the story is plausible. That’s all the science I need in a story that is meant to amuse.The plot sets up a rich guy as an evil nemesis of Jamie. Naturally, the evil rich guy embarks on an evil scheme and it will be up to Jamie (and a few other characters) to thwart him.

This is primarily a science fiction conspiracy thriller with enough action to justify calling it a thriller despite its failure to thrill. The plot doesn’t hold any real surprises, but the characters’ banter is … amusing. Scalzi fans presumably understand how his characters  engage in good-natured banter. The banter is probably enough to keep them happy until Scalzi turns his attention to more serious work.

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The Last Emperox by John Scalzi

Published by Tor Books on April 14, 2020

The Last Emperox is the third book of the Interdependency trilogy that began with The Collapsing Empire and continued with The Consuming Fire. The first book sets up the detailed background that serves as a springboard for the next two. When I read it, I wondered whether all that background was really necessary. Perhaps the trilogy would produce a story that might better be told in a single volume without all the detail, however interesting it might be, that John Scalzi served up in The Collapsing Empire. With apologies to Scalzi, who knows more than I do about how to write John Scalzi books, I confess I was wrong. The final two volumes are each packed with storylines, way too much to cram into a single volume and all of it essential, or at least worthwhile. Anyway, trilogies give writers three advances and royalties on three books instead of one, and who am I to complain about Scalzi earning a living? Readers who invest in all three books will not find themselves cheated.

By the end of The Consuming Fire, we know that flow streams connecting various places that humans occupy in the Interdependency are collapsing. Marce Claremont has brought that news to the relatively new Emperox, whose formal name is Grayland II. Informally, she is still Cardenia of the House of Wu, a relatively young woman who is forced into the life of a ruler when she would rather have the freedom that comes with a less stressful existence. Like most of the female characters, Cardenia has a healthy sexual appetite, much to Marce’s benefit. Various political machinations have ensued, including attempted assassinations, but Cardenia is still holding power, although to what end is uncertain. When the flow streams finally collapse, the Interdependency will collapse with them, producing a period of anarchy and massive death brought about by insufficient and suddenly irreplaceable resources.

The Last Emperox continues the political plot that lies at the novel’s heart. The villainous Nadashe Nohamapetan, seemingly foiled in the second novel, is up to new tricks in this one. She is matched against Lady Kiva from the House of Lagos, a delightfully foul-mouthed woman whose sex drive might better be described as insatiable than healthy, and good for her. Kiva may be allied with Cardenia or working against her. Scalzi keeps the reader guessing.

The plot is lively. Scalzi uses it to make the always timely observation that power is short-sighted. People who hold it want to keep it. If their actions accelerate the destruction of whatever (the environment, the government, the Interdependency), they’ll let the next generation worry about it. Maintaining power and accumulating more of it trumps (pun intended) the harm they cause to everyone else. Naturally, rulers of the powerful houses hatch a plan to save themselves from the flow stream collapse because, if only a few people will be able to survive, they feel entitled to be the survivors.

I expected the protagonists to come up with a plan to save the human race (or that part of it that lives in the Interdependency, which or may not be all of it) and they do, sort of, but the plan surprised me. It’s both clever and a testament to the willingness of good people to set power aside and to sacrifice everything for the greater good. Maybe science fiction fans carry the idealism to believe that our better selves will ultimately triumph. Maybe the fond hope that there is something salvageable, something decent, in human nature is what makes me keep reading science fiction. That, and good storytelling that revitalizes the sense of wonder. Scalzi attains those objectives better than most science fiction writers. In The Last Emperox, he brings a well-conceived plot to a satisfying conclusion while leaving room for related stories to be told. I hope he gets around to telling them.

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The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi

Published by Tor Books on October 16, 2018

The Consuming Fire is the second novel in John Scalzi’s Interdependency trilogy. The Collapsing Empire introduces key characters and sets up the trilogy’s framework. The habitats of the Interdependency are facing a crisis as the Flow streams that link them begin to disappear. The habitats truly are interdependent, with the possible exception of the planet End, resulting in the likely death of their inhabitants when they are cut off from their trade partners.

The Consuming Fire is more satisfying than the first installment because, having established the premise, Scalzi is free to do something with it. In addition to developing a solid plot based on political conspiracies, Scalzi uses the book to teach an allegorical lesson. The collapsing flow streams pose an existential threat, but the members of the power structure — industrialists, religious leaders, and politicians — refuse to consider the long-term implications of that threat because they are only concerned about their short-term goals: acquiring and maintaining wealth and power. They are more interested in propping up the stock market than in acknowledging a threat that will make their stocks meaningless in a few years. They are happy to let the next generation worry about the consequences of their greed. Does that remind anyone of, for example, global warming?

The story fills in more background about how the Interdependency came into being. It’s a clever story involving the manipulation of the superstitious with religious visions and prophesies that were faked by the first emperox. The visions were “meant as parables to help a divided humanity understand the need for a new ethical system that focused on cooperation and interdependency.” The current emperox, Grayland II (f/k/a Cardenia), uses the same trick to control the empire’s citizens in a time of crisis.

The plot follows a grand scheme to overthrow Cardenia that brings together the House of Nohamapetan (which tried to assassinate Cardenia in the first novel) and disloyal elements of her own house (the House of Wu). The few people who are on Cardenia’s side include Kiva, whose house is at odds with Nohamapetan, and Cardenia's lover, the mathematician Marce Claremont, who remains focused on the imminent collapse of the flow streams and the deaths that will follow if humans cannot make their way to End, a planet that is now under the inconvenient control of the House of Nohamapetan.

In a critical subplot, Marce discovers that older flow streams are temporarily reopening, including one that leads to a lost system. Marce travels there with a small team to learn what they can about survival strategies, only to discover that a few plucky humans are still alive, 800 years after their orbital habitats were cut off from supplies. More importantly, he finds a ship from a forgotten system of planets that is operated by a captain whose consciousness was downloaded into the ship’s operating system.

Scalzi combines action with intrigue in a fast-moving novel that suggests important lessons without becoming preachy. Cardenia continues to develop as a character, growing into a role as emperox that she didn’t want, using her wits and marshalling her toughness to take on political opponents who view her as weak and naïve. I look forward to seeing how Cardenia gets the empire out of the mess its short-sighted industrialists and politicians have created.

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