When the Moon Hits Your Eye
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Average rating4
The moon has turned into cheese.
Now humanity has to deal with it.
For some it’s an opportunity. For others it’s a moment to question their faith: In God, in science, in everything. Still others try to keep the world running in the face of absurdity and uncertainty. And then there are the billions looking to the sky and wondering how a thing that was always just there is now... something absolutely impossible.
Astronauts and billionaires, comedians and bank executives, professors and presidents, teenagers and terminal patients at the end of their lives -- over the length of an entire lunar cycle, each get their moment in the moonlight. To panic, to plan, to wonder and to pray, to laugh and to grieve. All in a kaleidoscopic novel that goes all the places you’d expect, and then to so many places you wouldn’t.
It’s a wild moonage daydream. Ride this rocket.
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For some reason I thought this might be humorous but it was more a study in a life extinction event. Not a bad thing but definitely not expected.
Great characters and more great storytelling on an unusual topic.
For a while John Scalzi was one of my favorite sci-fi authors. Anytime a new book a pre-order was automatic. However I was mostly underwhelmed by his last two novels The Kaiju Preservation Society and Starter Villain. Both had fun sounding premises and both didn't end up being as fun as their premise.
So here comes this book about the moon turning to cheese. In the afterword Scalzi mentions how its the final book in what he sort of considers a loose trilogy of unrelated books. I was staring to think that maybe I'd be more selective of which novels by Mr. Scalzi I'd pre-order in the future.
Thankfully this was a book that ended up being as fun as the premise. If you're looking for a hard sci-fi novel, well you must not have read a John Scalzi novel before. The science is hand wavy at best. But that' not the point.
I'm not generally a fan of short stories. This book is almost that, but not quite. Some characters we meet once and never again. The book explores a lot of ideas, characters and parts of the US with the question of "how would they react if the moon turned to cheese?". It's a silly premise and question, but somehow it leads to some really interesting vignettes that worked well together into a novel length story.
Despite my somewhat low expectations and a style of story telling I generally don't enjoy, Mr. Scalzi somehow pulled it off.
Wil Wheaton does his usual good job with narrations. This book has far less snark than other books by Mr. Scalzi but I still think Wil is always a great fit for his novels.
