When The Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi
I would like to thank Tor for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Tor
Published – Out Now
Price – £20 hardback £9.99 ebook
One day, suddenly and without explanation, the moon turns into a ball of cheese.
For some, it’s an opportunity. For others, it’s time to question their life choices. How can the world stay the same in the face of such absurdity and uncertainty?
Astronauts and billionaires, comedians and bank executives, professors and presidents, teenagers and patients at the end of their lives – over the length of a lunar cycle, each gets their moment in the moonlight. To panic, to plan, to wonder and to hope, to laugh and to grieve. All in a story that goes all the places you’d expect, and to many others you could never anticipate. For the people of the earth, this could be the end – or the beginning of a whole new world.
‘Never let a good crisis go to waste’ is a maxim that not just tries to be optimistic in the face of bad news but also shows that we humans are always looking for an angle. How can we use this to further our ow goals? They may be for the public good or for our own self-interest. How do we deal when the universe throws a true curveball at us. What about if the moon turned to cheese? That’s the premise of John Scalzi’s very interesting satirical science fiction novel When The Moon Hits Your Eye and we follow across the United States how one unexpected event creates a wave of changes small and major to a society.
The Neil Armstrong museum gets the first hint when their moon sample from the Apollo mission goes missing. But then everyone else’s does too. and the moon seems both bigger and shinier than it ever has before. For reasons unknown the moon has turned into a ‘organic matrix’ which NASA much prefers to saying cheese. From derailments to the new privatised space programme to film schemes, churches and cheese shops the world is rocked and changed. But also people start to realise that a moon made of cheese actually could be a lot more dangerous than anyone realised before.
Overall, I enjoyed this a lot because however strange an event we have (and Scalzi never really explains it) it’s the consequences of a strange event that I feel Scalzi particularly grabs the american approach to a crisis. It is very hard not to think back to the Pandemic and how a true black swan event can suddenly hit all the strata of a society at once. To do this Scalzi has moved away from a standard single plot and cast and opted for a set of small interludes some more linked than others and a spine focused around the space programme. This allows Scalzi to create small sketches some just for laughs while others offer more poignant perspectives. We see media production have to stop all moon-based plans (that poor Space 1999 reboot!) and instead a huge amount of cheese themes shows are dangled – the puns are deliciously terrible. Every rich entitled person wants to taste the moon while we also have some mid-western philosophy on death, taking events in their stride and even when to have faith in god and when not to. It’s a really broad look at society and does remind me of how everyone had to rethink their daily lives a few years ago but here for more cosmic reasons that what we thought was one thing now is not. If I have a slight niggle is Scalzi’s characters often tend to sound the same in these sketches – snarky, punny and warm hearted so while I enjoyed the debates and banter the characters here didn’t really jump out so much to stand out many pages later.
The main spine around the space programme allows Scalzi to look at the influence of billionaires and I am sure that Jody Bannon a thin skinned, greedy, amoral and frankly obnoxious one who is running the rocket programme to the moon does not resemble any real billionaire we may be thinking of…totally. Jody is a truly unpleasant conniving character that loves to get what he wants and yet his interludes also reveal the danger of the novel. Scalzi does use this to explore the influence of these cretins and how they malign all they touch. Its satisfyingly explored and sets up the book’s greater reveal about a cheese moon’s dangerous side. One that is both funny and tragic. Here is where a few of the issues I had with the book come through. It’s a very US centric viewpoint – very little thought about the wider impacts and the resolution while in some ways makes sense feels a little pat. There is a glimpse that Scalzi is prepared to show humans at their worst when a ‘Moon Flip-off’ party suddenly gets very dangerous but it quickly gets wrapped up and even leads to romance and family reconciliation. There is a theme that our better instincts always come through in a crisis, but this darker side is only really glimpsed at (even in the book’s code that people start to think it was all a conspiracy theory). Knowing the other aftermath of Covid on fringe groups getting powerful and darker forces using is to create havoc to their own advantages so it is disappointing that for a satire Scalzi seems to have pulled a punch or two to allow the more stable-minded mid-western states the book focuses one like to come through as where the true face of America lies. That feels based on where the USA now seems to be perhaps overly optimistic. Even the book’s US President who we are told only likes simple words explained to him seems to be a more humane operator than we are first expecting. It feels a little much more these things will pass rather than we need to knuckle down and doe the hard work to fix things even when huge danger threatens our way of life. I think sometimes satire works best putting a bit more bite into it and holding a true mirror to ourselves may work even better
Saying that I found this a lot more interesting than I was initially expecting Its less simple cheese themed zany hijinks and more a wider look at american life and culture even if could have perhaps had a bit more punch. As such if you want something more in the vein of light-hearted fun and yet thoughtful I still think it is highly recommended!
