When the Moon Hits Your Eye

When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi is an absolutely stellar, very highly recommended science fiction satire. This will absolutely be on my list of the best books of the year.

The moon has turned into cheese. A new lunar cycle marks the moment when the moon was replaced with cheese, or an "organic matrix," as NASA prefers to put it. All the lunar rock samples on earth have also turned to cheese. One concern is that a mass of cheese sixteen hundred miles in diameter isn't likely to be stable.

Now everyone around the world is confronting and struggling with the existential questions regarding all aspects of the moon turning to cheese. These discussions include average citizens, scientists, politicians, astronauts, authors, show more billionaires, filmmakers, philosophers, religious leaders, students, comedians, bankers, and more.

As expected, the writing is excellent. My appreciation of When the Moon Hits Your Eye only increased while reading. The premise is introduced and then chapters are various people reacting. It covers one lunar cycle. There are no main characters, however there are several recurring characters. The narrative can be extremely humorous but also serious and touching at times.

The plot unfolds through a collection of a wide variety of people reacting to an absolutely absurd occurrence that challenges everyone's fundamental understanding of the universe. It is a satirical book about a cross section of humanity faced with a large scale crisis and how they react. The crisis here is a moon made of cheese but comparisons could be made to the varied and numerous reactions to other world wide events.

When the Moon Hits Your Eye is a perfect choice for readers who can appreciate the surface level absurd situation and understand the deeper implications it induces. Thanks to Tor/Macmillian for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.
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I received a free ARC from Tor in exchange for my honest review.

What a whacky, wild romp! I can't say I've ever had a particular interest in reading a book about the moon turning to cheese, but when I saw that Scalzi wrote it, I knew I could trust him to entertain. I was right. It's weird to say a book about Earth's moon spontaneously turning to cheese felt realistic, but that's how it felt. This book was funny, a bit ridiculous at times, but also still grounded?

The end was actually giving me a bit of existential dread and there was a really nice passage on endings (read: death) that had me tearing up. Then the very end also felt realistic to what I'd guess might happen in this scenario, if you forced me to guess.

If you're in the mood show more for a contemporary sci-fi to take your mind of the horrors of today and put them into the horror's of a timeline with a moon made of cheese, please check this out! show less

The conceit of the novel is simple: what happens to life on earth when the moon suddenly, and inexplicably, turns to cheese? Each chapter follows a single character through a day in the month after the change. And while there is plenty of wry humour, as one would expect with Scalzi, there is also some really beautiful prose exploring the human condition and how various individuals find meaning in life in the wake of such a major change. Hopping from scientists at NASA, to a small town preacher, to a blowhard billionaire who still wants to go to the moon, to a university student working in a cheese shop, and more Scalzi crafts so many different characters who all feel real and compelling to follow (if sometimes unendingly irritating in show more the case of the billionaire). While this nominally could be labelled as sci fi or speculative fiction, I think this has much broader appeal to any reader who enjoys a good character study. I laughed, I nearly cried (at least twice), and I finished the book really glad I read it and keen to push it on other readers. If you're even slightly curious about the premise, go pick it up. You'll be glad you did. show less

I did get a big kick out of When the Moon Hits Your Eye, written by John Scalzi and read by Wil Wheaton. It's satirical, and also a little bit touching in several places places. The moon inexplicably turns to cheese, and there are some odd consequences, many of them funny, some of them not. It causes a crisis of faith for the science-minded and the religious types alike.

Definitely worth the read, and I will most likely listen to it again at some point. It is not as funny as Starter Villain, but it addresses quite a few more societal issue, like scientific literacy (or illiteracy, as in the case of the US,) not to mention the commercialization of space travel.

John Scalzi has never been afraid to be silly. His last book featured a criminal empire run largely by talking cats and foul-mouthed dolphins who demanded the right to unionize; an earlier novel begins with an interstellar incident caused by a fart. But this is surely his goofiest premise yet: What if the moon suddenly, inexplicably, turned to cheese?

Do not look for too much scientific rigor as Scalzi lays out the consequences of that change. As he says in his afterword, "the science in this book is, and here is an obscure technical term, extremely loosey-goosey." But even as the back of your mind is aware that this is completely wackadoo, it all feels plausible and convincing in the moment.

We follow the reaction to the change through show more 30 days -- one lunar cycle -- moving to a new place and new characters almost every day (a few characters come back for a second appearance). The tones of the chapters vary wildly, from the genuinely moving crisis of faith of a Midwestern evangelical pastor to the raucous Slack chat of a group of gay men trying to plan an eclipse party. We get reactions from the people you'd expect to see in a story like this -- the President, NASA astronauts whose moon mission is suddenly put on hiatus, journalists and science authors trying to explain things to the public -- but from odd side angles as well -- a pair of feuding brothers who own competing cheese shops, a Hollywood executive who finds that every pitch she hears is suddenly cheese-themed.

The final chapters get unexpectedly deep and philosophical, and if the ending is a bit too deus ex machina, well, it's no less absurd than the idea of the moon turning to cheese in the first place. The novel is a big ol' ball of goofy, nutty -- dare I say cheesy? -- fun, and I had an ever-widening grin on my face throughout. show less

When looking for a science fiction novel that doesn't take itself seriously, several options exist. But I'd argue that no one does non-serious science fiction better than John Scalzi. His latest novel, WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE, epitomizes that particular genre. Everything from the subject to the characters to the resolution is an exercise in not taking anything seriously. It's what I've come to expect from Mr. Scalzi, yet I believe he outdid himself this time.

WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE opens just after the Moon turns into cheese. People are only beginning to realize something is different, but don't know what it is yet. What follows are short chapters that read like vignettes as the lunar cycle progresses. Each chapter follows a show more different character so that we see a variety of reactions to the news and its consequences. Governments bluster, markets react, scientists scramble, the general population marvels, and the billionaires play.

Mr. Scalzi plays fast and loose with science in this novel, something he unabashedly admits in his Author's Note. Not that this should surprise you because Moon and cheese, but his fluidity in that area allows him to focus less on the action and more on the reactions. The cover-ups and explanations are as ridiculous as you expect, but nothing that feels disingenuous. In fact, despite the lack of concrete science explaining anything, Mr. Scalzi capitalizes on our gradual adjustment to crazy headlines to make WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE feel like the least improbable thing you will read all year.

Given the constant barrage of headlines that read like they came from The Onion rather than respected news providers, WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE is the perfect remedy. It seemingly mimics the lunacy of current headlines by reminding you that a situation can always get worse. The format lends itself nicely to any reading session, whether for a quick chapter or a more leisurely period. Lest you think the story is entirely superficial, it does have a few philosophical moments that require some introspection. That aside, Mr. Scalzi's headline one-upmanship does its job of helping you forget about real-world issues for a few hours, and WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE is a goofy but endearing palate/brain cleanser that hits all the right notes. show less

This almost takes the place of Redshirts as my favorite John Scalzi book. It uses an absurd end of the world scenario to show how different people from different walks of life would react if they knew each thing they said or did might be for the last time. It's got the snappy dialogue going on that Scalzi does so well and the story itself goes from laugh out loud funny to emotionally profound.