When the Moon Hits Your Eye: 04/15/25

When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi and Wil Wheaton (Narrator) (2025) is a science fiction what-if story that asks what would happen if the moon suddenly turned to cheese — excuse me, an organic matrix that resembles cheese. Like the classic disaster novels of the 1970s this one plays out over a month and from multiple perspectives.

Also like the actual moon landing, the events of this novel might actually be an elaborate diegetic hoax. As I'm not a moon landing denier, I am going to revel in the satisfying and over the top death of a certain fictional billionaire who bears resemblance to a certain nonfictional one.

Despite the ridiculous premise and the equally ridiculous ending, the middle bits pose a lot of interesting what-if questions. How would various societies react to having only a limited of time left? How would that reaction be affected by the ridiculous nature of the crisis? Is death ever dignified?

I had originally planned to read the book. I like Scalzi's books and he had me at the title before I had even bothered to read the description. But then I saw that Wil Wheaton is the narrator (and apparently narrates all of Scalzi's books) and I hit buy on the iPhone without further thought.

Wheaton does an excellent job of bringing this novel and its characters to life. His performance was well worth the added expense vs the ebook. I am now seriously considering going through the rest of Scalzi's books to listen to Wheaton narrate them.

Five stars

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