When The Moon Hits Your Eye is the latest in a string of very strange books by John Scalzi. The Kaiju Preservation Society introduced us to a former Postmates-ish driver taking a job at a wildlife preserve for horrifying monsters. Starter Villain pondered the moral implications of inheriting your uncle’s supervillain business. When the Moon Hits Your Eye introduces another premise so ridiculous that I can only assume Scalzi wrote the book on a dare: “What if the moon suddenly turned into cheese?”
The story unfolds through a collection of vignettes, with each chapter covering one day in a complete lunar cycle. We get to see how the moon’s newfound cheesiness affects the astronaut team whose moon landing plans have been suddenly shuttered, two Wisconsin brothers who own rival cheese shops, a pastor trying to comfort his flock in the face of a possible apocalypse, and many others. Through their eyes we watch humanity try to cope with the absurdity of what has just happened.
I think the most incredible thing about this book is that Scalzi plays the premise completely straight. This is a serious contemplation of the psychological, philosophical, economical, and theological implications of the moon turning into cheese. It’s definitely a funny book, but the humor is balanced with a sense of gravitas. This is less a book about the moon, and more about the way humans deal with the unknowable. The book is definitely more story-driven than character-driven; most of the characters are interchangeable placeholders, all spouting the same variety of witty dialogue. But it’s not meant to be an intimate character study. It’s a mediation on absurdity, and a very good one.