This is the best kind of fun! It's smart, quick and human. Each chapter is told though another voice, leading to a caleidoscope of experiences about...a cheese Moon! In true Scalzi fashion, this book hits all the right notes. A million starts (and a Moon or two!)

Published by Tor Books on March 25, 2025

John Scalzi usually displays his sense of humor in his science fiction novels. He’s churned out a bunch of science fiction comedies, the most successful being Redshirts. The stories tend to be amusing and Scalzi typically uses comedy to make a serious point. Even when he writes more serious novels (like Old Man’s War), he adds generous doses of humor. And he always remembers that the word “science” is in “science fiction” for a reason. Well, nearly always.

When the Moon Hits Your Eye is another sf comedy. It has sufficient merit to earn a recommendation, but it’s also disappointing. I had the impression that Scalzi wrote himself into a corner as he milked laughs from his premise and couldn’t come up with a credible way to ground the story in science.

The premise is ridiculous. One day, the moon turns into cheese — or at least into an organic matter that has the characteristics of cheese. Not only does the moon transform, but so do space rocks displayed in museums and kept in NASA’s vaults.

Scalzi brings a fair amount of science to the project, explaining that the cheese moon needs to be physically larger than the old moon to retain the same amount of mass. Mess around with the moon’s mass and tides get thrown out of whack. But a larger-than-moon-size cheese must compress as it orbits the Earth, so Scalzi imagines the cheese moon erupting as it squirts water from its innards. This is all very sciency, as a reader would expect from Scalzi, but it dances around the question of how the moon changed into a sphere of cheese.

Scalzi explores how the moon’s transformation is greeted by politicians, the media, scientists, wealthy business leaders, members of the clergy, the movie industry, and others. In fact, each chapter tends to focus on new characters who are caught up in the moon crisis. A cheese-related sex scandal involving a congressman and a retired sex worker might be the strangest response.

A chunk of the cheese moon breaks off during an eruption and is projected to smack into the Earth in about two years, causing an extinction event. Some people decide it’s time to start executing their bucket list. Scalzi imagines that bankers will use AI to keep their banks running after all the tellers decide they don’t want to be working during their final days of existence.

The funniest bit involves a company that designed a moon lander for NASA. The company’s CEO is jealous of, and in competition with, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. He makes an unlikely plan to take the lander on an unsanctioned mission to visit the cheese moon.

But back to the science. I wondered how Scalzi was going to pull this off, given the lack of any credible explanation for the moon’s sudden transformation into a cheesy mass. While at least one of his books flirts with Intelligent Design as a rational explanation of life on Earth, Scalzi is a scientist at heart. He nevertheless includes a preacher in the plot and gives the preacher a chance to encourage his parishioners to cling to their faith in times of trouble.

I won’t spoil the ending, but I will say that it disappointed me by failing to provide a definitive resolution of the mystery. Scalzi presents (but does not endorse) a theory, popularized on conspiracy websites, but the theory doesn’t explain how the moon rocks on Earth transformed. The silly premise and the absence of a legitimate (even if farfetched) explanation to support it undermines the novel as a work of science fiction, so maybe the book is best seen as a comedy fantasy sprinkled with bits of science. As a funny look at how people might respond to end times that are still a couple years distant, the story generates enough chuckles to make it a good beach read.

RECOMMENDED

This was really really fun in a way I haven't experienced since listening to Project Hail Mary. This is a must read.

A classic absurd, hilarious one from John Scalzi. I was chuckling on every page! Thank you for the advance read!

This was an absolute hoot! Felt more like unconnected short stories than one cohesive novel, though obviously what happens to the moon affects everyone on earth. But getting to know a new character at the last fourth of the book felt a bit jarring to my experience of reading. But that’s worth it for this wild romp!

Thank you to Tor and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book!

Wow. I'm such a huge Scalzi fan and even then there are times where I read the synopsis and think REAAAALLLY? But then I read the book and am blown away. A moon-is-cheese book shouldn't work, but I think he can make any idea sing.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for providing me with an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review!!

Everything was fine. Life was moving at a normal pace when suddenly the moon was no longer made of normal moon elements. The moon was now made of cheese!! In this multi-pov story we follow many individuals from many different parts of the world all experiencing this crazy phenomenon. From scientists trying to find the answers, to billionaires attempting to land on the moon, we get to see all the insanity up close and personal over a lunar cycle. What would you do if the moon was suddenly cheese?

This book was a lot of fun. If you’ve seen movies like “Don’t Look Up” and “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” and found them enjoyable, this may be up your alley. This reminded me a lot of Good Omens. It has very similar vibes for sure. If you want to read something “with your brain off” this would be for you! The plot is literally in the synopsis and it is really only that deep. The moon turned to cheese and everyone goes crazy in one way or another. It was seriously such a good time. 4/5 stars!

Thank you to Net Galley for the ARC of this book. I was really excited to have been offered the opportunity to read it before everyone else... But of course my schedule didn't allow me to actually do that. Anyway I’ve been a fan of the author since last summer when I read Starter Villain and then Lock In and Head On. I enjoy all of his writing styles, and this book was no exception.

The premise of the book is pretty simple. It chronicles the days over which people are reacting to the moon having turned to cheese. You get many different perspectives and types of writing from Reddit rants to transcripts of text conversations to traditional narrative.

I thought that the story was incredibly clever and there were some really neat characters, but I think the difficult thing for me about this book was that you got so little time to get to know characters because it wasn't a character-driven book. I am very much a fan of character-driven books, so this was outside my normal type of book; that doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy it, though. I really thought that it was creative and that he did a good job of making fake science seem real. As always with John Scalzi you get a fair bit of tongue-and-cheekness to the writing, and I always appreciate that. I would highly recommend this book to someone who's looking for something a little bit different, a little bit sarcastic, a little bit funny, and pretty compelling.

Well, that was a book.

Loosely billed as a trilogy of regular people dealing with high-concept sci-fi ideas alongside The Kaiju Preservation Society and Starter Villain, I think this was my least favorite of the three. I loved Kaiji as a fun, bubble-gum spree of monsters and capitalism and weird. The schtick was enjoyable.

It grew less enjoyable with SV, which felt like a rough draft of a story: lots of great ideas with a lot of formulaic writing.

And it grew downright annoyed with Moon, which started off really strong and then devolved into entries filled with either copy/paste repartee or heartstring-tugging moments of togetherness (usually framed in a speech of some sort).

Mainly, I was annoyed because of the ending. Commit, Scalzi! And for fuck's sake, tell me what kind of cheese!

Fans of Starter Villain and Project Hail Mary will really like this one. It has strong Project Hail Mary vibes.

Personally, I think that this would have been great as a novella, but as a full-length novel it was just too long. The repetitive pattern of the dialogue got old really fast.

Two stars, because at least the obnoxious billionaire dies horribly in the end.

I received an ARC from NetGalley

Hilarious, silly, and so much fun. I loved this book and was so thrilled to get an ARC. Scalzi is one of my favorite authors, and his newest didn’t disappoint!

John Scalzi has produced a rather nonsensical story about the moon turning into cheese for a period of time. Of course it is a hoax that is difficult to prove. Was it God? Was it aliens? Moonage dream. He runs with the theory of this nonsense as if it is real until suddenly the real moon returns. Hard to believe.

When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi is a quirky story about what would happen if the moon suddenly turned into cheese. There are alternating chapters from the White House, NASA, and a fascinating cast of characters. There's a little science, a little politics, and a lot of entertainment. I really enjoy Scalzi's books. I read Starter Villain, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I also liked this one a lot too. The author's creativity, quirkiness, and intelligence really shine through in his writing. Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

I love Scalzi's writing, his stories are always so interesting. Unfortunately, this one did not hit the right notes for me. I had a lot of trouble because of the way the story follows so many different characters and settings. I had trouble really following the story. I did enjoy the idea of the moon turning to cheese and the scientific side of the moon being bigger and also because of the heat, the volcanic eruptions coming from it. There were definitely interesting bits included.

In this novel, one day the moon suddenly is replaced by an object of the same mass that is an organic substance which sure seems to be a giant ball of cheese (even moon rocks on Earth!) Each chapter thereafter represents a different character in a day of the lunar cycle, from scientists to astronauts to politicians to business people to an array of ordinary folks.

I have read and enjoyed six of John Scalzi’s previous books, so sorry to say this one just didn’t do it for me. Some chapters were quite good, but because generally each character is a one and done (or at least not seen for 20 or so chapters), it didn’t really all hang together as a novel. Plus, sometimes the satire just felt a little too broad, and while I can suspend disbelief for all kinds of science fiction, this just felt too unrealistic. I’ll still read more of Scalzi in the future though.

The link below contains my spoiler free review thoughts on this book. If you have any questions feel free to contact me at my email in my profile.

https://youtu.be/AqV33-oFRQo

An exciting look at scientific development and exploration of how people react to unexplainable events. Great read!

I enjoyed the his other books, Starter Villain, so I knew this was going to be a good one. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for gifting me this arc.

If I used a more nuanced review scale, this would probably fall slightly below 4 stars - maybe 3.75? Alas, I do not, so 4 stars it is.

This novel really highlights Scalzi’s masterful writing ability. Each chapter is a short story featuring different characters dealing with the absurd experience of living in a world where the moon can spontaneously turn to cheese. Some chapters actually brought me to tears with the tangible emotion the author was able to create.

My main qualm with this book:
The RELENTLESS quippiness was almost too much. The story was “quip quip quip quip POIGNANT quip quip quip quip quip quip quip ASTUTE POLITICAL COMMENTARY quip quip quip…” for 300 pages. While there were some moments that were genuinely heartfelt, it just got to be a bit exhausting. I think I could have handled this pace better if it was a shorter novel or novella.

The moon has become what we always thought it was and now what?!? It’s the journey this book takes you on that is one of the reasons this author is one of my favorite authors to read and enjoy. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

Thank you NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

3.5 rounded up

Another fun book by John Scalzi. He is an author I will always recommend and read especially to people who are scared to try scifi books.

This book wasn't my favorite by him but I still had a good time. Since each chapter followed a different person, it was a bit hard to care about any of the characters but the fast pace and story helped keep me entertained.