If the moon have been to instantly flip to cheese, the film pitches could be unbearable. Astronauts could be irritated, grad college students could be demoralized and information articles would overflow with horrible puns. The nice jaws of the Web would pay money for the main points, churning out doomsday situations, memes and conspiracies. And that’s even earlier than the moon cheese would begin to compress, creating geysers of fabric and a dangerously unstable lunar panorama.
In When The Moon Hits Your Eye, voted considered one of Scientific American’s greatest fiction picks of 2025, creator John Scalzi plots out the bodily aspect of this state of affairs alongside the societal and interpersonal ramifications of such an surprising (if scrumptious) transformation. The story follows myriad views—together with these of scientists, authorities officers, billionaires with one thing to show, on-line discussion board commenters, journalists, and plenty of others—as individuals attempt to grapple with the moon’s abrupt transformation and cussed insistence on remaining tacky. We caught up with Scalzi to debate the planetary science of cheese, the sticky scourge of misinformation and the way in which a worldwide scramble to grasp the unexplained can reveal the method of science. (Plus: Would he eat the cheese?)
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
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So the moon is manufactured from cheese. How did you come to write down this?
I’ve settled into a extremely fascinating area of interest with the up to date science fiction I write, which is take a extremely absurd thought after which attempt to apply actual life to it.
We’ve got, since we have been youngsters, heard the phrase “the moon is manufactured from cheese,” or “inexperienced cheese.” And so my mind was like, “Okay, what would occur to everybody if the moon was manufactured from cheese?” As a result of it’s type of a common factor: The moon is within the sky for everybody. Everybody must cope with it, and it will be that disconnect of, “I’m attempting to get via my day in the true world with actual issues. And in addition, the moon has turned to cheese. All the pieces that I believed I knew in regards to the universe has simply been chucked out the window. What kind of simply God or universe would flip the moon to cheese? And for what function? And what does this imply for me?” So every chapter is its personal protagonist, every chapter has a brand new perspective, and everyone seems to be coping with the moon.
I had really been serious about [this] for a very long time. I had initially provide you with the thought in 2015, after which after I was nearly to take a seat down to write down it, Neal Stephenson got here out with Seveneves—
Additionally an iconic e book about sudden, dramatic modifications to the moon and their far-reaching penalties for Earth and society as we all know it.
And I used to be like, nicely performed, Neal Stephenson. I’m not going to place out my cheese moon e book within the wake of Seveneves. However that truly turned out to be advantageous as a result of I had extra time to consider the precise penalties of the moon turning to cheese. So weirdly this has been a multiyear challenge, from serious about it to really writing about it. And I do assume that like cheese, it advantages from having been aged.
How a lot analysis did you do?
I did some analysis. If you’re changing basalt with a dairy product, what are the results of that? How a lot does the moon broaden? What occurs when it begins compressing?
Surprisingly sufficient, there are articles on-line about this as a result of individuals have had this concept earlier than; they simply haven’t written novels about it. In order that was extraordinarily useful. I did discuss to some precise scientist mates about some stuff, and I used to be very clear—look, I’m not going to be exceptionally rigorous about this, however I do additionally wish to be sure that physics does what physics is meant to do. [My friends] simply checked out me like, “You’re an fool, however right here’s what you’re going to have to consider.”
One of many issues that was actually vital was that I didn’t get too particular. In the event you get too particular in science fiction, you’ll inevitably uncover the gaps in your individual data base. For instance, and I made it a operating joke, the type of cheese is rarely advised. [If I were to say] “Oh yeah, it’s Gruyère,” or one thing like that, anyone could be like “I really did the mathematics of what would occur with a Gruyère moon, and also you have been utterly improper!”
What was essentially the most surprising consequence of a cheese moon you discovered?
Ultimately you’ll have an environment, and you’ll have oceans.
You may’t simply have a cheese moon up there not being topic to physics…. If it’s going to remain in its orbit, it’s going to need to do the entire suite of physics. It’s going to compress. You’re going to have geysers of steam. You’re going to have eruptions the place enormous chunks of cheese are going to fly off, and finally, over the sequence of years or many years, you’ll inevitably have oceans, and people oceans would keep for hundreds of years and even millennia.
The albedo [brightness] of the moon could be considerably larger. There could be no extra deep night time skies every time the moon was within the sky; it will simply be like nightfall. All of that stuff was fascinating to me, and I believe placing it within the e book provides that type of bizarre verisimilitude to it that as a author you might be enjoying truthful along with your viewers. You might be saying sure, that is an absurd idea, however I’m going to really do the mathematics so you can be carried alongside and see the logical penalties.
Would you eat the moon cheese?
In my universe, completely, I’d eat the moon cheese. If I used to be given the chance, I’d one hundred pc do it.
Nice. Simply to have that on the document that you’d in actual fact eat the moon cheese.
Simply to have it on the document, sure. This is essential stuff.
Did you get pleasure from writing so many alternative views for the e book?
For me, a part of the enjoyment of doing this factor was having not simply the people reply to it, however [including] issues just like the information articles or the Reddit posts or the Slack rooms the place individuals are speaking about this. I’m a former journalist; I used to work on the Fresno Bee newspaper within the Nineteen Nineties. This may completely be an ideal story for everybody. The primary a number of days could be, “Oh my God, the moon has turned to cheese!” However you then would get the approach to life items, and you’ll get the sports activities items…. Simply imagining that type of stuff was fascinating to me.
And typically that protection and dialogue veers into misinformation or energetic disinformation.
It doesn’t matter if the moon is popping to cheese or if there’s an election or if there’s a pure catastrophe—there are instantly going to be actors that unfold disinformation. And the explanation they unfold disinformation is typically purely for their very own ends, like if somebody’s attempting to rip-off you, or they’re attempting to weigh in and manipulate political opinion. When you’ve got a historic occasion, on the time there’s a normal consensus about it as a result of everyone has skilled that world-changing occasion. The shared consensus is more durable to take care of in any circumstance the additional you get out from an occasion—and particularly now as a result of the Web makes it really easy to unfold disinformation. The previous saying that “the lie has traveled a mile earlier than the reality has even placed on its footwear” is totally true. When the reality comes out, that rumor has already taken root and any corrective is mainly a defensive struggle.
The scientists attempting to elucidate an totally baffling phenomenon are key viewpoint characters within the e book. What do you hope readers take away about the way in which science is finished?
I do hope that folks get the sense that the scientists within the e book are literally excited after that preliminary shock and disbelief.
Individuals overlook that science is just not a philosophy or a faith. Science isn’t any of that. Science is a system. It’s a systematized method of discovering and documenting and verifying and getting, via repeated experimentation and testing, as near the reality as you’ll be able to. When one thing like this occurs, after the preliminary second of disbelief for scientists, they’re going to be like, “Sure! That is what we’re right here for!” And I believe that that’s going to be thrilling for them. Now the flipside of that’s {that a} fantastical state of affairs can be going to spin up rumor and misunderstanding and apocalyptic pondering and other people shifting towards irrationality—as a result of in some ways, that is one thing that’s irrational.
That’s one thing that scientists need to cope with on a regular basis, each in the true world and in different fiction. What the scientists are doing within the e book is what the scientists do in actual life. They roll up their sleeves and say, let’s discover out what we’re working with and what’s actually occurring.
How has the response been to this bizarre, tacky e book?
It was an actual pleasure as a author that I acquired to take action many alternative views and so many alternative strategies and so many alternative methods of exhibiting how an enormous cheese moon would affect the world. I acquired to do comedy. I acquired to do romance. I acquired to make individuals chortle. I acquired to make individuals cry—there have been a few chapters the place individuals despatched me e-mails which might be like, “I used to be studying this and I used to be actually having fun with this and you then made me cry, and you then made me cry once more. I hate you I hate you I hate you. When’s the following e book?” And that’s precisely what I wish to do. I wish to give individuals what they count on out of a e book made out of moon cheese, however then I additionally wish to give them the moments that they don’t count on.
It was a enjoyable e book to write down, and I hope it was additionally a enjoyable e book to learn.
Have there been every other books that deliver weird science fiction into the on a regular basis that you just’ve loved these days?
There are a whole lot of books now that blend humor and absurdity. For some time there, it was actually troublesome to seek out. So you’ve got Dungeon Crawler Carl [by Matt Dinniman]. You have got Cat Valente’s House Opera books, the place she mainly posits Eurovision however for the galaxy. There was the e book Assistant to the Villain [by Hannah Nicole Maehrer].
There are different books that take an idea that modifications the world and everybody has to cope with it in a daily type of method. For instance, Mary Robinette Kowal’s Woman Astronaut sequence has an asteroid hit simply exterior of Washington, D.C., within the Atlantic Ocean, and as a consequence of that, the area program evolves extremely in another way and consists of girls in it from the very begin. Not simply alternate histories however alternative ways of wanting on the world are in every single place in up to date science fiction and fantasy, and so they’re a whole lot of enjoyable for individuals to discover.
