A Moon of Green Cheese

One fine day the Moon turned into cheese. It happened overnight, perhaps instantaneously. Suddenly its diameter is 300 miles larger, and its albedo higher. It is larger in the sky and bright enough to see during the day.

When the Moon Hits Your Eye, a humorous science fiction novel by John Scalzi, follows the first lunar month after the Moon becomes effectively green (fresh) cheese. All of it turns to cheese, including lunar samples brought back from the Apollo missions and lunar-origin meteorites.

NASA and space researchers around the world confirm that it has changed. Its new size is consistent with the density of cheese and its reflectivity is similar to that of cheese. Lunar features have changed. Everything man-made on the Moon has disappeared.

Moreover, the Moon is evolving. A massive block of cheese left out in the sun all day, it is collapsing on itself because of gravitational forces. Massive geysers are forming. Worse, it ejects a mountain-sized chunk of lunar cheese. It will eventually hit the earth. The event will make the dinosaur extinction look puny.

Scientists cannot explain what happened. It stands settled science on its head. Bureaucrats react with bureaucratic caution. (NASA will not officially state the moon is cheese. They call it a cheese-like substance.) Many question the existence of God. Epicures seek to taste lunar cheese.

Scalzi follows the reactions to the event on Earth. He provides vignettes of different people throughout the United States as they absorb the new situation. A tech billionaire uses the opportunity to attempt a landing on the Moon. A group of retirees at a coffee shop in Oklahoma talks about it, in a heartland church, members try to fit the event into their religious worldview; high school science nerds filter it through bathroom humor.

He also shows the reaction when people realize the world is doomed. Some want to struggle on: Bankers plan to keep the economy going to the very end. A would-be fantasy writer realizes that she should not have put off finishing her book until she could make it perfect. Others go full hedonist.

Scalzi has a lot of fun with the concept, exploring various reactions to an impossible event. When the Moon Hits Your Eye is lighthearted and a thoroughly wacky book. Readers cannot take it seriously, but it was never intended to be. It is a fun read.

“When the Moon Hits Your Eye,” by John Scalzi, Tor Books, March2025,‎ 336 pages, $29.99 (Hardcover), $14.99 (E-book)

This review was written by Mark Lardas, who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.