If the moon have been to instantly flip to cheese, the film pitches can be unbearable. Astronauts can be irritated, grad college students can be demoralized and information articles would overflow with horrible puns. The good 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 one in all Scientific American’s greatest fiction picks of 2025, writer John Scalzi plots out the bodily aspect of this situation alongside the societal and interpersonal ramifications of such an sudden (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 folks 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 know 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 now have, since we have been kids, 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 form of a common factor: The moon is within the sky for everybody. Everybody must take care of it, and it could be that disconnect of, “I’m attempting to get by way of my day in the true world with actual issues. And in addition, the moon has turned to cheese. The whole lot that I assumed I knew concerning 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 viewpoint, and everyone seems to be coping with the moon.
I had really been fascinated about [this] for a very long time. I had initially provide you with the thought in 2015, after which once I was nearly to sit down down to write down it, Neal Stephenson got here out with Seveneves—
Additionally an iconic ebook 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, effectively performed, Neal Stephenson. I’m not going to place out my cheese moon ebook within the wake of Seveneves. However that really 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 mission, from fascinated about it to truly 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. In case you are changing basalt with a dairy product, what are the results of that? How a lot does the moon increase? What occurs when it begins compressing?
Surprisingly sufficient, there are articles on-line about this as a result of folks 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 pals 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. For those who get too particular in science fiction, you’ll inevitably uncover the gaps in your personal data base. For instance, and I made it a working joke, the form of cheese is rarely advised. [If I were to say] “Oh yeah, it’s Gruyère,” or one thing like that, someone can be like “I really did the maths of what would occur with a Gruyère moon, and also you have been fully fallacious!”
What was essentially the most sudden consequence of a cheese moon you discovered?
Eventually you’d have an environment, and you’d have oceans.
You’ll be able to’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 should 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’d inevitably have oceans, and people oceans would keep for hundreds of years and even millennia.
The albedo [brightness] of the moon can be considerably greater. There can be no extra deep evening skies each time the moon was within the sky; it could simply be like nightfall. All of that stuff was fascinating to me, and I believe placing it within the ebook provides that form of bizarre verisimilitude to it that as a author you’re taking part in honest together with your viewers. You might be saying sure, that is an absurd idea, however I’m going to truly do the maths 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 100% do it.
Nice. Simply to have that on the report that you’d in reality eat the moon cheese.
Simply to have it on the report, sure. This is essential stuff.
Did you get pleasure from writing so many alternative views for the ebook?
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 persons are speaking about this. I’m a former journalist; I used to work on the Fresno Bee newspaper within the Nineteen Nineties. This is able to completely be an important story for everybody. The primary a number of days can be, “Oh my God, the moon has turned to cheese!” However you then would get the approach to life items, and you’d get the sports activities items…. Simply imagining that form of stuff was fascinating to me.
And generally that protection and dialogue veers into misinformation or lively 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 rationale they unfold disinformation is usually 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 a historic occasion, on the time there’s a normal consensus about it as a result of all people has skilled that world-changing occasion. The shared consensus is more durable to keep up 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 outdated saying that “the lie has traveled a mile earlier than the reality has even placed on its sneakers” is totally true. When the reality comes out, that rumor has already taken root and any corrective is mainly a defensive battle.
The scientists attempting to elucidate an completely baffling phenomenon are key viewpoint characters within the ebook. What do you hope readers take away about the way in which science is finished?
I do hope that individuals get the sense that the scientists within the ebook are literally excited after that preliminary shock and disbelief.
Folks neglect that science just isn’t 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, by way of repeated experimentation and testing, as near the reality as you may. 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 also be going to spin up rumor and misunderstanding and apocalyptic pondering and other people transferring towards irrationality—as a result of in some ways, that is one thing that’s irrational.
That’s one thing that scientists should take care of on a regular basis, each in the true world and in different fiction. What the scientists are doing within the ebook 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 happening.
How has the response been to this bizarre, tacky ebook?
It was an actual pleasure as a author that I acquired to take action many alternative views and so many alternative methods and so many alternative methods of displaying how a giant cheese moon would affect the world. I acquired to do comedy. I acquired to do romance. I acquired to make folks snicker. I acquired to make folks cry—there have been a few chapters the place folks 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 ebook?” And that’s precisely what I wish to do. I wish to give folks what they count on out of a ebook 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 ebook to write down, and I hope it was additionally a enjoyable ebook to learn.
Have there been another books that convey weird science fiction into the on a regular basis that you simply’ve loved recently?
There are plenty of books now that blend humor and absurdity. For some time there, it was actually troublesome to seek out. So you’ve Dungeon Crawler Carl [by Matt Dinniman]. You’ve got Cat Valente’s Area Opera books, the place she mainly posits Eurovision however for the galaxy. There was the ebook Assistant to the Villain [by Hannah Nicole Maehrer].
There are different books that take an idea that modifications the world and everybody has to take care of it in a daily form of method. For instance, Mary Robinette Kowal’s Girl 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 contains ladies in it from the very begin. Not simply alternate histories however other ways of wanting on the world are in every single place in up to date science fiction and fantasy, and so they’re plenty of enjoyable for folks to discover.
