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  • Review: When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi

    From BCFD 36@21:1/5 to All on Sun Apr 27 15:54:07 2025
    I listened to this one on the several airplane trips we have recently
    taken and on my daily walks.

    Premise: The moon turns into cheese for no particular reason.

    I enjoyed it even though it was not well printed or well bound. Being
    audio only, that would be difficult. Scalzi has his usual twisted
    strangeness going on and it is narrated by Wil Wheaton.

    I will have to admit, I would listen to W.W. read the instruction manual
    to a blender. He is a delight.

    The story itself is good. Think about what all might happen if the moon spontaneously turned into cheese in the matter of no time at all. What
    would it mean here on earth. How would it affect animals, people,
    society, etc. Scalzi covers a lot of ground in a rather cheesy way.


    --
    ----------------

    Dave Scruggs
    Senior Software Engineer - Lockheed Martin, et. al (mostly Retired)
    Captain - Boulder Creek Fire (Retired)
    Board of Directors - Boulder Creek Fire Protection District (What was I thinking?)

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  • From Scott Dorsey@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Sun Apr 27 21:02:08 2025
    Cryptoengineer <[email protected]> wrote:

    Cheese has about 1/3 the density of moon rock, so a first effect would
    a significant decline in tides. The Suns gravity would dominate tides,
    rather than the Moon's.

    I dunno, I have seen some parmesans that were pretty dense.
    --scott

    --
    "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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  • From BCFD 36@21:1/5 to Cryptoengineer on Mon Apr 28 08:41:52 2025
    On 4/27/25 16:49, Cryptoengineer wrote:
    On 4/27/2025 6:54 PM, BCFD 36 wrote:
    I listened to this one on the several airplane trips we have recently
    taken and on my daily walks.

    Premise: The moon turns into cheese for no particular reason.

    I enjoyed it even though it was not well printed or well bound. Being
    audio only, that would be difficult. Scalzi has his usual twisted
    strangeness going on and it is narrated by Wil Wheaton.

    I will have to admit, I would listen to W.W. read the instruction
    manual to a blender. He is a delight.

    The story itself is good. Think about what all might happen if the
    moon spontaneously turned into cheese in the matter of no time at all.
    What would it mean here on earth. How would it affect animals, people,
    society, etc. Scalzi covers a lot of ground in a rather cheesy way.

    I suppose I should read the story, but....

    Cheese has about 1/3 the density of moon rock, so a first effect would
    a significant decline in tides. The Suns gravity would dominate tides,
    rather than the Moon's.

    This issue is addressed. In detail.


    The sun can raise the moon's surface to 250F. This is more than enough
    to melt cheese, so I'd expect surface features to gradually sag until
    flat, lunar day by lunar day.

    The surface would, in the day, become a shallow fondue, which would be unfortunate for any humans or human infrastructure.

    However, its not even close to the heat of a pizza oven (around
    500F).

    pt


    Many issues are addressed, and many issues are not addressed. Scalzi acknowledges this in his Afterword at the end.

    Note: this is NOT hard SF! After all, cheese?

    Dave Scruggs
    Senior Software Engineer - Lockheed Martin, et. al (mostly Retired)
    Captain - Boulder Creek Fire (Retired)
    Board of Directors - Boulder Creek Fire Protection District (What was I thinking?)

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  • From -dsr-@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Wed Apr 30 16:52:07 2025
    On 2025-04-28, BCFD 36 <[email protected]> wrote:

    Many issues are addressed, and many issues are not addressed. Scalzi acknowledges this in his Afterword at the end.

    Note: this is NOT hard SF! After all, cheese?


    Oh, I disagree!

    Much "hard SF" starts with a lone engineer-inventor discovering a new physical effect which, in the course of a few chapters, becomes a source of free energy, reactionless propulsion, FTL teleportation and dessert.

    Scalzi skips the engineer-inventor, discards the alien spaceship, and goes directly to the one impossible thing: the Moon becomes cheese. Everything thereafter follows logically and inexorably, and as James likes to say, in sufficient detail that you can find the math errors.

    Mind you, I don't actually like this book. I will probably never re-read it, unlike The Kaiju Preservation Society or Starter Villain.

    But technically, I am of the opinion that is perfectly fine hard SF.

    -dsr-

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