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Queer Fantasy :: Sci-Fi Romance
When the Moon Hits Your Eye
John Scalzi
Sci-fi (2025, Recent Release!)
From Storygraph:
One day soon, suddenly and without explanation, the moon as we know it is replaced with an orb of cheese with the exact same mass. Through the length of an entire lunar cycle, from new moon to a spectacular and possibly final solar eclipse, we follow multiple characters — schoolkids and scientists, billionaires and workers, preachers and politicians — as they confront the strange new world they live in, and the absurd, impossible moon that now hangs above all their lives.
I preordered this book. It came in a few days after release. Then I had to finish the book I was reading at the time. THEN I finally got down to it and half-devoured it.
What we have here is multi-pov, partially epistolary book where instead of following one person through a disaster, we’re following different people in different positions. Some people are scientists. Some are cheesemongers. Some are writers and actors and rockstars. It’s a macro-exploration of human nature through the lens of an absurdist natural disaster. An investigation on how different people respond to a major shift in the nature of reality.
And that change in reality, that natural disaster, is the moon turning to cheese.
So we have this ridiculous thing that is posing an actual, factual problem. And the levity of the problem on the surface makes the weight of the actual consequence that much heavier. That something so stupid could be this big of a deal.
But then underscoring all of that is the realistic way that people respond to something so very very stupid.
And as the story ends and we see the way this event ripples through time, we’re left with the lingering realization that even the most outlandish history must be studied before we’re doomed to repeat it. That things even that which seems impossible, perhaps especially that which seems impossible, always has the potential to carry forward into the future.
Survival (Book 1: Species Imperative)
Julie Czerneda
Sci-fi (2004)
From Storygraph:
Facility, Dr. Mackenzie Connor, Mac to her friends and colleagues, was a trained biologist, whose work had definitely become her life….She and fellow scientist Dr. Emily Mamani were just settling in to monitor this year’s salmon runs when their research was interrupted by the unprecedented arrival of Brymn, the first member of the alien race known as the Dhryn to ever set foot on Earth.
Brymn was an archaeologist, and much of his research had focused on a region of space known as the Chasm, a part of the universe that was literally dead, all of its worlds empty of any life-forms, though traces existed of the civilizations that must once have flourished in the region. Brymn had sought out Mac because she was a biologist — a discipline strictly forbidden among his own people — and he felt that through her expertise she might be able to help him discover what had created the Chasm.
However, the decision was soon taken out of her hands when a mysterious and devastating attack on the Base resulted in the abduction of Emily, and forced Mac to flee for her life with Brymn and the Earth special agents who were escorting him. Suddenly, it appeared that Earth itself might be under attack by the legendary race the Dhryn called the Ro, the beings they thought might be the destructive force behind the Chasm. Cut off from everything and everyone she knew, Mac found herself in grave danger and charged with the responsibility of learning everything she could that might possibly aid Earth in protecting the human race from extinction…
This is a beefier book than I normally read, but Czerneda is one of the few authors I “trust,” so to keep me interested for the entire length. You also have to be accustomed to her pacing.
So we have a book that starts a little slow, a little languid. She really wants you to sort of soak in the world and social circle our main character, Mac, is coming from. Czerneda really wants you to get in and there and understand the life of salmon researcher on this future version of Earth. It’s a very slow build, layering elements of the speculative setting one by one until it unveils in a very natural way.
So when she brings in Brymm, the alien the first time, you get this little shock of “oh!” but them Mac brings you through it all. Mac’s never really met an alien, but she knows they exist. And that’s how you, as a reader end up feeling.
As the initial mystery unfolds there’s a sort of helplessness to it. Something completely new has entered Mac’s environment, and she’s overwhelmed with how to manage it.
And touching every part is Czerneda’s affection for speculative biology and the anthropological implications of it. The Dhryn, in particular, are a fascinating species that really stretches the imagination on what might reasonably exist in the “real world.”
Comic Roundup
Venom Chronological Reread
I’m currently working through Bendis’s first run of Guardians of the Galaxy in big omnibus form. It took awhile to actually get up to Flash as Venom showing up, but I’ve generally enjoyed the run. I’ve found my primary complaint is the panel flow from page to page. I’m not sure if it’s a consequence of the gutter in my omnibus, but I find the panel layout to be occasionally confusing.
What If…Venom? by Jeremy Holt Et Al
The What If…? titles can get so wacky, it can be really hard to keep track of them. So when I was at the shop and I found a stack of variant covers of this issue 1 of this featuring She-Hulk as Venom, I had no idea what I was looking at. I thought it was maybe a new series I had missed, somehow, but either way I went ahead and grabbed it.
When I got home, I did some more digging and found the rest of the series on Marvel Unlimited. Not sure why these were in the new bin when the series is a year old, but that’s my gain!
Because, you know what? This was a goofy-ass mini-series that I loved every second of. I genuinly love any time anyone does a hint at “the symbiote without Eddie” because you can take it in so many directions. There’s this common back and forth in the greater symbiote canon of “who’s the actual monster between the two?” Who makes who worse? Most of the modern comics settle into a “magnifying mirror” sort of thing, but what if you break the characters apart? Who does Venom become without Eddie’s influence?
So this particular series touches on that by attaching the symbiote without Eddie’s influence to people who are already heroes and, in one case, a villain. It does cast the symbiote, themselves, in a slightly darker light, but not in a way that isn’t reasonably canonical with where the symbiote’s frame of mind would have been at the time.
As a Venom fan it was a lot of fun.
Fantastic Four by Ryan North et al
This is the standout for me this month. It’s still coming out, so I’m trying to keep up with it. Holy shit. I haven’t really read any Fantastic Four since I was a kid in the 90s. I think this might have been the worse run to jump back in on because I’m not sure any other run is going to quite hold up the same.
I had been meaning to read this for awhile because I’ve been a North fan since Dinosaur Comics, but it kept getting pushed to the bottom of the list. With the movie coming out this summer, Fantastic Four in general was moving up the list of comics I wanted to start catching up with. Reading One World Under Doom, however, North hinted that issue three would connect with his main run. That pushed it right to the top so I could experience this reveal in real-time.
I had to make myself slow down ten issues in, so I could savor it.
What I find most compelling is that North doesn’t just have a strong science and technology background, he understands basic scientific theories to a degree that he can accurately build narratives around it. He writes a version of Reed and Sue that feel like scientists. And by giving these sort of dedicated issues to individual members of the team, he really takes the time to explore all of their complex inner lives.
And it is just so good.
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