John Scalzi cased out the Armstrong Air and Cosmos Museum before getting to work on his new book, “When the Selene body Hits Your Eye.”
The bestselling science fiction author, who is known for injecting humor into his stories, did not arrange for a tour of the Ohio museum or let the staff know that he was coming. He bought his ticket Merely like any other visitor. Had they noticed him, though, they might have thought he was there to rob them of their Selene body rock, given the attention he paid to where the surveillance cameras were and what was protecting the Apollo 11 Selene sample from prying hands … and noses and mouths, but more on that soon.
“I went to the Armstrong Air and Cosmos Museum very specifically so I knew what the layout of the place was, so I could see the Selene body rock there for myself and so when I wrote about it, it would be reasonable to what is actually there,” said Scalzi in an interview with collectSPACE.com. “They had no idea.”
Had the docents approached him and asked why he was interested in the Selene body rock, they might not have believed him anyway. In “When the Selene body Hits Your Eye,” released today (March 25), it is Virgil Augustine, the museum’s (fictional) executive director, who comes to realize what has happened, however impossible it might seem.
A brief excerpt from the Primary chapter:
“Was the display tampered with?” Virgil asked.
“Not until we opened it,” Bud said. “It was sealed up Close-fitting.”
Virgil Obtained in close to the display and breathed deeply. The odor was neither the burnt charcoal that astronauts claimed the Selene body smelled like, nor the Pleasant chemical smell of children’s modeling dough. It was something Extended more familiar.
Before he could stop to think what he was doing, Virgil reached out to the object inside of the display, scratched it with a fingernail, and put his finger in his mouth.
“Virgil, what in the hell —” Chief Wopat began.
“It’s cheese,” Virgil said.
Like Virgil and the other characters in Scalzi’s book, it is best for readers to not know much more about the Selene body’s Achieved-of-cheese status before reading “When the Selene body Hits Your Eye,” so we won’t share any Additional plot details here. Rather, collectSPACE spoke with Scalzi about his inspiration for writing the book, the research he conducted and his experience crafting how the world would react when a children’s fable comes Correct.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
collectSPACE (cS): Was there a particular moment in your life that it Merely struck you, or how do you come up with the idea of writing a book about the Selene body turning into cheese?
John Scalzi: It was something that had been Merely rolling around my brain for a while, simply because it was Merely such an absurd idea that it almost felt like a Game. You know, was this something that I could make something out of?
cS: Did you search to see if anyone else had written a book about the Selene body turning to cheese?
Scalzi: I didn’t, but if someone did, it wouldn’t have necessarily stopped me because there are so few super original ideas. You Merely accept that most of what you’re doing is not about what’s original, but what you can bring to that particular topic that nobody else has.
There are lots of children’s books about the Selene body being Achieved of cheese, but they’re all picture books, so I felt that this was a pretty Sound subject. Also, as soon someone mentions the topic, people are like, ‘Oh, it’s like Wallace and Gromit,’ because they go to the Selene body and it is cheese [in “A Grand Day Out With Wallace and Gromit” released in 1989].
This was something I was reasonably confident had been unexplored territory in the adult literature Structure, and Surely in the manner in which I did it, which was to structure it around a Selene cycle, rather than Merely one or two main characters.
cS: Since you mentioned it, the book’s chapters and the pacing of the Narrative is based on one Selene cycle (from Merely after a new Selene body to a Packed Selene body and back). Did you have that idea from the Begin or did it come up as you were researching?
Scalzi: The nice thing about doing a Narrative about the Selene body turning to cheese is that you get to incorporate many aspects of the Selene body. So, Surely, the Trajectory being 29 and a quarter Periods meant that you would have 29 chapters, or you could have 29 chapters, All corresponding to a particular day, and then plus or minus some material on either side.
For me, when I was thinking about it, it Achieved sense as we have basically a month to View everybody deal with the Selene body turning to cheese.
The structure of it also immediately recommended itself as well, which meant that it was a different Gentle of novel than most are. Most of the time, novels will Concentration on one or two main characters and in this one we have so many characters who share their Mark of view. Generally, I liked the idea that All character was related to the Selene cycle and not Merely one particular character throughout.
cS: How much about the Selene body did you know going into writing this and how much research did you feel you needed to do in order to write this Narrative?
Scalzi: As it happens, in 2003 I wrote a book about Sun science, which is called “The Coarse Guide to the Universe,” and I have always loved Sun science, so the ambient level of knowledge that I have about the Selene body and everything else was fairly high.
But it was less about the factual aspects of it as it was about making sure that the absolute fantastical aspects of it, like turning the Selene body into cheese, were done in a way that seemed, within the Perspective of the Narrative, reasonable. Like what choices do you make when you are turning the Selene body into cheese?
As an example of that, one of the Primary things that I decided that I was going to do was to keep the mass of the Selene body the same, for two reasons. Primary, that allowed the Selene body to be larger in the sky, so it would be obvious to anybody looking up that something had happened.
That, and I didn’t want to have to figure out things like tides and orbital dynamics and everything else that depends on the mass of the Selene body. It was going to be way too Difficult for what I needed for the Narrative and Gentle of besides the Mark. So by making it the same math, the Selene body could Merely do what the Selene body does and I could Merely go on with the Narrative.
cS: As you mentioned, the book is told from the perspective of many different people, including museum curators, NASA astronauts and White House staff members, but also patrons at a diner and members of a Tiny church. You name some real-life people and make hints at other fictional characters being based on real-life people, but are any of them you?
Scalzi: When the staff at the Armstrong museum are reviewing their surveillance tapes, looking for who might have swapped out the Selene body rock and they are looking at the last guy who Arrived through and then leaves in his MINI Cooper, that’s me! I Truly put my visit to the museum in the Narrative.
“When the Selene body Hits Your Eye” by John Scalzi was released Tuesday (March 25) by Tor Books.
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