One fine day, when NASA is in preparing for early tests of the new moon lander for the Diana missions to return to the Moon, the NASA director gets word of an emergency with the lunar samples brought back from the Apollo missions.
Have they been stolen? No. Have they been destroyed? Not exactly.
They've turned to cheese.
The Moon itself, right now at quarter phase, is also looking mighty strange, with a much higher albedo than the gray, rocky world should have. Almost as if...it's also now made of cheese.
It's also quickly determined to be larger, at least in diameter. Large enough that even with the lower density of cheese, it's still the same mass. So, no immediate disruptive effects on Earth, as tides and other effects remain unchanged. Although, the upcoming annular eclipse of the Sun will now be a total eclipse of the Sun.
Over the next month, we follow a variety of small groups, reacting to and coping with the sudden and inexplicable change in their own ways.
NASA has to decide what to do about the test flight of the new Mars lander. Should the unmanned flight go all the way to the Moon and return, as planned, or only to low earth orbit, instead?
The billionaire whose company designed and built the new Moon lander decides to exploit the confusion to fulfill his own lifetime dream. (Jody Bannon is not Musk; we know he's not Musk because he hates Musk and Bezos both.)
A science writer whose first book has, well, flopped, is looking for a chance to recover from that, writes a book about the sudden change in the Moon and its possible scientific impact.
A minister at a small Evangelical church in the Midwest has to guide his flock through what this means for their faith--and reaches into unsuspected depths in himself.
Two rival cheese shops in Madison, Wisconsin, find themselves confronting, together, a mob that tips from shouting their confusion, fear, and anger at the Moon, to turning it on a more accessible form of cheese.
A variety of small stories, some funny, some charming, play out over the next month.
It's a good little book, not up there with Scalzi's best, but an enjoyable read nevertheless.
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