THE KAIJU PRESERVATION SOCIETY

In this unusual pandemic novel, a young person—whose gender is never specified—is given a unique, literally out-of-this-world opportunity to escape the Covid-19 lockdown.

In early 2020, Jamie Gray is working as a marketing executive at food delivery startup füdmüd when Rob Sanders, the company’s asshole chief executive, abruptly fires Jamie for no apparent reason. Reduced to working as a delivery person for füdmüd in the following months (during the height of the pandemic, no less), Jamie leaps at a job opportunity offered by an acquaintance. That’s how Jamie winds up on a parallel Earth working for the titular Kaiju Preservation Society: lifting heavy objects, serving snacks in conference rooms, shooting monsters in the face, and just generally providing assistance to the scientists studying skyscraper-size, Godzilla-like creatures with internal nuclear reactors. In the process, Jamie discovers just how much of an asshole that former boss really is, to the potential detriment of two worlds. In his author’s note, Scalzi calls this book “a pop song…light and catchy,” in contrast to the “brooding symphony” of the completely different novel he had intended to write. But despite the absurdity of the premise, the book isn’t entirely escapist fluff. Sure, it bubbles with the banter and snarky humor readers expect from this author. But it’s also a blunt and savage swipe at tech-bro/billionaire culture, the Trump administration, and the chaos and tragedy that result when powerful and rich people set themselves against science and scientists in order to profit from disaster. The evil plot would seem creaky and melodramatic if it weren’t such an accurate satiric mirror of the current sociopolitical milieu. In short, it’s a fictional delivery system for the outrage that Scalzi typically expresses in his tweets and on his blog about the mess we currently find ourselves in.

Fun but with a purpose.