The Kaiju Preservation Society: Shortlisted for the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Novel

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Jamie learns that he is part of KPS Tanaka Base Gold Team. He meets other members of the team and concludes: “It’s like the foreign legion for nerds.” Rob tutted at this. “You know that’s not true. Füdmüd has a reciprocal agreement with Duane Reade that gets our deliverators up to ten percent off selected health products.” I read snippets about “humor” and “fun” and “funny” and I was mostly rolling my eyes and swearing if I read “I lift things” one more damn time I’d scream. Wait!” I can hear you say. “Some people are aromantic! And asexual! And gender-neutral!” OK, sure, fine, but somebody is going to say something and even in your own head you are going to think about things sometimes. Life isn't sterile. Not only does Jamie not have any sexual, romantic, or gender-based thoughts, but no one uses gendered pronouns around him, for him, asks him about his pronouns, looks at him with lust, makes any kind of question/comment about him, his romantic sexual life, his romantic sexual tastes, his appearance NOTHING. It's honestly ridiculous and so far-fetched. John Scalzi’s THE KAIJU PRESERVATION SOCIETY, where, on a parallel earth, kaiju — the massive Godzilla-esque monsters of Japanese film lore — roam free; after humans discover entry into this universe (via tearing open the space-time continuum with nuclear explosions), scientists work to study and protect the gargantuan beasts… while others look to exploit them, optioned to Fox Entertainment, by Joel Gotler at IPG (world).

Scalzi is far better than other SF authors in consistently making me laugh. He has an ear for the absurd in everyday conversation. Some of his tales are just a riff on a current cultural phrase or obsession (see Red Shirts as an example https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ). In others, like this one he probes a bit deeper into mankind and our dilemmas. I snorted at this. “You have a much more optimistic view of the academic landscape than I do. I was looking down the barrel of adjunct professorships for the rest of my life.”Because ‘FoodMood’ was already taken by a food delivery app in Bangladesh, and they wouldn’t sell the name,” I said. “So if you’re ever in Mymensingh area, be sure to use the app with the name that actually makes sense.” It was only as Jamie encountered Dr. Lee, the physician seeing to his vaccinations, that we are assured that this is a book written by John Scalzi.) I flung the tablet over to Rob, who grabbed it. “You’re a real asshole,” I said, “Just so you know.” Setting aside that I could not get the chorus of The Kinks Village Green Society out of my head while I was reading it, this one is, maybe more than any other book I've read recently, exactly what it says on the label. It's a John Scalzi novel about kaiju and about a society that preserves them. There's a threat to the kaiju, because otherwise why would you need a preservation society, and stuff happens, because it's a Scalzi novel. Thule Air Base turns out to hide the gateway to a parallel Earth, in which evolution took a different turn after the early Mesozoic era, resulting in a planet dominated by impossibly immense creatures whose growth is fueled by internal bio- nuclear reactors. Mankind first became aware of this world in the wake of World War II, when the use of atomic bombs opened temporary portals between the worlds, to which and through which the creatures were attracted by the radiation fallout, on which they feed. After Japanese filmmakers were inspired by rumors of the initial breakthrough to make " Kaiju" movies such as Godzilla and its successors, the creatures were dubbed Kaiju. Aside from such rumors, their real-life existence has been kept secret by governments around the world, who formed KPS (the Kaiju Preservation Society) to study the Kaiju Earth, prevent additional breakthroughs, and protect the denizens of each world from those of the other.

It also needs to be said how wonderfully diverse the characters are and how that is treated as a given. For example, Niamh is non-binary and their pronouns are respected by all. They are who they are, no prejudice, no judgement. The villains in this tale are not people with any form of bigotry, Scalzi doesn’t use that as a point of conflict which I very much appreciated. Instead the villains are corporate, they are in the field of business, of getting disgustingly rich and not giving one damn about the cost. Tom Stevens who dated Iris Banks who was best friends with my roommate Diego when I lived in that apartment on South Kimbark just above 53 rd Street and used to come to our parties sometimes,” I said. Yeah. We don’t know why it happens, we just know it does. When it does, just look at something not blue for a while.” This is the first book I read, which was not only written during the Pandemic, but was also relevant, in a round about or direct way, to it:) The author was a good deliverator to some laughs, if you take the book for what it was meant to be and suspend disbelief as far as the science is concerned. Or maybe, that is just me unable to process concepts that do not support our human-centric thinking of the Universe and everything we do not understand, we tend to render impossible. Maybe:)

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I’m not going to delve too deeply into the plot, suffice to say that an unemployed sci-fi ‘expert’ finds himself transported to a parallel Earth in which humongous flying creatures are considered a species heading for extinction and therefore worthy of treatment that in this Earth are afforded to Giant Pandas. There’s a lot of science here, a good deal of humour and a posse of characters with PhDs. No firebombing,” Brent said, but his heart wasn’t in it. Laertes’ parents were the sort of outwardly very nice conservative people who wouldn’t miss an opportunity to call Laertes by his deadname, and that shit will wear you down over time. I think it was actually the idealistic nature of the KPS that I needed right now, when the world around me seems to be going to the dogs. I have days when I just have to turn off the news and turn up the music. I have the privilege of being able to retreat from reality for a few days when the world seems too heavy. Fantasy literature has been my haven during the whole pandemic, not to mention my whole life. Thank you, Mr. Scalzi for an inspiring, funny fantasy novel that cheers me up when I'm feeling blue.