When the Moon Hits Your Eye

by John Scalzi

I don’t pretend I can explain the moon turning into cheese. I can’t. No one right now can. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t explainable—it just means that, on this particular matter, we are no different than those humans ten thousand years ago looking at an eclipse. You know those humans really are no different than we are, right? They had the same brains and the same ability to reason and understand. Bring one of those humans ten thousand years forward in time and once they stopped freaking out, you could explain the science of eclipses to them. I don’t know what the science is here. I may not live long enough to receive and understand the science. But I believe strongly that the science is there. The history of human civilization is the history of what was considered the magical and mystical slowly but surely being explained. The moon turning into cheese seems magical and mystical to me. But maybe if a human from ten thousand years in the future came back in time, they could explain it to me, and I could understand it. [applause] Question: Okay, but it could be God testing us, right? Answer: I mean, why would God test us with cheese? [laughs] That’s a question for a theologian, not for me. Please, seriously, ask your local clergy about that one.