
You can always depend on one thing from John Scalzi. No matter how serious the situation or how great a threat to their lives, his characters will exchange wisecracks. Sometimes it’s unclear whether he’s acting out a compulsion to become a standup comic. You simply can’t take the man’s writing at face value, because he doesn’t seem to take himself or his work at all seriously. But in his latest venture into the endless possibilities of science fiction, The Kaiju Preservation Society, Scalzi takes readers all the way into La-La Land with a story based on an utterly preposterous idea.
Godzilla was real
Don’t believe me? Try this out for size. The 1954 Japanese film, Godzilla, and its many sequels and imitators were based on real monsters hundreds of feet tall who broke through into our reality when humanity began experimenting with nuclear weapons. These kaiju populate a parallel Earth that can reach into ours only when a nuclear explosion weakens the “wall” separating our Earth from theirs. So, yes, Godzilla was real. Preposterous enough for you?
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi (2022) 201 pages ★★★☆☆

A 60-year-long international conspiracy
Well, it gets even sillier. Since the days when kaiju first surfaced on (our) Earth, the leading nations of the world have secretly bonded together to establish a network of scientific research stations on Kaiju Earth. Somehow, they have managed to keep it all a secret for more than half a century. And hapless young Jamie Gray becomes a party to the secret when he is fired from his job as an executive at a GrubHub knockoff. A chance encounter with a staff member of one of those research stations leads to an invitation for him to join the Kaiju Preservation Society. And, yes, after rigorous training, Jamie soon finds himself on Kaiju Earth.
A novel populated by science fiction fans
Still with me? Okay, Jamie is now charged with “picking up things” at Tanaka Station deep into the jungle of what corresponds to Labrador. He is, in effect, the gopher for a bunch of scientists with PhDs in biology, physics, geology, and other fields. Jamie himself had been a doctoral candidate in English, writing a dissertation on . . . get this: dystopian fiction. It turns out that he, and pretty much everyone else at Tanaka Station, is a science fiction fan. And, of course, Scalzi peppers his tale with allusions to science fiction films, television shows, and novels.
Now, if you think Scalzi has exhausted the limits of your credulity, forget it. You’ll also discover that the executive who fired Jamie from his job will turn out to be the villain of the piece, and an utterly nasty one at that. And, oh, those 500-foot-tall kaiju? They’re powered by internal nuclear reactors which they grow organically. But didn’t I say this was all preposterous?
About the author
John Scalzi (1969-) has written nearly two dozen science fiction novels since 2005. He is best known for the Old Man’s War series, which I did not enjoy (perhaps because I’m an old man myself). Scalzi was president for three terms (2010-13) of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Although born in California, he was living in Ohio when I heard him speak at the Bay Area Book Festival a few years ago.
For more reading
Previously I’ve reviewed several other novels by the author. I loved the first of them listed here but found most of the rest disappointing.
- Redshirts: A Novel With Three Codas (Diabolically clever, and very, very funny)
- Old Man’s War – Old Man’s War #1 (A sci-fi novel that harkens back to the bad old days of the pulp magazines)
- Lock In: A Novel of the Near Future (John Scalzi’s near future sci-fi novel set after a strange pandemic)
- The Collapsing Empire – Interdependency #1 (A promising start to a new John Scalzi series)
- Reviewing John Scalzi’s Interdependency trilogy
For similar and related novels, check out:
- The ultimate guide to the all-time best science fiction novels
- 10 top science fiction novels (plus lots of runners-up)
- The five best First Contact novels
- 10 best alternate history novels reviewed here
- Seven new science fiction authors worth reading
- The top 10 dystopian novels reviewed here
And you can always find my most popular reviews, and the most recent ones, plus a guide to this whole site, on the Home Page.
I have it on reserve at the local library, if only that I have enjoyed every other novel he is written. Kurt Vonnegut’s novels had a lot of preposterous settings but they were only for the purpose of providing a platform for larger commentary on society (much of which was really depressing). I suspect that most people involved in any kind of technology field today are Sci Fi fans so perhaps the novel is just a tongue firmly in cheek commentary on Sci Fi geeks. I will find out in a few days.
The premise was absurd, and the execution lame. If Scalzi was satirizing anything, I think it must have been himself.