An eco-thriller. Nuclear reactors. An alternate earth. Kaiju (giant monster of a type featured in Japanese fantasy and science fiction movies and television programs). It doesn’t even matter if you don’t understand any of this. If you’re up for a witty science fiction adventure, try John Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society.

Jamie Gray expects to get his evaluation, but instead he’s fired from his job at fudmud on the same day COVID started to shut down New York City. He ends up as a “deliverator”, a food delivery person with one benefit, a 15% discount at Duane Reade, a New York pharmacy. But, one day he delivers food to an old friend from college. Tom Stevens works for an animal rights organization, taking care of large animals. Tom says they need a grunt, someone to lift and move things. The team is about to ship out, so Jamie doesn’t have long to decide if he wants the job. Jamie learns he’ll be trained to work with very wild, very large, very dangerous animals. He’ll be away from civilization for months at a time, with no Internet, and little contact with the rest of the world. Lots of vaccines before they leave. Oh, and the salary is $125,000, with a $10,000 signing bonus. And, they’ll pay his rent and student loans while he’s gone. Sign him up.

Tom didn’t tell Jamie everything. It’s only when the team lands in an alternate Greenland that they learn about those “animals”. They’re Kaiju, gigantic beasts who depend on nuclear power for their existence, and on parasites for cooling down their internal temperatures. They can explode with the force of a nuclear bomb. They’re dangerous, but not the most dangerous animals in this alternate world. That would be man, as always. And, one man in particular threatens everything KPS, the Kaiju Preservation Society, is tending.

In his author’s note, John Scalzi says The Kaiju Preservation Society was not the dark, gritty novel he was planning to write in 2020 when the world turned upside-down. But, he couldn’t write a novel that seemed as depressing as the current state of the world. Instead, this novel just fell into place, a story of an ordinary man working with a team of scientists to protect Kaiju, based on large Japanese movie monsters. There’s humor, wit, and science.

Last year, I reviewed a mystery that angered me. I felt it was too early in the COVID and political environment for that story. John Scalzi handles COVID differently, and it’s not too early for his science fiction novel. His New York City is honest as people lose their jobs, and struggle to find new ones. His hero escapes to an alternate environment filled with Kaiju. The Kaiju as shown in Japanese movies are a metaphor for nuclear power and how it’s affected Japan and the world. So many authors are going to have to address the subject of COVID. Scalzi introduces it, and allows Jamie Gray to avoid it.

He does deal with man’s greed and search for power. He deals with nuclear power and the Kaiju. I’m not into science, so I can’t even say if he gets the science right. I can say John Scalzi gets the adventure, the escape, and the atmosphere right in his latest novel, The Kaiju Preservation Society.

John Scalzi’s blog is Whatever, http://whatever.scalzi.com

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi. Tor, 2022. ISBN 9780765389121 (hardcover), 264p.

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