The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

The Kaiju Preservation Society
by John Scalzi

272 pages, Hardcover
Publication: March 15, 2022 by Tor Books
ISBN: 9780765389121 (ISBN10: 0765389126)
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/57693406 

The Kaiju Preservation Society is John Scalzi’s first standalone adventure since the conclusion of his New York Times bestselling Interdependency trilogy.

When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls “an animal rights organization.” Tom’s team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on.

What Tom doesn’t tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. They’re the universe’s largest and most dangerous panda and they’re in trouble.

It’s not just the Kaiju Preservation Society that’s found its way to the alternate world. Others have, too–and their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.

The Kaiju Preservation Society is the most fun I’ve had with a Scalzi novel since Redshirts, and for many of the same reasons. Scalzi loves nothing more than taking a trope, plot, or other sacred sf bovine and turning it on its head, revealing a few dark truths and poking a bit of fun at it in the process. This time he takes on Godzilla and his kin, pointing out the absurdity of the whole thing, and then sciencing the hell out of it just the same. It’s Jurrasic Park meets Pacific Rim on the other side of the looking glass, and it’s great fun.

Jamie Gray left a perfectly good doctoral program working on a thesis about “bioengineering in science fiction Frankenstein through the Murderbot novellas1” to join füdmüd, an Ubereats style startup, but he didn’t count on being screwed by the tech-bro running it. Suddenly out of a job in NYC in the middle of COVID, he turns to the gig economy to survive, now delivering for the same startup he’d just been fired from. Only that won’t last because füdmüd is about to be bought up and…no thanks, we’ve got our own delivery guys. But on his very last delivery, Jamie runs into Tom Banks, a guy whose life he’d inadvertently changed by turning him on to the wonders of science fiction by talking about his dissertation at a party. 

Tom was a business major, and somehow he’s gone on to be head of operations at a facility run by an NGO that protects very large animals, is very secretive, and happens to be in need of someone bright, not weirded-out by sci-fi scenarios, able to lift things, and is willing to disappear from the world for months at a time. Jamie’s desperate and intrigued, and soon finds himself on a plane to a remote Arctic base, which turns out to be the gateway to a parallel world. One full of Kaiju, which turns out to be the actual inspiration for the entire Japanese giant monster mythos because, under just the right conditions, involve nuclear explosions, they have a habit of falling through into our world.

Jamie is teamed with four other newbies, all PhDs in different disciplines, and Scalzi uses them to dig into the science of the thing, which is nonsensical on the face of it.  The author delights in pointing out the absurdity on one hand, and slapping a sciency patch over it with the other2.  While the post-docs are all essential for digging into different aspects of dealing with the Kaiju, it’s Jamie’s lack of focus that makes him so useful. As a serious reader of science fiction, he’s able to provide context for all the siloed scientists…and also, he lifts things.

The setting is a bit like what you’d get if you took McMurdo Station in Antarctica, filled it with millennial post-docs, and dropped it into Jurassic Park. All in all, it’s a fast-paced romp with likable characters (except the ones that you’re supposed to hate) a certain amount of snark and pop culture, and plenty of Godzilla references. At under 300 pages for the hardcover, it ends all too soon, but if the alternative was to pad the book with filler, I’m just as happy with the length. It’s billed as a stand-alone novel though it could easily expand to a series.  But much of the point of the book is to play with the whole Kaiju concept, and it’s unlikely that a sequel would be able to keep up the fun.  A few novellas, though, might be a nice addition.

Interestingly, the eBook version and the paper edition have different covers, the hardcover version showing a silhouette of Godzilla, which pretty much gives away the game. The eBook version, on the other hand, shows a somewhat beat-up ID Tag lying on a jungle forest floor, which I liked much better. I had to wonder if their marketing thought that digital readers were more likely to know what Kaiju were, based on their demographics. Honestly, I don’t think they’d be wrong.

Science fiction readers and fans of Japanese monster movies will both find a lot of resonance in The Kaiju Preservation Society, and everybody else should read it just for fun.

  1. Actually, that was his Master’s thesis, but you get the idea.
  2. In storytelling there’s actually a term of art for this, called Lampshading, and Scalzi is evidently buying get his bulb coverings by the dozen.