Sci-fi horror collides with small-town politics in John Scalzi’s Monsters of Ohio

John Scalzi has developed a reputation in science fiction for comitting to the bit. Whether with meta-explorations of killable side characters in Redshirts or a world in which the moon literally turns into cheese in When the Moon Hits Your Eye, you can count on Scalzi seeing a concept through to its wildest implications. In his latest romp, corporate greed, lovable cows and hideous monsters converge in Richland, Ohio. It’s a small, exploited town on its last legs—but the first tentacles will be arriving shortly.

Fresh off a red-eye flight after winning his fourth Hugo Award, Scalzi stopped by to chat with us about his newest novel, Monsters of Ohio.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

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If you had to pitch Monsters of Ohio to someone who has never read a John Scalzi novel, what would you say?

I describe it as “cozy Cronenberg.” The slightly longer version of that is “Stephen King and Nora Ephron are made to violently kiss.”

When you last sat down with us, you described your niche in contemporary science fiction as taking “a really absurd idea and then [trying] to apply real life to it.” Monsters of Ohio seems to be no exception. How did we get here?

Well, thanks to Stephen King and Stranger Things and all of that sort of stuff, we have all seen the idea of monsters in a small town, right? I thought it would be fun to take a lot of the dressing of that and put a new spin on it, where the idea was not necessarily horror but to see what some of the consequences would be if, all of a sudden, there were monsters in your town and yet you were still trying to get through the rest of your day.

What did your research process look like? How much digging did you do for the more scientific aspects of the book?

A lot of my “research” is not directed research. It is literally “Oh! I remember this one thing I read one time on the internet!” And either that comes in handy while I’m writing, or it will pop up in my head and will keep going around and around and around until I write something about it. My brain is a rat’s nest of judicial decisions, fun facts about small mammals, and lots and lots of astronomy stuff.

I think, in many ways, I was uniquely designed to be a novelist, because when people are like, “When will you ever use that information?” I’ll be like, “Well, as it turns out, I will use it while I’m writing up a book called Monsters of Ohio.” So there you have it.

How important is scientific plausibility to you when writing science fiction?

It’s very important to me that people remember that science fiction has two parts to the phrase. There is the science, but there is also the fiction. I want to get the science at least broadly correct and reasonable so that, when I step into the fiction part, you can see it as a natural extension. Now you may or may not always agree with how I’ve decided to step off into the fiction part, but you can see, at least, [how] I got there.

I am always very hesitant to call myself a hard science-fiction writer because so much of that basically requires an advanced degree—and I have a B. A. in philosophy, so all I know is how to find things. That said, I’ve always also had a real interest in science and a real interest in talking about how science interacts with our lives. And so, when you are writing a story where, you know, [highly unlikely monster shenanigans redacted by editor], you want to be able to do it in a way that is, at least, scientifically plausible. I mean, [a written event] always happens because plot, but mine is rooted in specific things that happened in the natural world, as opposed to “and then magic” or “and then gods and demons.” There’s nothing wrong with gods and demons, but, in my case, I’m a science-fiction writer, so that’s where my brain goes first.

Monsters of Ohio is your 20th novel, and it feels paradoxically cynical and hopeful at the same time.

A lot of that cynicism plus hopefulness comes out of the experience of modern life and day-to-day life.

We live in a world where there is private equity strip-mining small towns. We live in a world where the interests of the moneyed class really are at odds with the interests of the people going day-to-day. [Take] where I live right now. In this moment, we are having a huge discussion about [how] they’re going to put power lines somewhere through Darke County, [Ohio], which is also the county that’s in the book. They swear to us that [the lines] are not to power the huge data centers that are being put up in our state right now, but come on. And part of the problem is that one of the routes is literally my street.

The hopeful part is the part where the people who are dealing with the consequences of that look toward their community, look toward their friends, look toward the people around them for support, for help, for unity—all of those sorts of things. The way that I think the little guy is going to get through this is to look at his neighbors and realize that all the messaging and disinformation that is designed to keep us angry and suspicious at our neighbors is, in fact, designed to keep us angry and suspicious of our neighbors and, in fact, [that] we need our neighbors’ help and that we need to help our neighbors and support them as much as we can during this time.

This is already helping, because I thought the takeaway of the book was that the proverbial little people were going to get through this by exploding.

I mean, why not both?

Getting to the really important questions now: You have often asked musicians to write theme songs for your books. Have you done that here?

I have inquiries out, which is, I think, the only thing that I can say at this time. But it would make sense to do it because the protagonist was very briefly in a very briefly famous emo band. So I would like to have that set up. Unfortunately I may have missed the window for the hardcover release, but there’s always the trade paperback release in about a year.

Chappell Roan would do a great rendition of the protagonist’s signature song, “Red Wine Massacre,” in case you’re taking suggestions.

I think she might be a little bit out of my price range. When you commission something like that, you do have to pay your artists, and I think Chappell Roan might be just a little pricey for a humble science-fiction author.

What would it take to get you to write a book about someone from Michigan?

I would be happy to have a character from Michigan. Will my neighbors burn my house down if I do it? Possibly. But that is the risk one takes for true literature.