The moon has turned to cheese in John Scalzi's new sci-fi novel My only complaint about the science fiction due to be published in March is: how in the world are we meant to find the time to read all these great novels? There are so many must-reads out this month, whether it's the latest from Nicholas Binge, Silvia Park's tale of a lost robot sibling or Laila Lalami's vision of a future where our dreams are policed for what we might be going to do (sounds quite Minority Report – a very good thing in my view). All I can say is, I think it's time to step away from the computer and get reading, if we want to keep up… Sadly for humanity, in this latest slice of comic sci-fi from the excellent John Scalzi, the moon has turned to cheese and they have to work out what to do about it. This sounds like a lot of fun, but I'm primarily planning to read it to find out what type of cheese the moon has become. Our sci-fi columnist Emily H. Wilson heartily approves of Binge's latest, writing that this time travel tale is well-deserving of its upcoming big-screen treatment.

There's not someone at Google who has been assigned to John Scalzi, going, "Oh, I see John Scalzi is at an airport today!" It is a vast, unconscious processor that goes, "Oh, he's at the Raleigh airport, so let's point to where he can get a burger," or something like that.

John Scalzi is known for his witty science fiction thrillers. Old Man's War and its sequels are his take on military science fiction, while last year's Collapsing Empire was a new foray into space opera. His latest novel Head On is a techno-thriller involving robotic sports leagues and murder, and it's a book that's particularly relevant in our own, technological world. Head On is the sequel to Scalzi's 2014 thriller Lock In and an accompanying novella, Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden's Syndrome. In each, he introduces readers to a world that's experienced a medical catastrophe: a flu pandemic infected and killed millions of people around the world, and left some of the survivors with Haden's Syndrome, a condition that left them "locked in" to their bodies.

Asking a bunch of literate people about the Great American Novel is an open invitation for us all to show off and make cogent, compelling arguments about the importance of [insert a favorite novel here] in the canon of American literature, regardless of whether anyone outside our small circle of literary compatriots knows of the novel or would agree. As a science fiction and fantasy writer, for example, I can make a pretty good argument for Philip K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle" or Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451," or maybe even Mark Helprin's "Winter's Tale," and I might even get a cheering section behind the choice. Ubiquity: It has to be a novel that a relatively large number of Americans have read, and that a large proportion of those who haven't read it know about in other ways (for example, by a popular filmed adaptation). Notability: There has to be a general agreement that the novel is significant -- it has literary quality and/or is part of the cultural landscape in a way that's unquestionable (even if critically assailable). Morality: It needs to address some unique aspect of the American experience, usually either our faults or our aspirations as a nation, with recognizable moral force (not to be confused with a happy ending).