A House Between Earth and the Moon

A Novel

By: Rebecca Scherm

Narrated by: Xe Sands

“Compulsively readable.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Inventive and thrilling. . . . I couldn’t put it down.” —Brit Bennett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half

“It’s a thrill to read this novel.” —Jia Tolentino, New York Times bestselling author of Trick Mirror

The gripping story of one scientist in outer space, another who watches over him, the family left behind, and the lengths people will go to protect the people and planet they love

For twenty years, Alex has believed that his gene-edited super-algae will slow and even reverse the effects of climate change. His obsession with his research has jeopardized his marriage, his relationships with his kids, and his own professional future. When the Son sisters, founders of the colossal tech company Sensus, offer him a chance to complete his research, he seizes the opportunity. The catch? His lab will be in outer space on Parallaxis, the first-ever luxury residential space station built for billionaires. Alex and six other scientists leave Earth and their loved ones to become Pioneers, the beta tenants of Parallaxis.

But Parallaxis is not the space palace they were sold. Day and night, the embittered crew builds the facility under pressure from Sensus, motivated by the promise that their families will join them. At home on Earth, much of the country is ablaze in wildfires and battered by storms. In Michigan, Alex’s teenage daughter, Mary Agnes, struggles through high school with the help of the ubiquitous Sensus phones implanted in everyone’s ears, archiving each humiliation, and wishing she could go to Parallaxis with her father—but her mother will never allow it.

The Pioneers are the beta testers of another program, too: Sensus is designing an algorithm that will predict human behavior. Katherine Son hires Tess, a young social psychologist, to watch the experiment’s subjects through their phones—including not only the Pioneers, but Katherine’s sister, Rachel. Tess begins to develop an intimate, obsessive relationship with her subjects. When Tess and Rachel travel to Parallaxis, the controlled experiment begins to unravel.

Prescient and insightful, A House Between Earth and the Moon is at once a captivating epic about the machinations of big tech and a profoundly intimate meditation on the unmistakably human bonds that hold us together.

©2022 Rebecca Scherm (P)2022 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Addictive. . . . Fast-paced. . . . Scherm's character-driven sf story centers on individuals working against the clock to find a solution to climate change. . . . Scherm beautifully captures emotion in her writing as she shows how important connection is to our shared humanity.”
—Booklist

“A high-concept domestic novel that merges science fiction and eco-fiction tropes. . . . Scherm [gives] the climate change novel a wider yet still realistic scope and . . . nuanced characters in Alex and Mary Agnes, who are both eager to do the right thing but undone by humanity, its fickle nature, and its allegedly liberating but often self-imprisoning technologies.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Compulsively readable. . . . A House Between the Earth and the Moon is a thought-provoking and absorbing read. By deftly combining the subjects of big tech and climate change, Scherm has created a world that fully embodies the anxiety and indignity of our times.”
—Sandra Newman, The New York Times Book Review

Disappointing ending

The story was great, but the ending was... not. Worth the listen, but I wish the ending had been better.

“Family Life” tag is misleading

Audible tagged this book as “Family Life” but failed to also tag it as “Lesbian.” I agree with the other review that the story meanders and is pointless — but I also tired of the blatant lesbian love story in the midst of the chaos. I would not have purchased this book if it was marked properly. Let me decide what types of characters and relationships I want to encounter in my books.

incoherent

The author presents a future dystopian world where the temperature periodically rises to above 130 F, killing people by the tens of thousands. A pair of Korean sisters own a mega company 'Census', which has provided an in-brain smart phone which almost all have implanted, and everybody can see everybody and everything. This device includes a 'dashboard' running constantly with information, someplace in the phone user' awareness, somehow, A space station is being built to house billionaires so they can escape the planetary misery, the initial construction to be done by a small group of 'pioneers'. One woman pioneer is secretly assigned to create an algorithm by watching everything the other pioneers see -their ' views'-she has some sort of special access to their brains - the goal being the ability to predict what people will do before they decide to do it. This ability when let loose on the world will enable Census to stop murders and suicides before they happen.

Much of this future world is left as vague as it is presented here, The 'Phone' , and the 'Views' are never made understandably real to the reader, Thus the narrative suffers since these two entities are principle characters in the story.
Also, since the world is coming, apparently, to a possible end, what would be the point in preventing a few murders and suicides? Certainly something more global would be a better focus of the world's biggest corporation