This is not just because The Kaiju Preservation Society is literally a novel set in 2020, with the events of the book's main plot unfolding in parallel to the ongoing crisis that Covid represents for this story's characters. It's also because, more than any other novel I've recently read, The Kaiju Preservation Society struck me as being a book that was very overtly about the experience of watching a global catastrophe unfold from a place of relative comfort and safety, with the story eventually coming to be defined by the real-world crisis that is perpetually unfolding off-screen, and which Scalzi's protagonists remain continually aware of despite only rarely mentioning.
Through this element, Scalzi is able to imbue what on the surface is a deliberately outlandish narrative about giant monsters and inter-dimensional travel with an unexpected depth. The true focus of this book is not so much any of the massive creatures his protagonists must contend with, but instead the feeling of dull confusion that comes from having your entire life upended by a cataclysmic disaster so vast it cannot be seen.
Narrated in first-person via a character whose gender is never mentioned, The Kaiju Preservation Society begins by introducing its protagonist, Jamie Gray, just moments before their life falls apart. As a former PHD student who has recently abandoned the degree studying dystopian science fiction literature they'd previously spent years pursuing, the novel opens as Jamie is preparing for their six month performance review at an emerging online food delivery service they've joined called “Füdmüd” (the umlauts in the name, we are later told, exist to ward off a potential copyright lawsuit from a similarly named delivery service in Bangladesh called "FoodMood").
However as Jamie enters the office of their exuberantly egotistical boss (a hereditary billionaire and chronic venture capitalist named Rob Sanders), they quickly realize that the long list of accomplishments they've amassed during their short time at Füdmüd are meaningless. In preparation for the economic downturn brought about by the imminent pandemic, Rob has devised other plans not only for Füdmüd, but Jamie's career at this organization. After explaining his spur-of-the-moment decision to rename all of Füdmüd's low-paid gig workers "deliverators," Rob continues:
"What I'm saying, Jamie, is that Füdmüd needs someone like you on the ground. In the trenches. Giving us intel from the street." He waved out the window. "Real. Gritty. Unvarnished. As only you can."
I took a minute to let this sink in. "You want me to be a Füdmüd delivery person."
"Deliverator."
"That's not actually a position in the company."
"That doesn't mean it's not important to the company, Jamie." (p.4~5)
It's in this context, with Jamie having lost anything resembling a regular salary or health care plan just as the early months of the pandemic begin, that they happen to stumble across an old college friend named Tom Stevens while out working as one of Füdmüd's many deliverators. In a cleverly written sequence that seems to take place across sporadic 10 to 15 second interactions unfolding over the course of several weeks (the only indication of the passage of time being the fact that the Füdmüd meal Jamie is "deliverating" to Tom's expensive condominium changes from one sentence to the next), the two friends commiserate about old times, and get caught up on the details of the others lives and contrasting career fortunes. When Jamie casually mentions they are about to be laid off from even their volunteer position at Füdmüd (Rob having sold the company to a still larger food delivery service which pays its deliverators even less than he did), Tom makes a spur-of-the-moment decision, and offers Jamie a job at the suspiciously well-funded environmental research group in which he now works. This is an organization, he helpfully explains, which does work with "large animals" in the arctic, and goes only by the cryptic initials "K-P-S."
The story that follows quickly veers into the deliberately absurd, with much of the humor deriving from Scalzi's tendency to weave together a dense network of repeating jokes and gags, and then intersperse these with unexpectedly genuine moments of earnest reflection. Soon, Jamie is spirited away to a secluded arctic facility secretly housing an inter-dimensional portal, and through this portal (along with a team of world-famous scientists, elite military soldiers, and Tom) voyages to the so-called "Kaiju Earth"--a vibrant but ecologically hostile jungle realm where life has evolved the capacity to metabolize uranium, and consequently grown to enormous proportions.
Initially founded to prevent the giant monsters (or "kaiju") of this universe from crossing over into our dimension, the KPS (or "Kaiju Preservation Society") has long since pivoted from an exclusively military organization to a scientific one. In the present day, the Kaiju Preservation Society exists not only to study the unique realm and ecology which the Kaiju Earth harbors, but also to protect this deceptively fragile ecosystem from the danger that human industry could pose to it. As Tom explains to Jamie immediately after their arrival on this world:
“Mosquitoes kill more humans every year than every other type of animal combined, [...] including other humans. And to flip that around, humans have wiped our version of Earth clean of almost every single animal much larger than we are. We hunt them to extinction, and we put ourselves into their environments. Size isn’t the issue. It never was.”
“So we’re the monster police, too,” I said to Tom.
“Correct,” he replied. “The only real question is, who are the monsters?” (p.44~45)
Yet as Jamie settles into their job as a KPS employee, and slowly learns of the unique and bizarre ecology of the Kaiju Earth, the world they left behind looms quietly in their memory in a way that quickly comes to define this story by its absence. The massive creatures of the Kaiju Earth are all at once wondrous and terrifying, but by virtue of the strictly worded NDA which Jamie was required to sign as a condition of their employment with this organization, nothing they experience in this world can ever travel with them when they inevitably return to Earth in several month's time.
The fractured awareness which this fact produces in Jamie's mind is demonstrated almost immediately after they first arrive at the research base in which they spend the majority of the novel, with the unexpected peace and sense of purpose that both the KPS and the Kaiju Earth come to hold for them being cast by Scalzi in a deliberately ambiguous light.
Upon moving into their new apartment, Jamie finds an anonymous letter left for them by this apartment's prior resident--a woman who seems to give a gentle warning to the individual who she knows will come after her. When describing her own experiences of the Kaiju Earth, this person writes to Jamie:
It's also bittersweet because when we leave this world behind we leave everything about it behind. We can take nothing from it and tell no one of it. Three years of my life—four tours!—and all I have is the memory. It’s one of the reasons I have to leave it. As wonderful as it has been, it feels like too much of my life has been unreal. Imaginary. Maybe I’m the only one who feels this way, but even if it’s just me it’s enough. It’s time for me to go back to the real world, and have a real life. (p.63)
This isolating nature of the Kaiju Earth, when coupled with Jamie's own growing paradoxical awareness not only of the pandemic unfolding back home, but later on (indirectly) the 2020 American presidential election and resulting January 6th insurrection, give the entire novel an unexpectedly gentle quality that allows the book to easily switch gears from a fast-paced action story to something more reflective. While Jamie has found in their job at the KPS a refuge from the crises unfolding back on Earth, the book also pointedly introduces this new world in a context which continually reminds Jamie of the events unfolding in their old home.
Juxtaposing these moments are more overtly comedic scenes where even the book's humor pulls back into something more profound. In one repeating sequence, Jamie continually discovers via their conversations with their coworkers that they are apparently the only member of the KPS who does not possess at least two or three PHDs, and in the process seems to cheerfully come to terms with their own apparently misplaced decision to forego an advanced degree in literature for a career in online food delivery. Likewise, later on in the novel there is a scene in which Jamie receives jungle survival training from a grizzled KPS veteran, only to eventually realize that the single lesson this woman is seeking to instill in them is that no one human being can ever hope to endure on the Kaiju Earth alone.
While there is beauty in this new world and its many creatures, Jamie is continually reminded that this beauty must never be seen to overshadow the immense destructive power of these same beings. The Kaiju Earth is in part a refuge for Jamie, but it's also an expression of the unknowably inhuman power of nature itself, with the novel ultimately coming to depict (via a final crisis that unfolds rapidly during the book's ending chapters) the ways in which this otherwise benign world can turn lethal.
As Tom pointed out to Jamie as this story began, the most dangerous animals in both the Kaiju world and Earth itself are humans, and for this reason the most catastrophic natural disasters arise not so much from the forces of nature themselves, but instead the human tendency to dismiss the power of nature as merely a resource that exists to be exploited.
I do have some criticisms of this book, all of which pertain less to the novel's story itself, and more to some comments and concerns I have regarding Scalzi's use of a single Japanese word within this novel's title--kaiju.
Deriving from the word 怪獣 (whose two component kanji literally translate as “mysterious beast”), the contemporary usage of kaiju both in Japanese and English media generally refers to any type of giant monster (most notably the titular creature featured in the Godzilla films). Consequently, throughout The Kaiju Preservation Society, Scalzi's characters regularly reference the pop culture history of giant monster movies from Japan, with the fictional KPS being an organization whose management show endless enthusiasm for the Godzilla film franchise specifically.
There are times in which this intertextual humor gives rise to something wonderful, with Scalzi exhibiting a deft awareness in how he negotiates the potential issues of referencing the popular culture of another society for comedic effect. For instance, in addition to insisting on naming the giant creatures of the Kaiju Earth via a Japanese word, there’s also a running joke throughout the book of how the leaders of the Kaiju Preservation Society have named the various research bases established in the Kaiju Earth after people who were in some way involved in the creation of the original Godzilla film. The facility in which Jamie spends most of the novel is, for instance, called the Tanaka Base, and named after Tomoyuki Tanaka, one of the producers of the first Godzilla movie. Likewise, the facility housing the inter-dimensional portal is known as the Honda base (and named after director Ishiro Honda).
This detail in the novel's world-building could easily have come across as culturally reductive, because while the joke about how quite literally every single location on the Kaiju Earth bears the name of someone who was in some way involved in the first Godzilla film is mildly funny, it could also have become an example of cultural appropriation if left unchecked. Via this element, Scalzi is essentially repeatedly distilling an entire society down into references to this one single internationally recognized pop culture franchise.
Thankfully however Scalzi saves his story from this fault via an additional layer of humor. Whenever anyone in the novel mentions to Jamie that the Tanaka base is named after the Godzilla producer (and people mention this fact quite regularly), another character will invariably offer up the helpful but extremely important fact that Tanaka is actually the fourth most common family name in Japan, and therefore the last name of a huge number of other individuals (not just the producer of this one single monster movie from the 1950s).
The ultimate effect of this is that Scalzi is continually pointing out to his readers that while Tanaka is indeed the name of one of the producers of the 1954 movie Godzilla, the Tanaka base could also just as easily have been named after quite a lot of other people, many of whom have just as much of a right to have this state-of-the-art scientific research facility on another plane of reality named after them as Tomoyuki Tanaka did (if not, arguably, more so).
Jokes like this work because, in addition to being written with a wry and deliberately awkward humor, they also represent a critical bit of cultural awareness on Scalzi's part. By repeatedly pointing out to his readers that Tanaka is in fact a very common name, Scalzi is highlighting how his story is using the culture and language of a society to which he himself is not a part. In essence, he is directly calling attention to the biases of his own characters when he very deliberately reminds his readers that this one narrow portion of Japanese popular culture he keeps referencing is only a small portion of a much larger society. Moreover, Scalzi does all of this in a way that furthers the book's humor.
Unfortunately this awareness does not extend to all aspects of The Kaiju Preservation Society, and the book's most egregious oversight relates, ironically, to the in-universe explanation for why it is that the kaiju of the Kaiju Earth are referred to with a Japanese word.
Immediately after arriving at the Tanaka base, Jamie and the other new employees of the KPS receive a lecture from Tom briefing them in this organization's history and origins. As Tom explains things, the Kaiju Earth was first discovered in the early 1950s when the American Navy accidentally tore a hole in the fabric of space-time with a hydrogen bomb test. Within the novel's fictional reality, the first Godzilla film was actually inspired by a real-life kaiju that happened to stumble through this rift between universes, and it's for this reason that the kaiju of the Kaiju Earth were ultimately named after the fictional creatures they inspired. As Tom explains the story:
“In May 1951, the U.S. set off a prototype of a hydrogen bomb at a place called Enewetak Atoll. It’s in the Marshall Islands. Two days later, one of the kaiju crossed over at the detonation site.”“The actual fucking Godzilla,” Kahurangi said.“Which to be clear looked and acted nothing like the Godzilla of the movies,” Tom said. “It was just huge and hungry and stomped around for a bit looking for something to eat before the U.S. Navy spooked it and it took off into the ocean.”“Then what happened?”“It swam away from the navy for three days and then died and sank in the Japanese shipping lanes. That’s why we have Godzilla. Japanese sailors saw the U.S. Navy chasing something big, talked about it when they got back to Japan, and the story found its way to the filmmakers.” (p.41~42)
This detail in Scalzi's world-building runs uncomfortably close to a real-world history, and what's worse is that this history is itself closely linked to the monster movie mythos which his book continually references.
In 1954, a Japanese fishing vessel known as the Daigo Fukuryuu-maru was accidentally irradiated in the fallout produced by a nuclear weapon's test conducted by the American Navy on Bikini Atol. As a result, the crew of the Fukuryuu-maru were soon afflicted with severe radiation poisoning, with one man, Aikichi Kuboyama, ultimately dying of his injuries many days later.
Public outrage in Japan over this incident subsequently sparked a renewed awareness of nuclear weapons, and the risks which radiation poisoning posed to the general public. This growing cultural movement was part of what contributed to the popularity of the original Godzilla film, since this movie was not only released later that same year, but very prominently featured a plot wherein the U.S. Navy inadvertently awakened a giant sea-creature with one of these very same tests. Even the opening images of this movie were according to Honda inspired by the Fukuryuu-maru incident itself, with the film beginning with the crew of an unnamed fishing vessel being irradiated in a blast of boiling hot seawater produced by the film's titular monster.
Yet while Scalzi's novel seems to unintentionally reference the historical events surrounding the Fukuryuu-maru, it does so in a context that reimagines this ship's crew (or at least their fictional analogues) as passive observers of this history rather than active participants in it. The nameless "Japanese sailors" of Scalzi's version of these events are depicted as being incapable of comprehending what they are witnessing, and upon spotting the real-life Godzilla being chased around by the American navy, simply react by telling outlandish stories about giant sea monsters. It is these stories (and not a dramatization of the dangers of nuclear weapons and institutional incompetence) which then give rise to the character of Godzilla in this novel's world.
The end effect is that Scalzi's rendering of this history removes from these events any of the politics or controversy that existed at the time.
To be clear I don't think that any of this was intentional on Scalzi's part. The way in which the origins of the fictional Kaiju Preservation Society mirror the events surrounding the Fukuryuu-maru were likely intended more as a general reference to the enduring association of giant monsters with nuclear power. Moreover, it is worth noting that in the above scene, Jamie does express doubt regarding the events that have been relayed to them by Tom (declaring that they are "officially skeptical of this Godzilla origin story"), though the book also doesn't do anything with this skepticism. We are not, for instance, ever given any reason to think that there may be more to the KPS's origins than what Tom relates. The end result is that as fun and playful as so much of The Kaiju Preservation Society is, there is one critical instance in which the book's cheerfully bizarre humor turns sour without realizing it.
This is not a catastrophic failure for the book on the whole, but it is a shortcoming which I think warrants discussion. Even monster movies from the 1950s sometimes have a much more complicated history underlying their origins than is immediately apparent, and assuming that this pop culture mythology can be extracted from its social and historical context without any consequences brings with it a whole host of new issues that often demand examination.
In most other respects, The Kaiju Preservation Society remains a playful and innocent novel--a book whose relaxed humor easily gives way to more contemplative themes. The strongest portions of this story are those moments when Scalzi manages to convey the sense of subdued absurdity that is living through a global pandemic, and the quiet reflection experienced by his protagonist as they slowly come to heal the wound which this catastrophic event has left in their life.
To the extent that The Kaiju Preservation Society is indeed a monster story, it's a monster story whose monster resides perpetually off-screen, and whose presence in this novel is defined exclusively via the unremarked shadow it casts on the narrative.
The giant lizards don't count.