A House Between Earth and the Moon

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

Scientist Alex Welch-Peters has believed for twenty years that his super-algae can 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 Sensus, the colossal tech company, offers 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 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. Meanwhile, back on Earth, with much of the country ablaze in wildfires, Alex's family tries to remain safe in Michigan. His 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. As they toil away two hundred miles in the sky, Sensus is designing an algorithm that will predict human behavior. Tess, a young social psychologist Sensus has hired to watch the Pioneers through their phones, begins to develop an intimate, obsessive relationship with her subjects. When she takes it a step further-traveling to Parallaxis to observe them up close-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.

Story Locale: Outer space; near future Michigan, California, Wyoming

About the author

Rebecca Scherm is the author of Unbecoming. She lives in California with her family.
 

Summary

“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.

Additional text

“Part sci-fi, part dreamy drama, The House Between Earth and the Moon follows the residents of Parallaxis (a luxury space station developed by tech giant Sensus) as they try to build a home for billionaires to escape Earth's increasing inhospitality. Meanwhile, the people they leave back home—particularly the family of Alex, a researcher seeking to create a carbon-guzzling algae—are struggling with both their present and futures.”
—Marie Claire, “The Most Eagerly Anticipated Fiction by Women in 2022”

“If you read just one novel about future billionaires funding scientists to try to save a select few from global warming by making it possible to live in outer space, definitely let it be A House Between Earth and Moon.”
—Glamour, “The Best Books of 2022 to Add to Your Reading List”

“Inventive and thrilling, A House Between Earth and the Moon dives into the near-future climate apocalypse with eerie prescience, startling humor, and, somehow, hope. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Brit Bennett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half

"Rebecca Scherm is a treasure of a novelist: searching, inventive, her scope both everyday and expansive, her work marked by a tender but merciless psychological acuity. In A House Between Earth and the Moon, she has the near future—or the present—of perpetual emergency firmly within her grasp. It’s a thrill to read this novel, which punctures, urgently and humanely, the technocrat fantasy that space might save us; it brilliantly vivifies the terrors of love and surveillance and ambition, the dream and impossibility of escape."
—Jia Tolentino, New York Times bestselling author of Trick Mirror

“A House Between Earth and the Moon is a compelling, urgent book. I couldn't put it down. Rebecca Scherm brilliantly, and with such heart and tenderness, imagines a frightening future for our planet and our flawed, complicated species, and the worlds she imagines are so vivid, and feel so real I wondered if she owns a crystal ball. I loved these characters and their struggles and desires, and I rooted for them, and worried about them, and I can’t stop thinking about them. This is a remarkable novel.”
—Edan Lepucki, New York Times bestselling author of California

“I loved A House Between Earth and the Moon—a smart, propulsive, sharply observed psychological novel set in a convincingly detailed near future, as well as an insightful examination of how rapid advances in communication technology can inadvertently render us indecipherable to each other.”
—Dexter Palmer, author of Version Control

“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. . . . An ambitious . . . dystopian tale.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Product details

• Authors: Rebecca Scherm
• Publisher: Viking USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 29.03.2022
• EAN: 9781101980101
• ISBN: 978-1-101-98010-1
• No. of pages: 400
• Dimensions: 158 mm x 233 mm x 30 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Science fiction, fantasy