READERS GUIDE

AN INTRODUCTION TO A HOUSE BETWEEN EARTH AND THE MOON
 
“The edgeless darkness, the thinness of it—it didn’t matter that Alex had already seen it through glass. The darkness filled his eyes first and drew the breath right out of him. And then, looming behind him, was Earth, huge and round and real. White streaks wrapped the blue and green marble like cotton, protecting it. The sight was hard to reconcile with the ground he lived on—had lived on, until a week ago. In his country alone, California was on fire nine months a year, half of Texas was flooded with mud, and the hurricanes that turned coastal towns into mulch no longer kept to any calendar, but from up here, you would think the whole planet lived in verdant spring bloom.”
 
In 2033, climate change is ravaging the planet, heat blocks and wildfires are wiping out entire towns, and billionaires are frantically planning their migration from Earth to outer space. A telecom giant called Sensus, cofounded by the ambitious Son sisters Rachel and Katherine, promises to make their escape a reality. In addition to the ubiquitous phones they manufacture, which record every moment of users’ lives and sell their data, Sensus has launched the first-ever luxury residential space station. But before they can make good on their investors’ wishes, they hire seven scientists to get Parallaxis up and running—the space Pioneers.
 
Meet Alex Welch-Peters, who has spent the last twenty years trying to slow global warming by genetically modifying algae. He jumps at the chance to take his research to Parallaxis, where he can avoid the public eye, and the pressures of his strained marriage, and focus on saving the world. When he does—and he’s sure it’s a matter of when, not if—his wife and children will finally know that all those lost years in the lab had not been in vain.
 
Back in Ann Arbor, Alex’s teenage daughter Mary Agnes fantasizes about joining her dad in space—about being anywhere but high school, where her crush has edited her into the non-consensual collage porn he is distributing. She gets revenge by unleashing a phone virus on his family, the consequences of which suddenly make Parallaxis a viable destination for a surprise family reunion.
 
While the Pioneers labor at the behest of Sensus, on the ground the company is fracturing. Rachel and Katherine Son are at odds for the first time about their vision for the future of Sensus. Behind Rachel’s back, Katherine hires a young researcher named Tess for a secret project that involves spying on a group of Sensus users through their phones and coding their behavior to create an algorithm that predicts human action, speech, and feelings. Tess’s first subject? Katherine’s insubordinate sister. Her other lab rats are the beta tenants on Parallaxis. And then, inexplicably, Mary Agnes’s feed appears.
 
When Katherine insists that Rachel supervise the construction on Parallaxis, she and Tess—who is eager for a front row seat to observe her subjects—join the Pioneers in space. As Earth grows ever more uninhabitable, anger toward Sensus brews, and the residents begin to recognize that someone, somewhere, is watching and manipulating them, Parallaxis starts to feel like a petri dish of conflict and claustrophobia two hundred miles in the sky.
 
Told via a rotating cast, A House Between Earth and the Moon is a page-turning, mind-bending novel about a world on the brink, when climate change has transformed the concept of home, and technology has permeated every aspect of public and private life. Sometimes chilling, sometimes tender, and with the tenacity of the human spirit hanging in the balance, Scherm’s novel tells a story about everyday people forced to make extraordinary choices to protect those they love and the planet they’ve always known.
 
 
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
 
1. The novel is set in 2033. When you imagine that year, what do you see? How similar is the novel’s version of the future to the picture in your head? What do you think the 2030s have in store in terms of climate change and technology?
 
2. If given the opportunity, would you want to experience space travel? Are there details in the novel that made it more attractive to you? What would be the scariest part?
 
3. Corporations actively collect data on countless aspects of our lives. Did Scherm’s novel change how you view this phenomenon? What does privacy mean to you now, and how do you think the definition will change in the future? Do you think of privacy as a commodity?
 
4. While Alex is looking to breed a particular invasive algae species to mitigate the destruction of climate change, Sensus’s technology has already been unleashed all over the world, forcing the most extreme Luddites into hiding. How do the characters try to assert their control over these various invasive forces? Do you think there’s hope for human control at the end?
 
5. Climate change is destroying the earth, and its impact in 2033 is more urgent than ever as people around the world are displaced from their homes due to wildfires, freak storms, and extreme weather. How does it feel to imagine the future in the face of this crisis? If you had the chance to flee worsening conditions on Earth and move your family to a space station, would you?
 
6. Imagine being a teenager in the year 2033. What aspects of your experience do you think would be different?
 
7. The novel explores the choices parents make for their children and the many different ways in which we understand and act on matters of safety. How is Meg’s approach to protecting her kids different from Esther’s or Teddy’s? Do you think there is a right way?
 
8. Technology plays a complicated role in the novel. While it makes certain aspects of life easier, it also exploits individuals, influencing their behavior on behalf of shareholders. What effect do you think the omnipresence of technology has on human behavior and the characters’ intuition? Can you think of a time in which technology influenced your own behavior without you noticing it?
 
9. How does Tess view her work? What about Alex? The other Pioneers? What questions do you think the novel poses about the relationship one has to their work? In face of mounting global catastrophes, what do you make of the push for healthier work-life balance? How do you see this movement fitting into a greater capitalistic economic structure?
 
10. Climate change and surveillance capitalism are two troubling realities that underscore the novel. How do you think they are related? As the climate crisis grows more and more urgent, what companies, if any, do you think will profit off it?
 
11. What did you think of Tess’s research? Would you ever want to watch people the way she does? Do you think there are similarities between the work she does and the work of her father, who creates characters and manipulates them for an audience’s entertainment?
 
12. The parents—Meg especially—struggle with the difference between the world they understand and the more technologically mediated realms of their children. How does this generational divide play out in the novel? What effect do you think it has on parents and children in general?