A Fun Read? It's a Lock!

John Scalzi is hardly an obscure, unknown author; he's won Hugo Awards and signed a multi-million dollar publishing deal that was widely discussed in sci-fi fan circles. But I only discovered him last year, and have slowly been exploring his sizable bibliography since then. Most recently, that was in the form of his 2014 book Lock In.

Lock In is set in a not-too-distant future in which a global pandemic has permanently altered normal life. (I know, right?) Most people who catch this highly contagious virus experience only mild flu symptoms, but for 1% of the people who contract it, consequences are dire. (I know, right? This was published in 2014.) The victims of Haden's Syndrome fall into a paralyzed state -- fully awake but unable to move or respond to stimuli. Fortunately, huge strides are made in interfacing with the human brain, allowing these "locked in" people to continue interacting with the world via personal robots they inhabit. Against this backdrop, a new FBI agent -- himself a "Haden" -- is assigned with his partner to investigate a murder in which a Haden is a prime suspect. Soon, they're on the trail of a vast conspiracy with sweeping ramifications for society.

I still don't have a lot of other John Scalzi to compare Lock In to, but the comparisons are positive. As with The Dispatcher, he has created a vivid sci-fi premise and built up a wholly credible environment around it. The world-building is clever and deep, with more layers always waiting to be revealed as the tale unspools: if this is true about this world, then it makes sense that this would also be true. And yet the world-building is not the point of the story, but rather a backdrop against which an interesting narrative can be spun.

Like Redshirts, there's a healthy dose of humor woven throughout the tale. Lock In is not actively trying for comedy most of the time (as Redshirts often does), but the characters all have a sense of humor and don't shy away from it. The circumstances of the story are extreme, but the characters are believable. They're real people in surreal circumstances.

You do have to like mysteries, I think, to be drawn into Lock In. Despite the science-fiction premise and trappings, this is very much a detective story, a cop drama. It's a specific kind of cop drama, in fact, with sort of "opposites attract" partners learning to work together in the face of a plot much bigger than either of them. Not that the familiarity of this story structure is necessarily a bad thing; there's plenty of inventiveness elsewhere in Lock In that I don't begrudge John Scalzi mixing a few tropes into his recipe in places.

Lock In might actually be my least favorite Scalzi so far, but that says more about my reaction to his other books than it does to this one. Lock In is also the first book of his I've read that does have a sequel, and I do expect I'll be reading that at some point down the road. I give the book a B+. It's a solid page turner, and I think most of you who would be reading this post would probably enjoy it.