[amazon_link id=”0765375869″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][/amazon_link]Title : Lock In
Author : John Scalzi
Genre : Sci-fi
Publisher : Tor
Pages: 336
Publish Date : August 26, 2014
Source : Netgalley / Publisher ARC
Rating : 4/5

Amazingly, I lover-of-all-that-is-hard-science-fiction hadn’t read John Scalzi before. I corrected that by reading “Lock In” who’s protagonist is a disease-inflicted human living his life with the help of an android body.

Chris Shane lives in a futuristic world where a contagious disease, dubbed Hadens, causes a “lock-in” among its victims. Hadens affects humans in different ways – most have little to no side effects, some are completely physically paralyzed  or “locked-in” with fully functioning brains, and the third category have their brains modified by the disease enabling them to become (if they choose) Integrators.

Since there is no cure, and Hadens takes a toll every year, technology has been developed to enable paralyzed Haden’s sufferer’s (also called Hadens) to live out their lives in a physical world via robot bodies called threeps. “Locked-in” Hadens also have another option should they wish to traverse the world physically – they can up-load into another human, an “Integrator”, and assume control of that body for a short period of time. Our hero Shane having experienced complete lock-in as a child, and now a newly appointed FBI agent, fulfills his work requirements via his high-end threep.

Shane is assigned to the Hadens crime unit with his senior partner Agent Leslie Vann, and when a mysterious murder involving a Hadens Integrator comes to light, Shane has his first case on the job.

Lock In is a murder mystery set in a futuristic world. There are political influences – there is a new law ending subsidies for all Hadens, causing much protests and action in the Hadens community – none of which endear them to the larger non-Hadens world. Then there are economic implications of this law, which give rise to a whole other set of problems. When a Hadens dies in such an environment, everyone is suspect.

While the murder mystery is well done and works on its own, I really enjoyed the novel because of the skill with which this futuristic world is constructed. Scalzi gives much thought to details and answers the how-what-why questions which come with this fictitious world, so the sci-fi part of the story is well-grounded (IMO, half-baked sci-fi settings cause many a could-have-been-great novel to sink). It was quite interesting having the first person point of view from Shane’s threep, a robotic body which is also an advanced computer letting him have advantages like built-in recording, instant database lookup etc. that ordinary humans don’t.

I also liked Scalzi’s characters. Chris Shane is a rich kid with a privileged upbringing. He doesn’t need to work for a living, but does so because he wants to. He keeps a balanced head on his threep and is generally good humored, patient and pretty sharp. It’s also kinda helpful that bullets just zing off his metallic alloy body 🙂 and that he can simply dial down his threep’s pain receptors, when in a potentially painful skirmish. Agent Vann has her problems but Vann and Shane work well together as a team.

This was a well-rounded sci-fi novel – just my kind of book. I enjoyed it very much and look forward to reading other Scalzi novels. Hopefully a sequel or series based on Team Shane-Vann too?