Lock In

by John Scalzi

I'll admit, I was a little skeptical about this book. I love Scalzi and am willing to read just about anything he writes, but I have to say that, at first glance, my impression of this book was "meh". Books about epidemics aren't really my thing.

Then Scalzi was on Twitter promoting his novella Unlocked which was his precursor to Lock In. He entertained me so much just by promoting the book, that I had to buy it. Plus it was only $1.99 for kindle. So I bought it and read it and I actually really liked it. It was written as a kind of documentary of Haden's Syndrome and the style was very different from what I had seen from Scalzi before. So I was willing to give Lock In  a try.

If you liked Redshirts, you'll enjoy Lock In. It's a mystery with a major conspiracy behind everything, and the characters are as enjoyable as Scalzi's characters always are. Speaking of which, I have determined that Scalzi only has one main character that he uses for all of his stories. Personally, I am OK with this.

The premise of the book is that there was an epidemic of a particular flu virus. It was much more deadly than the normal flu strains and has one nasty side effect. Some people got the flu and were fine a few days later and that was that. Other people got sick, got better, and then experienced a second phase of the disease, which manifested similar to meningitis. Once that happened, a fraction of the population experienced what became known as "lock in": they were completely paralyzed. They were still conscious and aware of everything going on around them, but they could not move or speak. Major bummer.

Technology to the rescue! So they created a computer that they put in these people's brains that could control a robot (technically called "Personal Transport Units" but more commonly known as "threeps" after C3PO). By using these robots to get around, people with lock in could experience most aspects of a normal life.

Of course, nothing is ever that easy. When someone looks like a robot, are you going to treat them like any other person? Of course not! That would be way too rational. So there's loads of prejudice and hate crimes and all the political ramifications that always go along with it.

The book is told from the point of view of a Haden (which is what they call someone who has lock in), so the reader gets to experience all the pros and cons of living life mostly as a robot. I was pretty impressed with Scalzi's attention to detail and the way he foresaw the future if something like this ever happened. Everything from the prejudice of those without Hadens Syndrome to the different functions of threeps to the technicalities of having to use a machine to get around. It was pretty cool and Scalzi is as entertaining as ever, so if you like reading his stuff, I definitely recommend reading this one.

On a related note, Lock In has already gotten a TV deal and this was Scalzi's reaction to the news.