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Lock In

Review

Lock In

In a recent blog post on Tor/Forge Blog, John Scalzi wrote in great detail about his love for semicolons, and, as a surprising corollary, his decision not to use them in his newest novel.According to the author, LOCK IN is “among other things, a murder mystery. It’s fast. It’s blunt. It’s abrupt in places. It’s not a novel for semicolons.”

The description is apt. LOCK IN takes place in a near future where the spread of a highly contagious virus called “Haden’s syndrome” has permanently altered the structure of society. In the vast majority of cases, contracting Haden’s results in one of two options: flu-like symptoms that eventually pass with no long-term effect, or death. However, an unlucky 1% experience “lock in”: victims are fully aware, but unable to move in their own bodies. With 4.35 million Americans “locked in” and more contracting the disease every year, technology companies have created an implausibly advanced hardware/software combination that allows the locked in --- or “Hadens,” as they’ve come to be known --- the ability to temporarily transfer their consciousness to android-like machines called “threeps.”

"LOCK IN is a fast and thrilling read, with plenty of character development to support a satisfyingly twisty plot."

Amazingly, Scalzi’s worldbuilding chops are so tight that this profoundly weird conceit seems totally normal after a dozen pages or so. Even the fact that Chris Shane, narrator of LOCK IN, is himself a Haden --- there’s a vertiginous moment when you realize that Chris’s first-person “I” means “I, a human consciousness in a robot shell” --- becomes only slightly extraordinary by chapter three. And by that point, the murder mystery is well underway.

Chris Shane is a rookie FBI agent, and the novel picks up on the first day of his first assignment: a Haden-related murder at the Watergate Hotel. You see, in addition to transferring their consciousness to threeps, wealthy Hadens can pay to transfer into “Integrators,” certain human beings who have (voluntarily) placed the appropriate hardware in their brains. To Shane and his partner, hardened veteran Leslie Vann, it appears as if the Integrator standing over a dead body at the Watergate might’ve been the unwitting vehicle for a killing. However, Shane and Vann’s attempt to discover what really happened in the hotel room uncovers a plot that becomes larger and more sinister as they pursue it from the boardrooms of Washington, D.C. to the Navajo Nation and back again.

Though Scalzi’s brilliant, original premise makes LOCK IN certifiably science fiction, the novel operates very much as a thriller. In fact, I found myself wishing that more time was taken to explore the social complications of a post-Hadens world. Details about how certain young Hadens “customize” their threeps (four young Haden protesters do themselves up as the Founding Fathers in a funny, memorable scene) are often more engaging than the intricacies of computer science that attempt to explain how Haden-threep or Haden-Integrator technology actually works. Still, LOCK IN is a fast and thrilling read, with plenty of character development to support a satisfyingly twisty plot.

And Scalzi was right: it’s not a novel for semicolons.

Reviewed by Sam Glass on August 22, 2014

Lock In
by John Scalzi

  • Publication Date: August 4, 2015
  • Genres: Fiction, Suspense, Thriller
  • Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
  • ISBN-10: 076538132X
  • ISBN-13: 9780765381323