Lock In

Not too long from today, a new, highly contagious virus makes its way across the globe. Most who get sick experience nothing worse than flu, fever and headaches. But for the unlucky one percent - and nearly five million souls in the United States alone - the disease causes “Lock In”: Victims fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus. The disease affects young, old, rich, poor, people of every color and creed. The world changes to meet the challenge.

A quarter of a century later, in a world shaped by what’s now known as “Haden’s syndrome,” rookie FBI agent Chris Shane is paired with veteran agent Leslie Vann. The two of them are assigned what appears to be a Haden-related murder at the Watergate Hotel, with a suspect who is an “integrator” - someone who can let the locked in borrow their bodies for a time. If the Integrator was carrying a Haden client, then naming the suspect for the murder becomes that much more complicated.

I love John Scalzi. He sucked me back into science fiction with Old Man’s War and his books continue to be enjoyable to read. This book is a great alternate future book, though as I write that it doesn’t seem correct.

As I read this book I kept drawing parallels to some of the equality issues that have taken up so much of the world now. The main character is caught between policing her own people and those that are different.

And like all Scalzi’s books, Lock-in provides you with amazing technology, but doesn’t spend all of his time explaining it. I never like it when the author is so in love with the awesome tech in the world that the story gets bogged down.

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