★★★★☆ After a worse pandemic...

Lock In

John Scalzi

One of the first things that strikes a 2024 reader about John Scalzi's Lock In is that it takes place after an "influenza-like global pandemic". Covid was bad enough, but the Great Flu of Lock In was substantially worse. It killed 400 million people worldwide. The Great Flu was often followed by meningitis, which in many patients caused permanent brain damage resulting in Locked-in Syndrome. Locked-in syndrome is a real thing, but in the real world it is rare. In Lock In it is called Haden's Syndrome after a famous sufferer, and is quite common: 4.35 million in the USA.

Thus far Lock In is grounded in reality. However, Scalzi takes it much further. Haden's patients have neural networks implanted in their brains which allow them to communicate electronically. In particular, a Haden can inhabit a telepresence robot called a personal transport, colloquially called a threep (after C-3PO) or sometimes a klank, although this is considered a slur by Hadens.

In addition to the Hadens, a small number (about 100,000 worldwide) of Great Flu patients experienced brain changes that allowed them to become Integrators. I will allow you to find out what that entails from the book.

Our hero and first-person narrator Chris Shane is the world's most famous Haden. He has just joined the FBI as an agent. Lock In recounts his first week on the job. It's not a typical new job orientation experience. In fact, Shane and his new partner, Leslie Vann (a former integrator) are immediately called to the scene of a murder. The investigation spreads wide.

So, we end up with a science fiction buddy-cop whodunnit. It was fun. Chris and Vann are a good team. Chris, perhaps surprisingly, is more-or-less the straight-man of the pair. He manages to make being locked in an everyday life experience, because that's what it is for him. Vann is the eccentric.

There are two more books in the Lock in series, a prequel Unlocked that tells the history of Haden Syndrome, and a sequel Head On. I intend to read both.

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