I was planning on saving Lock In for another time, but after listening to The Dispatcher, I needed to listen to Lock In. I listened to the Wil Wheaton narration. Listening to Wheaton’s narration made me think of Armada, which I had just listened to him narrate. Very briefly, the title of this review was “That’s how you do nostalgia, Cline!” I changed it because that would have been unfair to John Scalzi, Ernst Cline and their respective books. Just so you know, though, Scalzi […]
John Scalzi is reliably fascinating
This was my second attempt to read this book, and I’m glad I gave it another go. I haven’t been let down by Scalzi before, and Lock In was no different. This is a fairly typical Scalzi novel, in that the world is well developed and multi-layered. From what I’ve read of him (Redshirts, the Old Man’s War series, and The Dispatchers), he’s very adept at centering his stories around a big idea, and this is no different. Set in the future, a disease has […]
A pretty cool sci-fi premise that I could see as our future
What’s the best thing that can come from a debilitating illness that renders your body useless? The internet, of course, and a bit of sci-fi neural networking voo-dooery. Which brings us to our story and a future where people are “locked” in by Haden’s syndrome. While most people affected by this illness just experience flu-like symptoms, a small percentage of those afflicted suffer complete physical, but not mental, paralysis. Technology has allowed these individuals, known as “Hadens”, to live productive lives via brain downloads (or […]
My Kind of Mashup
This was my first Scalzi, but not my last. I’ll definitely be checking out more of his work after this. Lock In was an unbelievably fun and inventive read with some fascinating themes. The novel takes place in a future United States where 1.7 million people suffering from Haden’s Syndrome are “locked in.” They are mentally spry and fully aware, but their bodies can’t move or respond. The scientific community responded to this issue by creating new technologies to help locked in people. The first […]