A highly contagious virus sweeps the globe, killing many people, and leaving millions “locked in”: fully conscious and aware, but unable to move their bodies in any way. The disease becomes known as “Haden’s Syndrome,” and the world responds by banding together, and developing neural uplinks that allow locked-in “Hadens” to communicate with others, control robots (called “threeps”), or even control other people (called “integrators”) that go out into the world as their avatars. Amidst this setting, a Haden named Chris Shane joins the FBI, and uses his robotic avatar to investigate a murder. Although the book relies on a fairly contrived premise, it makes good use of that premise to develop a reasonably interesting mystery story.
Scalzi has a lot of fun exploring the ideas behind lock in. How would people react to robotic avatars? What would life be like if your actual body spent all its time lying motionless in a bed, while you walked around in, and experienced the world through robotic eyes? Or the eyes and body of another human? How would Hadens feel about their lives? How would this differ if they got the disease when they were very young or very old?
The concept of minds jumping around and controlling different bodies is fun, and lends itself very well to mystery stories. It reminded me in some ways of Altered Carbon, but less confusing, and with more humor thanks to Scalzi’s typically funny dialog. Perhaps the weakest part of this book, which was written before COVID-19, is the naive belief that humanity would almost universally band together to fight a disease. I wonder what Scalzi feels now, having seen all the anti-mask and anti-vax morons out there?
