Review: Lock In

Lock In By John Scalzi

A sci-fi / police crime drama book I read recently. It’s an extremely readable book and hard to put down once I started reading. I finished it in 2 readding sessions.

The book sets a background where a disease has taken over many millions of people all over the world. For some patients , this disease causes them to remain in a pseudocoma state. Thankful, our technology has advanced enough where these individuals can have a life using a surrogate - either a humanoid robot or a compatible person, known as an integrator.

The mystery / crime drama part has to do with a specialized crime committed by or related to someone with this disease.

The conclusion isn’t too surprising as the police crime drama part is pretty ordinary.

Two observations.

One, social issues in the book’s society are treated very mundanely. Same sex couples are just normal. Racial identity isn’t stressed. Sexual identity is hard to tell at times. In fact, I am not very sure if the protagonist is male or female. This certainly makes you think about psychological impacts of a world where you can interact with sexless android as surrogates.

Two, this book can be made in a TV show like Castle!

Highly Recommended.