Lock In is a near-future sci-fi mystery novel from John
Scalzi. I’ve enjoyed Scalzi’s work for years, and he has a penchant for tightly
plotted, compelling mysteries – as with this year’s excellent “The Dispatcher”.
The world of Lock In should be reasonably familiar. People
are still bipeds. The political systems we’re familiar with are still holding
sway. The US still has a President. People still drive from place to place.
There’s still coffee, bars, and mega-corporations. Sure, the cars are now
self-driving, and the coffee places have a well-targeted marketing mechanism,
but the people are. In the end, still people.
But the world has also changed. A global epidemic has left a
small significant proportion of the global population ‘locked in’; paralysed
but cognisant, unable to communicate with the outside world. That’s where the
sci-fi comes in. Scalzi gives us neural interfaces, virtual worlds, and bodies
which the locked in can hop into. It’s a world where, at least in the US, there’s
an awareness of a certain kind of disability, an amelioration, and a well
portrayed cultural adaption to that fact. The locked in, by virtue of their
numbers, have become a minority demographic – one that acts under assistance and
prejudice in equal measure. There’s echoes of the civil rights struggle here,
and stronger reverberations for the prejudice that the disabled face daily.
This is a society which is handling seismic shift in how its population is
structured – and stumbling, well meaning, toward an uncertain end goal. Quite
what the status quo will be is not yet defined – and that liquidity, that lack
of social definition, makes for an intriguing and compelling world.
The characters – well, our central duo are familiar in the tropes
of the mystery genre – a rookie detective and his more experienced, emotionally
wounded partner.
The former, Chris, is also locked-in. They’re relatively
well off, earnest, and intellectually curious. There’s enough self-awareness of
privilege there not to make Chris a chore to read, and their intelligence and
focus means that the reader can follow along with their analysis easily enough.
There’s some focus on getting through things by the book, a degree of caution
at the start of the text, wrapped around a lack of confidence. What’s driving
Chris, the need to be distinct from their family whilst also being a part of
it, is sketches out in the emotional reactions within the text – the
relationships are convincing, complicated, and occasionally startling – as with
any family.
Chris’s partner is another matter. Older, a veteran of the
FBI, she’s both familiar with how things work, and perhaps more than a little
cynical about the fact that they work at all. She’s dry, wry, and obviously
ferociously clever. That she’s also a survivor – well, that’s inherent in her
attitude, from the first moment. Quite what experiences have transformed her –
well, those we learn alongside Chris. But I can say that this is not a book
which backs away from emotional heft for its characters. They have their
issues, and those issues make sense within their own context – but they’re also
raw and human.
There’s a slew of supporting cast of course, from Chris’s
room-mates, to their family, from victims to suspects. What ties them together
is that each gets enough depth to be convincing. We don’t see much of the
room-mates say, or of the CEO of a large technology corporation – but when we
do, their motives, their meanings, and their humanity are no less clear. The
main cast have greater room to manoeuvre, but it’s nice to see the support
given enough depth to be convincing.
The plot – well, no spoilers. It’s a techno-thriller, with
additional sci-fi elements. It opens with a murder investigation, and suggests
links to larger issues. The plotting is tight and convincing. If I wasn’t
always a step ahead of our investigators, I was certainly looking at the
evidence alongside of them. The central investigation is tense and well-paced –
with sufficient evidence produced for the reader that they can work with the
characters. There’s some marvellously explosive action as well, though it tends
to come with undisguised consequences. Both the more explosive moments and the
investigation work within the larger social tapestry of the world - with a
consistent internal logic and a cracking conclusion.
If you’re in the market for an inventive, imaginative sci-fi
mystery, then this is probably the book for you.
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