Lock In
Ratings295
Average rating3.9
Loco, qué bien q escribe Scalzi xD Este es el 3er libro q leo de él este año (siendo el primero el de la sociedad protectora de kaijus :v) y la verdad, lo disfruté mucho. Lock In no es de sus libros humorísticos, es más serio. Trata sobre un mundo en el que una epidemia llamada Síndrome de Haden deja con parálisis total del cuerpo a una gran parte de la población humana, dejándolos encerrados (locked in) en sus cuerpos. Para combatir a esto, se desarrollan unos robots a los que las personas con Haden pueden controlar para reintegrarse a la sociedad. Excepto que ahora a la sociedad no le gusta que haya un porcentaje tan grande con ventajas sobre la gente común y corriente. En este contexto se desarrolla una trama de intriga y conspiración que dos agentes del FBI tienen que resolver.
I'm always so excited when I find a good, hard science, science fiction story. I can count on this author to provide a good story the same way Isaac Asimov and Michael Crighton do.
Great new ideas, not too much stalling to present the underlying theories, some humour, some education on bias, and the murderer not revealed too early.
It was good to be so interested in turning off the tv to read text.
Entertaining dialogue heavy. Interesting story line set in a near future possibility. The writing was a little simple but I enjoyed the read. It's a decent selection for a quick read.
Loved the concept and I blew through this book in two days. I really love “grounded” science fiction. (aka, not Star Trek but I love that too so ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ) I'm not big on spoiler filled reviews but I did have one small issue with the ending.
Very entertaining and straightforward scifi thriller based on an interesting concept. Not too many surprises and it doesn't ask much of the reader, pretty much the equivalent of a scifi popcorn blockbuster. But hey, sometimes that's exactly what you need!
It's probably more like 3.5 but it's better than most stuff I rate 3 stars so I rounded up. I enjoyed the murder plot and the characters. It balanced the mystery with realities of a different lifestyle. The characters felt fleshed out and none of the named characters felt like place holders. My main complaints is it just didn't push certain plot points far enough. For instance, we see the digital world that the locked in have access to, but it feels more like a surface glance. Given the main character is locked in, this is kind of disappointing.
My favorite bit from this book:
“Describe the strength of that belief.”
“Strong as iron,” I said. “Strong as oak.”
“Iron rusts. Oak burns.”
This is honestly my platonic ideal of comfort reading. The mystery is tricky enough to not be predictable, but also not so obscure that the plot twists were frustrating. The main characters were fun and witty with snappy dialogue. I liked the exploration of Haden syndrome and the meaning of disability and virtual communities. I should read more Scalzi
So Lindsey Ellis mentioned this on stream, and I've been meaning to read John Scalzi's books, so this was literally my first, but she mentioned the Threeps and disability and capitalism and I was like “SOLD” and got ahold of this book not long after. It's a good book, and she was right, Scalzi has a light sort of writing. The book flies along, it's like a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of adult or scifi books that feel...like an emotionally trying situation. This has emotions to it, but nobody is like, intensely tortured or abused, it's not an intense amount of focus on suffering. We also have a disabled cyborg protagonist. He's a good guy, which is also nice, none of this tortured violent antihero stuff in other books.
As far as the actual plot–it's a detective story, about the system that has risen up around this intensely dangerous and traumatizing disease that affected people of all ages, genders and social classes. It highlights the difference between people who were minimally and maximally effected by the disease, known as Haden Syndrome.
It could have been three or more stars but I had to demote the book for the exposition dumps. At around 4/5, the plot is basically resolved by a multi page exposition. The earlier exposition dumps were irritating but after that I just was annoyed and lost interest in the characters.
I really liked the concept behind this series. It was so deep that it took quite a while for the story to get moving. I gave this a 4 star but its just barely. The author had to repeatedly try to sell us on the motivation behind the villain and I think that's because it was so convoluted and in my view not a strong motivation to do everything that happened.
Late review, I already don't remember much about this book.
This is a very formulaic detective story with a sci-fi twist. I'm not much of a fan of detective stories, but this is competent and well written tale.
I didn't like much the robot bodies controlled by the mind, which is the whole sci-fi portion of the book. But again, it was a well written story. I was particularly bothered by the lack of contra arguments when the people that were forced to live like that decided to form a nation of their own and even preached that theirs were the preferred way of living. At no point it was mentioned how the poor were supposed to deal with this.
This is a entertaining murder mystery set in the near future. The book description pretty much explains what it is all about. A fun read. 3+ stars. (I cannot quite give it four stars but three doesn't seem enough somehow. I do wish GR had a finer rating system.)
I liked it, haven't read that many SF mysteries so that's a nice change. I thought the changes to society were well thought out. There were times when I lost track of who was who but it wasn't too serious a problem. I would probably read other books in this world.
As usual Scalzi is good with the premise (like Dispatcher) and sharp with dialog. Plus point for having me completely fooled on the gender of the protagonist.
Truly, Scalzi never fails me. Not only does he write in a way I love (no long-winded, overly involved prose but straight to the point and punchy) but the concepts behind his sci-fi novels are so intriguing. This book is begging to be made into a TV series, I tell ya.
Plot: A whole new society have evolved to accommodate those who are ‘locked in' their bodies due to a terrible disease called “Haden's syndrome”. Technologies were created to give “Hadens” a way to play a part in society. They walk around in the physical world in “threeps” (robots to you and me) while their real bodies lie in bed, and they also exist in a virtual world called “the Agora”.
I would've loved to see more of the Agora, but in this book, it's all about Integrators (human rent-a-threeps) being murdered, so it is set in the real world most of the time.
As usual Scalzi writes in the first person, with our point man being Chris Shane, formerly one of the world's youngest Haden sufferers and poster boy for the cause. He is an FBI agent and his partner, an Integrator. This book moves at a nice and fast pace, and you hardly ever get bored. Lots of awesome adventure possibilities with this series and I'm glad that a second book is out soon.
PS: Do read the free online prequel novella, Unlocked first. I find that it helped me in understanding the universe. Here: https://www.tor.com/2014/05/13/unlocked-an-oral-history-of-hadens-syndrome-john-scalzi/
A really cool take on androids, social impact of creation of a new sub-society and quite interesting investigation. -1 star for a very unclimactic finish.
This was my first Scalzi book (which might be scandalous considering I'm a sci-fi lover). I liked how he randomly included homosexuality, race and sex without making a big deal about any of them and how the main character is never identified with a sex.
I listened to this book on Audible and chose Wil Wheaton as my narrator because, c'mon it's Wil Wheaton!! It came with the Novella about Hadens which I didn't listen to until after the book. But I got the gist of the The Lock In plague (which is pretty scary–it reminded me of the book/movie “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) fairly quickly, and while I had some questions about details about the disease it didn't interrupt my enjoyment of the story.
I loved the fact that it was actually a mystery/cop novel/thriller set in a sci-fi world which is always a perfect mix, just enough explaining of all the sci-fi stuff to enhance but not enough to be a distraction from a great story.