In early 2017, on the recommendation of a librarian friend who shares sci fi love, I picked up Lock In, by John Scalzi. It was a set-up that wouldn’t seem too unlikely in the near future: A contagious virus invades society, taking down everyone who catches it with headaches, fever, and other flu-like symptoms; but a certain small but significant percentage of those who contract it are then afflicted with a follow-up condition termed “lock in.” They are completely and terrifyingly awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to any kind of stimulus. The disease, which is named Haden’s Syndrome after its most famous victim (the First Lady), attacks indiscriminately, affecting people across all spectrums.

Because of the high profile of some of its victims, researchers go all out to solve the various problems of Haden’s Syndrome. Although they haven’t yet come up with a cure, they develop several “work-arounds,” including the implantation of a neural network in the brain of its sufferers that allows them to project their conscious selves—brain, personality, however you want to term it—into mobile units or robots called “threeps” (after, of course, C3PO). Additionally, there are also certain humans who can act as “Integrators” and carry the personality of the Haden within their head, so that a Haden could hire the services of a human with this ability and training and use their body to, say, attend a business meeting, have a romantic evening, or what have you.

The scientific explanation for exactly how all of this works is a bit hazy; but the effect of the science is such a fun concept to play around with that the reader is able to suspend disbelief and go with it. The current story to which all of this is background is a police procedural in which two FBI agents, one a Haden, the other a former Integrator, are assigned a case in which a Haden-related murder may have been committed. Think of the added complexity of solving a murder in which someone else’s personality may have been “driving” the body that committed the crime!

I loved this first book. It was a delightful combination of science fiction and murder mystery—it felt like Asimov’s ‘Lige Bailey and Daneel Olivaw were back, but younger, wittier, fresh. I loved the complexity created by people who could jump from threep to threep and thereby travel wherever, or Integrate to “ride” in someone else’s head/body—it made it difficult to solve crime, that’s for sure. I also enjoyed the widening of the plot to include the changing world of the Haden society.

Last week, I discovered there was a sequel to Lock In on the library shelf and eagerly checked it out. Head On is billed as a stand-alone, but I personally don’t think you could read it without having more knowledge about this world-built view than is given in the opening synopsis.

FBI agents Chris Shane and Leslie Vann are back, investigating the mysterious death of a professional athlete during a game of Hilketa, a rather medieval sport in which all the players are Haden’s Syndrome folks, using “threeps” to play the game. (It features swords and hammers, and a lot of tearing off and punting of heads through goalposts. Yes, literal robot heads.) What follows is a multi-city investigation involving adultery, deception, personal and corporate speculation, and a sports league in which suddenly murder and violent crime are everywhere, as someone desperately tries to cover up their plan to pervert the sport for their own profit.

I enjoyed this; but not with quite the same pure sense of enjoyment I had from the first book. Again, it’s more of a police procedural than it is a science fiction novel, but with the novelty of Haden’s people being able to jump from town to car to office as long as there is a threep available to receive them, while not being able to do some of the things regular people consider second nature. As a vehicle for speculation about such wide-ranging themes as sexism, ableism, socioeconomic status, and so on, it was admirable; but for me, the story got unnecessarily convoluted with the addition of shady character after red herring after reluctant ally, to the point where I got the corporate guys’ lawyer’s name mixed up with that of a Haden caregiver’s, and misunderstood one passage rather badly until I got that straightened out. I did enjoy all the mayhem, but felt like I needed to understand a little better what was going on as it happened, instead of waiting for the big reveal at the end.

It’s an odd hybrid of fast pacing with extensive explication that I’m not sure would work for either someone in search of a thriller or someone who wanted a complex sci fi story, so a reader needs to be either a fan of both those genres, or have tolerance for one while reading it for the other. As a fan of both, I enjoyed it quite a bit.