Lock in by John Scalzi

Lock in by John Scalzi

A blazingly inventive near-future thriller from the best-selling, Hugo Award-winning John Scalzi.

Not too long from today, a new, highly contagious virus makes its way across the globe. Most who get sick experience nothing worse than flu, fever and headaches. But for the unlucky one percent - and nearly five million souls in the United States alone - the disease causes "Lock In": Victims fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus. The disease affects young, old, rich, poor, people of every color and creed. The world changes to meet the challenge.

A quarter of a century later, in a world shaped by what's now known as "Haden's syndrome," rookie FBI agent Chris Shane is paired with veteran agent Leslie Vann. The two of them are assigned what appears to be a Haden-related murder at the Watergate Hotel, with a suspect who is an "integrator" - someone who can let the locked in borrow their bodies for a time. If the Integrator was carrying a Haden client, then naming the suspect for the murder becomes that much more complicated.

But "complicated" doesn't begin to describe it. As Shane and Vann began to unravel the threads of the murder, it becomes clear that the real mystery - and the real crime - is bigger than anyone could have imagined. The world of the locked in is changing, and with the change comes opportunities that the ambitious will seize at any cost. The investigation that began as a murder case takes Shane and Vann from the halls of corporate power to the virtual spaces of the locked in, and to the very heart of an emerging, surprising new human culture. It's nothing you could have expected.

Old Man's War Series
#1 Old Man's War
#2 The Ghost Brigades
#3 The Last Colony
#4 Zoe's Tale
#5 The Human Division
#6 The End of All Things
Short fiction: "After the Coup"

Other Tor Books
The Android's Dream
Agent to the Stars
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded
Fuzzy Nation
Redshirts
Lock In
The Collapsing Empire (forthcoming)

The 2006 John W. Campbell Award went to John Scalzi. He won the Campbell Award for Outstanding New Writer, and his debut novel, Old Man's War, was a Hugo Award finalist for science fiction. The Ghost Brigades, The Android's Dream, and The Last Colony are among his other works. He has received the Hugo Award, the Romantic Times Critics Choice Award for science fiction, the Seiun, the Kurd Lasswitz, and the Geffen awards, among others. His blog, Whatever, is one of the most popular in current science fiction.

Scalzi was born and reared in California and attended the University of Chicago. He and his wife and daughter live in southern Ohio.