john Scalzi is understood for his witty technological know-how fiction thrillers. Old Guy ’s Battle and its sequels are his tackle army technological know-how fiction, while ultimate 12 months ’s Collapsing Empire was a new foray into space opera. His contemporary novel Head On is a techno-thriller concerning robotic sports activities leagues and murder, and it ’s a e-book that ’s in particular related in our own, technological international.
Some spoilers beforehand for Head On.
Head On is the sequel to Scalzi ’s 2014 thriller Lock In and an accompanying novella, Unlocked: An Oral Historical Past of Haden ’s Syndrome. In every, he introduces readers to a world that ’s skilled a clinical catastrophe: a flu pandemic infected and killed tens of millions of individuals around the global, and left a few of the survivors with Haden ’s Syndrome, a condition that left them “locked in” to their our bodies. They had been alive, however they couldn ’t move or interact with their atmosphere. the us government began a big initiative to assist rehabilitate those survivors, known as Hadens, developing neural nets that allowed them to interface with robot our bodies named Threeps (nicknamed for C-3PO from Famous Person Wars), digital worlds, and those known as Integrators, whom Hadens can take over and remotely pilot.
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In Lock In, Scalzi presented readers to Chris Shane, a Haden FBI agent who’s partnered with senior Leslie Vann. The pair investigates the homicide of an Integrator, which ended in a larger conspiracy. In Head On, the pair is again tasked with investigating the death of a Haden athlete named Duane Chapman. Chapman is a player in a rising game known as Hilketa, wherein the gamers pilot particularly designed robot bodies and take a look at to sever the head from a randomly decided on opponent. His demise is a blow to the newfangled sport, that is trying to soar to the worldwide level. As Shane and Vann dig into the athlete ’s death, they find a number of suspects and are ultimately resulted in an entire-blown conspiracy concerning shady firms and the future of the Hilketa league itself.
Scalzi never reveals Shane ’s gender, reasoning that it would be tricky to tell apart in robotic our bodies, additionally saying that Hadens may effectively regulate how they look to the surface international. Audible has due to the fact that launched a couple of audiobook versions, every with a different narrator, Amber Benson and Wil Wheaton.
The Radical is a fast-paced, compelling thriller now not unlike Isaac Asimov ’s robotic novels. Scalzi takes readers during the logical investigative steps regarding Chapman ’s demise, assembling a bigger conspiracy that ’s built on organized crime, cash laundering, and extra. While the e-book is a fun diversion, it ’s also an fascinating addition to the sector that Scalzi set up in Lock In, and it serves as a fair parable for how the arena deals with — and takes benefit of — marginalized communities.
Scalzi ’s Unlocked offered and defined this world ’s backstory and the political undercurrents that have formed the sector as we meet the characters in Lock In. After the moon shot initiative that helped improve the technology that allows (and ultimately subsidizes) Haden ’s health care, a invoice known as the Abrams-Kettering Invoice pulls again on that care, in the long run riding the action in both Lock In and Head On. As a consequence, Head On is essentially a book approximately unintentional results. The creation of Threeps and digital spaces for Hadens brings in regards to the upward thrust of a unique neighborhood of individuals with a shared, semiprotected experience of being locked into their our bodies. The pullback on their health care leads many to attempt to find a solution to survive, including violent sports activities that common people can ’t literally participate in.
But regular people are starting to capture up. The generation that enables Hadens to outlive and have interaction with the arena is beginning to cross mainstream. Non-Hadens want to get in at the digital worlds and robot our bodies that the Hadens require, and there are protesters at Hilketa games who bitch that they ’re being discriminated against. As the sector begins to modify, some of those persons are beginning to find ways to take benefit of the situation. Hilketa teams fee non-Hadens a premium value to get “premium” options like clinical readouts of Hadens all over video games, while some other trade particular person wants to strengthen a ZipCar-like Haden service for individuals (basically non-Hadens) to use the robotic Threeps once they ’re no longer in use.
In The Long Run, Head On is a amusing, breezy mystery, one that showcases an international that carries with it a few extraordinarily astute statement on a few of the real problems that we are facing in our own. that is an example where the sector seems like it ’s a bit of greater than the sum of its individual portions, and hopefully, we ’re not done with it but.