I was drawn to John Scalzi's book "Lock In" because of its medical premise. This novel, set in the "near future," describes the aftermath of a virus which causes 1% of its victims to experience something similar to "locked in syndrome." Locked in syndrome is a terribly scary disease where a brainstem injury such a stroke causes someone to be completely paralyzed but cognitively intact (eye control is usually preserved). Scalzi imagines a world where a significant portion of the population has this syndrome, and so technologies, industries, and government regulations have all been developed to cater to these victims. In this science fiction book, those who are "locked in" are able to mentally control mechanical robots, and in some cases, control other consenting humans. The novel is a police procedural novel that raises questions about free will when a person seemingly controlled by a locked in person commits a crime. Lately, I have been reading a good amount of science fiction, and as far as that genre goes, this book was hard to put down. More than just a crime thriller, it engages questions of societal discrimination, philosophy and ethics, and possibilities in futuristic science.
Image shown under Fair Use, from Wikipedia.
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