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| (Cover Artist: Peter Lutjen) |
On the surface, Lock In is very unapologetically a noir-mystery centering around the exploits of a chain-smoking FBI agent struggling to solve a set of gruesome murders, with the novel's sci-fi elements manifesting via the fact that this otherwise familiar story is told (essentially) from the perspective of this woman's android coworker. Predictable to the crime-thriller genre, there is an elaborate plot-line involving murder and corporate espionage, and a long list of suspects whom the protagonists must investigate one by one as the mystery deepens. All the while, this story takes place within the context of a larger narrative involving hundreds of thousands of beings who, at least outwardly, appear to be sentient androids who in the novel's near-future version of America have started organizing a march on Washington to advocate for their rights.
In short, Lock In should at best be a moderately interesting work--a novel whose plot basically amounts to what you would expect from an episode of CSI or Law & Order if written (inexplicably) by Issac Asimov. And yet, similar to Scalzi's other work (2012's Redshirts, and 2022's The Kaiju Preservation Society) Lock In manages to interweave these seemingly shallow tropes with a deeper narrative kept hidden in plain sight, ultimately conducting a twist to one of the foundational mythologies of this book's genre that allows Scalzi to explore a set of issues normally ignored even by the more socially conscious branches of science fiction. Lock In is in part a murder mystery with robots added for fun, but its also very overtly a novel about disability rights, and the endlessly relevant politics associated with when those rights are incorrectly perceived to be luxuries by society at large.
Lock In (Plot Summary)
Lock In begins some 25 years after a deadly strain of the flu known as Haden's syndrome left 1% of the Earth's population permanently paralyzed (400 million people, as the book's prologue helpfully points out). With this context established, the book starts by introducing the readers to Chris Shane, a gender-neutral young person struggling to distance themself from a childhood spent in the public eye.
Chris was afflicted with Haden's syndrome as an infant, and as a result is now something of an unwilling celebrity. After their father--a retired baseball star-turned-philanthropist--responded to his child's illness by using his own considerable wealth and fame to jumpstart research into neural imaging and robotics, Chris became a very literal poster child for the plight of the 400 million individuals whom Haden's syndrome had left paralyzed, and spent much of their early life advocating for the creation of advanced robotic bodies which those with Hadens syndrome could use.
Now, two-and-a-half decades later, the results of the initiatives championed by Chris's father are a world in which Brain-Computer Interfaces allow those afflicted with Haden's Syndrome (known colloquially as "Hadens") to continue to live independent lives via the use of autonomous remote control androids called "threeps." Thanks to this technology, those who would otherwise be paralyzed for life now live almost entirely through humanoid robots that allow them to remotely interact with others, even as their physical bodies remain immobilized by their condition.
As Lock In opens however, Chris travels via their own threep to a new job as an FBI agent just as congress has passed the controversial "Abrams-Kettering bill"--a policy which privatizes the multi-million dollar social support programs which Hadens need to survive. Chris only barely has time to ponder whether or not to participate in the nation-wide strike that numerous Haden's rights groups declare before they are promptly called to a crime scene by their new boss--the emotionally jaded FBI agent Leslie Vann.
There, Chris and Vann find a bewilderingly gruesome murder whose only logical suspect--the brother of a prominent figure in the Haden's rights movement itself--would leave this case a clear-cut homicide but for the fact that Vann is convinced there must be something more. Not only does Vann's prime suspect in this case behave as if he's hiding something worth more to him than avoiding life in prison, but the murder victim himself seems to have emerged practically out of thin air--there being no record of this man's existence prior to the day he spontaneously turned up dead in a hotel room.
Review
The thing that makes Lock In such an interesting novel isn't so much the murder-mystery plot that Scalzi constructs, but how he weaves an unexpectedly thoughtful examination of various social issues relating to disability rights into a genuinely solid and engaging crime-thriller narrative.
As the book's story develops further, both Chris and Vann are thrust into a complicated investigation that sends them in and out of various levels of the Haden's rights movement, in the process allowing Scalzi to explore the diverse ways in which vested societal prejudices change the experience of Haden's syndrome with regards to classism, racism, and ableism. It's Scalzi's gentle but nevertheless piercing examination of these issues that forms Lock In's true subject, with the story ultimately using the framework provided by its murder mystery plot as a vehicle to explore issues related to disability rights, and the politics of visibility.
One particularly memorable scene in this regard comes when Chris visits a so-called "Haden only" housing complex with a prospective landlord. Here, Chris is given a tour of an extremely cheap apartment, and the exchange that follows between Chris and the Landlord reveals the way in which the experience of Haden's syndrome changes depending on income. In this scene, Chris quickly realizes that despite the very real obstacles they personally have faced as a result of their disability, there are also certain basic rights which the wealth they have inherited from their father ensures will never be taken from them.
"This isn't an apartment, it's a closet," I said, stepping forward to let Robinson [the landlord] in.
"I usually think of it as a bathroom," Robinson said, and pointed to a small tiled area, which had a bank of electrical outlets and a couple of covered drains on the floor, flush with the tile. "That's the medical nook, by the way, right where the toilet would be."
"You're not exactly giving me the hard sell on this Apartment, Ms. Robinson," I said.
"Well, to be fair, if all you're looking to do is park your threep every night, this isn't a bad choice," Robinson said. She pointed to the back right corner where grooves and high voltage outlets were set into the wall, ready to receive inductive chargers. "It's designed with standard threep cradles in mind, and the hardwired and wireless networks are fast and have deep through-put. [...] You don't have inessential things taking up space, like closets and sinks. It's everything you need and absolutely nothing you don't."
"I hate it," I said.
"I thought you might" said Robinson. "That's why I showed it to you first." (p.67)
This passage introduces what soon becomes one of Lock In's more intriguing subjects, which is the way in which the effects of Haden's syndrome are in the novel's world shown to often function as justifications for subjecting those with this disability to treatment that would otherwise be recognized as inhumane, if not even criminal. In the above scene, Chris arrives in the "efficiency apartment" only to find an isolating closet built to do little more than store a human body. Even the most basic amenities have been removed because they are not deemed necessary to those with this condition, with all that is left being the plumbing needed to dispose of bodily waste.
The implication is that for low-income Hadens, the paralysis which these peoples' condition causes has been taken by people like Robinson as a justification for placing them in spaces which no non-paralyzed person would tolerate. That is, because Hadens are paralyzed, Chris realizes in this scene how many non-Hadens like Robinson assume that individuals with this condition lack not only the physical ability to create a comfortable living space, but also the need to do so. This point is driven home by the conclusion of the scene, in which Chris coldly responds to Robinson's insinuation that Hadens are incapable of perceiving their surroundings by saying "We're locked in, not unconscious. Trust me Ms Robinson. We notice where our bodies are. We notice it every moment we're awake." (p.68)
A similarly interesting dynamic appears later on in the novel. Here, while working for Vann, Chris does investigative work in Los Angeles, and rather than physically moving their threep across the country, simply connects wirelessly to a spare threep kept on hand by that particular FBI office. Given that those with Hadens syndrome have brain implants that technically allow them to connect to inactive threeps anywhere in the world, the ability to instantly transfer their consciousness between bodies gives Chris a convenient advantage when it comes to cutting down on travel expenses.
However, upon shutting down the link they have with their own exceedingly expensive "high end" threep, Chris immediately learns that this ability to switch bodies is not seen by the FBI as the advantage it should represent. After connecting to the spare threep which this particular office is required by law to keep on hand, they find that this threep is in fact a heavily damaged machine that is only barely functional (having been immobilized in a gunfight several years earlier and then never replaced). What's more concerning is that when Chris voices this issue to the agent who greets them, their concerns about whether or not they will be able to do their job are immediately dismissed. The agent in question, who is named Ibanez, very overtly indicates to Chris that she doesn't have time to ensure that they retain basic capabilities like the ability to move. As Chris "arrives" at the Los Angeles office, the exact exchange reads:
"You understand that having a threep that can't move its legs is going to be a hinderance to the work I need to do today," I said.
Ibanez stepped to the side and then motioned to the wheelchair she had been standing in front of.
"A wheelchair," I said.
"Yes," Ibanez said.
"A threep in a wheelchair."
"Yes," Ibanez repeated.
"You understand the irony, right?"
"This office is ADA compliant," Ibanez said. "And as I understand it you are going to a post office, which are also by law required to be ADA compliant. This should be sufficient."
"You're actually serious about this," I said.
"It's what we have available at the moment," Ibanez said. "We could rent you a threep, but that would require approvals and paperwork. You'd be here all day." (p.191-192)
Critical to this exchange is not the fact that Chris balks at the prospect of using a wheelchair (a device which millions of people regularly rely on for freedom of movement), but rather the way in which the failure of the FBI to uphold its own policy is an error which Chris is expected by Ibanez to take responsibility for. Ibanez makes a point in this scene of offering Chris the option of spending the time and effort required to rent a more functional threep, but makes it clear that this will cause them both undue stress. Essentially, Ibanez requires that Chris take responsibility for her own failure to account for their disability.
The commentary which Scalzi produces here about both the importance of disability services, and how such services come to be maligned, is only further reenforced by the fact that Chris's own wealth as the child of a famous philanthropist is something that they routinely find themselves forced to turn to in order to function. In the latter scene at the FBI office, Chris ultimately chooses to go to a private "threep dealership" nearby, and rent a threep via their own out-of-pocket cash--a decision which ultimately proves to be a vital plot point in the events which follow. While Chris's wealth is shown to allow them to partially mitigate the effects of the discrimination they have already faced, Scalzi is always careful to highlight how this is not the case for everyone with Chris's disability.
The end result of sequences like these is that Scalzi is able to portray the extent to which the experience of disability is socially constructed. That is, these experiences derive not from the physical disability Chris lives with, but rather the way in which those around Chris both do and do not respond to the reality of their condition. Provided with the proper support services, people like Chris are perfectly capable of functioning in their jobs, and yet Chris lives in a society where the services they need are increasingly being viewed as luxuries which they should be expected to pay for.
Criticisms/Final Thoughts
It's almost inevitable that for a book whose themes are as compelling as those explored in Lock In, the story's final chapters would come across as anti-climactic. While the murder-mystery plot which Scalzi uses as the driving force behind this narrative functions primarily as a vehicle for an exploration of larger social issues, it's also the case that the book's genre requires that Scalzi ultimately allow this secondary plot to take center-stage when this story reaches its conclusion.
The result is that by the time that Chris and Vann corner the murderer they've spent the entire novel pursuing (successfully playing some mind games with this book's villain in a way that tricks that person into confessing to their crimes without realizing it), Scalzi's accompanying explorations of the issues of intersectionality, ablism, and the prevalence of systemic micro-aggressions have grown so fascinating that it's almost disappointing to see the book be forced to turn away from these themes in its final chapters.
Then again, for a novel whose plot dealt with the entrenched nature of societal prejudice via the perspective (basically) of two police officers, perhaps having Lock In leave its more interesting themes and questions unresolved brings a wry commentary to this narrative.
Like the best crime stories, the mystery around which Lock In revolves is merely a vehicle by which many larger social issues can be explored, and so by letting the novel's story finish as abruptly as it does, Scalzi is able to highlight the true focus of his narrative. There are some crimes that have clearly defined perpetrators--people who can be arrested, proven guilty, and sent to jail. Yet these crimes are, in the grand scheme of things, also rare. The true atrocities of the world often cannot be attributed to one single person, and so as dedicated as Chris and Vann are to their jobs, there's a limit to the social change they can enact on the world.
They are, after all, only the FBI.