Head On

by John Scalzi

Overview

"As much as Scalzi has the scientific creativity of a Michael Crichton, he also has the procedural chops of a Stephen J. Cannell to craft a whodunit with buddy-cop charm and suspects aplenty—most of them in someone else's body." —USA Today

John Scalzi returns with Head On, the standalone follow-up to the New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed Lock In. Chilling near-future SF with the thrills of a gritty cop procedural, Head On brings Scalzi's trademark snappy dialogue and technological speculation to the future world of sports.

Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent’s head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are “threeps,” robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden’s Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real and the crowds love it.

Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.

Is it an accident or murder? FBI Agents and Haden-related crime investigators, Chris Shane and Leslie Vann, are called in to uncover the truth—and in doing so travel to the darker side of the fast-growing sport of Hilketa, where fortunes are made or lost, and where players and owners do whatever it takes to win, on and off the field.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780765388933
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/26/2019
Series:	Lock In Series , #2
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	119,963
Product dimensions:	4.10(w) x 7.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

JOHN SCALZI is one of the most popular and acclaimed SF authors to emerge in the last decade. His massively successful debut Old Man's War won him science fiction's John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His New York Times bestsellers include The Last Colony, Fuzzy Nation, and Redshirts; which won 2013's Hugo Award for Best Novel. Material from his widely read blog, Whatever, has also earned him two other Hugo Awards. Scalzi also serves as critic-at-large for LA Times.

He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Head On

"New and fresh....Scalzi's smirking, impish voice is a nice touch." —NPR

"Particularly relevant....A fun, breezy thriller, one that showcases a world that carries with it some extremely astute commentary on some of the real problems that we face in our own. " —The Verge

"The Lock In universe is as fascinating as ever....Complex, expansive....Pretty damn cool." —RT Book Reviews, 4 stars

"Head On doesn’t care if you’ve read Lock In or not, but it does care if you enjoy a mystery wrapped up inside a science fiction novel....This might even be one of the best introductions to Scalzi out there." —Culturess

"[Scalzi's] prose flows like a river, smoothly carrying us through the story; his characters are beautifully crafted; and his future world is impeccably designed, at the same time wildly imaginative and wholly plausible." —Booklist, starred review

"This taut mystery, filled with memorable characters in a well-constructed world, will keep readers on the edges of their seats." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Readers will definitely show up for the witty banter and smartass takedowns….Very clever, wonderfully satisfying fun." —Kirkus

"A snappy, cannily-driven police procedural in which Scalzi highlights and skewers contemporary issues and hypocrisies." —The Seattle Review of Books

"Scalzi is in good form again here with his usual rich blend of smart, rapid-fire dialogue and well-paced bursts of hard-hitting action." —Toronto Star

Praise for Lock In

"This is the kind of thriller that Michael Crichton, Lincoln Child, and James Rollins do so well. Add John Scalzi to that list." —Douglas Preston, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Kraken Project and Impact

"As much as Scalzi has the scientific creativity of a Michael Crichton, he also has the procedural chops of a Stephen J. Canell to craft a whodunit with buddy-cop charm and suspects aplenty—most of them in someone else's body." —USA Today

“Satisfying.” —NPR

“Scalzi takes his work to an entirely new level.” —Cory Doctorow

“A smart, thoughtful near-future thriller…. This powerful novel will intrigue and entertain both fans and newcomers.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“John Scalzi may be the most entertaining writer in SF today.” —Toronto Star

From the Publisher

★ 03/05/2018
Hugo-winner Scalzi returns to the fascinating world of the near-future thriller Lock In with this provocative sequel. Chris Shane was the poster child for Haden’s syndrome, a condition in which a lively mind is trapped in an unresponsive body. Like other “Hadens,” Chris uses an implanted neural network to control a “threep,” an android body, and interact with the rest of the corporeal world. Chris works as an FBI agent handling Haden’s-related cases alongside partner Leslie Vann. This time, they are called to investigate the suspicious death of professional hilketa player Duane Chapman during a match. Hilketa (it means “murder” in Basque) is a violent sport of carnage and decapitations played by Hadens in specially built threeps; the damage dealt to Chapman’s threep shouldn’t have affected his physical body, but he reported unusual pain from his threep’s injuries and then died. The sport is growing in popularity and money-making potential, bringing the possibility of corruption. Is the North American Hilketa League trying to cover up some skullduggery, or did Chapman’s jilted wife kill him? Chris and Leslie need to uncover the truth before the tangled case ignites a national scandal. Scalzi expands his complex future with master strokes, balancing buddy-cop wryness with thought-provoking social and political commentary. This taut mystery, filled with memorable characters in a well-constructed world, will keep readers on the edges of their seats. (Apr.)Correction: An earlier version of this review misstated the title of the previous book in the series. It also misstated the gender of a character.

Publishers Weekly

03/15/2018
The latest hot sport Hilketa consists of teams of players who attack each other with weaponry, rip off their opponent's head, and send it through the goalposts. With "threeps" (robot bodies controlled by those afflicted with Haden's Syndrome) as players, this violent game attracts major crowds and investors until one star athlete dies in the middle of a game under mysterious circumstances. FBI agents Chris Shane and Leslie Vann (introduced in Lock In) are called in once again to investigate this Haden-related crime and discover a darker world of sex, drugs, and deals gone wrong. When Shane's parents are courted as possible investors in the game, he must use his own experience as a Haden and his investigative skills to discover the truth before more deaths accumulate. VERDICT This sequel to Lock In continues the intriguing partnership of two agents with their own unique Haden experiences in a world not too far removed from our own. Scalzi's accessible prose will keep readers on a page-turning course to the book's finale. [See Prepub Alert, 11/15/17.]—Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton

Library Journal

2018-02-06
The long-awaited second in a series (Lock In, 2014) that explores disability politics within the context of a near-future techno-thriller.FBI Agent Chris Shane (gender carefully unspecified by the author) is a Haden, a survivor of a devastating meningitislike disease that has left them "locked inside" their body, able to interact with others only virtually or via sophisticated robots known as "threeps." Chris and their partner, senior Agent Leslie Vann, investigate scandal and foul play in the world of Hilketa, a violent sport played by Haden-piloted threeps in which the objective is to tear the head off a designated threep and carry it to the goal. Promising player Duane Chapman inexplicably dies during a game intended to recruit new investors for the sport, and a league official who attempts to hide data about the suspicious incident commits suicide soon after. Labeling Chapman's death a murder, Shane and Vann follow a trail obscured by arson, kinky affairs, FBI mishandling, threep attacks, and slimy lawyers to a scheme concerning Hilketa's shady (and shaky) financing. As in the previous installment, the villain is obvious halfway through; the true puzzle is figuring out the details of and the motivations behind the complex plot. There is plenty of trenchant commentary on disability rights, prejudice against minorities, and the ways in which plutocrats take advantage of government funding. Readers will definitely show up for the witty banter and smartass takedowns Scalzi (The Collapsing Empire, 2017, etc.) liberally sprinkles through all his novels. They may be less amused at Scalzi's running joke about the way Chris' threeps are always being destroyed, reminiscent of how Stephanie Plum's cars are always exploding in Janet Evanovich's novels; this sort of mild physical humor gets tired quickly. There's also a vital clue that's somewhat too reminiscent of a plot point in Men in Black.Very clever, wonderfully satisfying fun.

Kirkus Reviews