Monday Review: Lock In by John Scalzi

image via amazon.com

When Luke and I discussed How to Train Your Dragon on the podcast last week, we touched briefly upon the idea of Hiccup and Toothless being two of few good representations of a young adult fantasy character with disabilities.

Why good?

Good because, while both find challenges in their missing limbs (a tail fin in the case of Toothless and an amputated foot in the case of Hiccup) both find ways to compensate.  In neither case, however, is the compensation perfect: Toothless literally falls out of the sky when his prosthetic tail fin is severed and Hiccup will never be the perfect chieftain he thinks his father wants (which, in the end is more his issue than Stoic’s, but internalization doesn’t make it any less of an issue).  Imagine, an adequate but not perfect solution.  Sort of like…

… wait for it …

life.

image via
screen relish.com

The disability, in these cases, is an integrated part of the character rather than a trope or a device.  The character is not who he is because of the disability and the disability isn’t a mechanism for a specific plot point.  It’s a very, very small, though not unimportant, part of who Toothless is.  It shapes Hiccup but doesn’t define him.

What does all of this have to do with John Scalzi’s new book?

Same principal in big kid form and that is a big flipping deal.

Agent Chris Shane is, quite literally, locked in his own body, autonomic and higher function intact but rendered completely unable to move by anatomical cerebral changes, the scars of Haden’s Syndrome.  He has been locked in since he was a child.

Locked in but not trapped.  Far from trapped.

image via http://vespertellino.deviantart.com/art/Cyborg-face-324405164

He, like all those locked in, has been implanted with a neural net, a prosthetic of a sort, that allows him to move his mind and consciousness into a robotic body.  He has gone on vacations.  He has chosen a career path.  He has an apartment and friends.  Is it a perfect solution?  Absolutely not.  If his shell is damaged, he’s out of commission until he can get a new one.  His body is vulnerable to attack without any ability to respond or even call for help.  And yet, somehow, being locked in doesn’t define Shane.  It’s an aspect of who he is, an important one, one without which he isn’t him.

And Chris Shane likes who he is.  He resents the way his lock in is paraded before the world.  He resents being a poster child for his father’s political aspirations.  But the lock in itself?  He accepts it.  Integrates it.  Never forgets it but doesn’t allow it to rule him.

Sort of like…

… wait for it…

… life.

(There’s a lot more to Lock In than this, but we’re eyeing it for a future pod and I don’t want to shoot my whole opinion wad on the first go-round)

Science fiction and fantasy are changing, kids.  Women in charge, three to five pronouns per society, individuals with disabilities who are people instead of representations or points being made.

image via nationalgeographic.com

Exciting times.

Braves new worlds.

Get to reading.