Lock In

First off, the physical condition of beling 'locked in' is not fictional. Whether Scalzi knew this or not when staring on this story is unknown. The reality for hundreds of victims in the early 20th century was far less empowering and optimistic and far more pathetic and dehumanizing than this story would have you believe.

To understand the reality of humans truly being 'locked in', read the great Olver Sacks book "Awakenings", and then watch the film of the same name. During the 1918-19 influenza pandemic that killed millions of people around the world, many others were instead 'locked in', or turned into essentially wax figures which still lived but could no longer interact in any meaningful way.

It appears this premise is what motivated Scalzi to write a novel aobut what might have happened to these living flu victims if technology was available to rebuild their lives without a human body.

While this is a fascinating what if, and SF is all about what if, there is a serious flaw in the understanding of the human body at idle. Scalzi believes that the human body can be indefinitely maintained just by floating in a tank with the appropriate inputs and waste disposal, so long as the mind is intact. This is tragically incorrect. The body is not in stasis when idle. It is slowly, inexorably degenerating, as anyone with a broken limb can attest when the cast comes off. This is only increased when there is literally no stimulus, and thus the folks who are 'locked in' as the novel describes woudl experience their own bodies disintegrating steadily until the body was completely useles and unrecoverable.

Knowing this but ignoring it makes much of the premise of the novel deeply flawed, and damages the story on many levels. It would have made much more sense for Scalzi to use his earlier 'brain in a box' idea from the Old Man's War series, but that didn't have the same dramatic frission.

Scalzi here has swung for the fences an hit a pop fly. Turn off your breain and be content with the social commentary instead.