Head On (Lock In, 3) - Softcover

Scalzi, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1509835105 ISBN 13: 9781509835102

Publisher: Tor, 2018

Synopsis

John Scalzi's Head On, is a 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.

To some left with nothing, winning becomes everything . . .

In a post-virus world, a daring sport is taking the US by storm. It’s frenetic, violent and involves teams attacking one another with swords and hammers. The aim: to obtain your opponent’s head and carry it through the goalposts. Impossible? Not if the players have Haden’s Syndrome. Unable to move, Haden’s sufferers use robot bodies, which they operate mentally. So in this sport anything goes, no one gets hurt – and crowds and competitors love it. Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.

But is it an accident? FBI agents Chris Shane and Leslie Vann are determined to find out. In this game, fortunes can be made – or lost. And both players and owners will do whatever it takes to win, on and off the field.

About this title

About the Author

John Scalzi is one of the most popular and acclaimed SF authors of his generation. His 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, Lock In, Redshirts, which won 2013’s Hugo Award for Best Novel, The Last Emperox and The Kaiju Preservation Society. Material from his widely read blog Whatever has also earned him two other Hugo Awards. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.

From the Back Cover

To some left with nothing, winning becomes everything

In a post-virus world, a daring sport is taking the US by storm. It’s frenetic, violent and involves teams attacking one another with swords and hammers. The aim: to obtain your opponent’s head and carry it through the goalposts. Impossible? Not if the players have Hayden’s Syndrome. Unable to move, Hayden’s sufferers use robot bodies, which they operate mentally. So in this sport anything goes, no one gets hurt – and crowds and competitors love it. Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.

But is it an accident? FBI agents Chris Shane and Leslie Vann are determined to find out. In this game, fortunes can be made – or lost. And both players and owners will do whatever it takes to win, on and off the field.

Praise for John Scalzi

‘Clever dialogue, fast-paced story and strong characters’
The Times

‘Plot twists worthy of a Raymond Chandler novel’
Huffington Post

‘Top-notch’
Washington Post

From the Inside Flap

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Tor
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1509835105
• ISBN 13: 9781509835102
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336