Head On (Narrated by Wil Wheaton)

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars | 3,805 ratings

Price: 29.66

Last update: 11-16-2024


About this item

"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 stand-alone follow-up to the New York Times best-selling 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.


Top reviews from the United States

James B. Gibson
5.0 out of 5 stars Bring Back Wil Wheaton!
Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2024
This is a fine book, both as a mystery and a sequel to Locked in. But the audio book misses Wil Wheaton’ great interpretation of Scalzi’s writing.
Mike Kremen
4.0 out of 5 stars 3.5*
Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2018
3.5*

Short Version: I liked this book. I liked the first in this series (?), Lock In, better, as the concepts were fresher. I like the non-sex-defined narrator/main character and the partner, but I have issues stylistically. I can see this being a long-running series.

Long Version (potential spoilers): Look, I finished the book in 2 days. It goes quickly, which is clearly intentional. But, now that we are two books in, it is also clear that the style is quite intentional. How would I best describe the style of writing here? Aggressively bland. If Scalzi is trying to corner a sub-market that otherwise doesn't really exist outside of Asimov's R. Daneel Olivaw, he might be having Pyrrhic success. Those books, while I am sure not current any longer regarding cultural issues, were not this bland.

What do I mean when I say bland? Here are a couple of ways I can comparatively describe it: 1) FBI in the 50s bland, in that agents were to have no facial hair and no personality (which has been depicted in fiction ad nauseum); 2) Yankees in the 90s bland? Nope, there was too much personality there; 3) Threep bland - i.e. threeps are just shells Hadens get into, so they're usually not supremely detailed and three dimensional people in their own right - the style matches that level of underdevelopment.

But why would you say this was on purpose, you might ask. This book feels like the opposite of 'turning it to 11'. You know how tons of science fiction and fantasy books have a bit of wow factor for showing the reader things that are clearly not in our world? This book makes all of those things mundane and lived in, as if OF COURSE these things exist and people procedurally know what to do. Also, having read Old Man's War (some wow factor), Redshirts (some solid satire), and the Collapsing Empire (wow, humor, and some cursing for color to boot), it is clear to me that the style here is not the 'natural speaking voice' of the author, but has to be an active focus.

Despite the style, there's plenty to like here, generally, including plenty of current-type issues: a professional sports league started around the newly handi-capable that has issues with growing, surviving, inclusion and exclusion (if you want, there's even a Kaepernick analogue - if you don't, it's different enough not to be right on the nose); tech-supported CSI; complications in sexual relationships when binary is further and further out the window... And more. All of it is built out enough that it isn't just mentioned, it is detailed enough that the few things the story needs are available.

Look, this series is certainly good enough. Scalzi could probably, audience demand depending, write 20 of these with how open this world is, and even with the issue I detailed above, I'd probably read them. But I'm not sure I'd like them.
ToldYouSo
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic read, very solid detective work, but the “Lock In” novels are scary.
Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2018
As my review title says, these novels are scary —not Steven King scary, but a more realistic type of scary. I wouldn’t call the Lock In novels dystopian fiction, because it may someday be possible, when we learn more about the brain’s “wiring” and we make great advances in neural nets, to accomplish the feats described in these books. I’m old enough to know it it won’t happen in my lifetime, but if you’re in your twenties, you might see something aporoaching this. For those who doubt, just remember that 25 years ago we still had PC programs that had to run directly under DOS because they wouldn’t run under the Windows then available.*

*For those young enough to have no idea what I’m referring to with my reference, nearly all “real” video games and many other non-Microsoft programs required editing of the autoexec.bat and/or config.sys files to specify how memory above 640K (yes, K!) was to be treated — as extended or expanded memory. For more info, Google DOS expanded memory.
mpeterke
4.0 out of 5 stars Scalzi is brilliant!
Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2018
First I have to state Scalzi is still at the top of my most favorite authors if not the most favorite. I would have liked to give this one 4.5 stars if that would be possible, but after much consideration, I decided to give it 4.

This is fantastically written, and the dialogues are witty and funny as hell. It almost felt like sometimes that the characters are in a Quentin Tarantino movie. The world is also really interesting and very coherent. I hope he will continue to write stories happening here.

So, the sole reason I gave it only 4 is that this is first and foremost a detective story in a sci-fi setting and I like his space operas much better. It is a brilliant and complicated detective story, with conspiracy and plot twists all the way. If that's your genre, you will love this. If you like sci-fi as well, you will be absolutely lost in this one.

I feel like this is somewhat similar to Asimov's detective stories, which I also liked, but were never my favorites among his works.

So, I recommend this one wholeheartedly either to crime story or sci-fi fans and if you are both, it's even better.

Meanwhile, I am sure I will buy and read any other books by Scalzi if he decides to continue this saga, but I'm eagerly waiting for him to continue the Interdependency series or maybe dare to dream about another installment in the Old Man's War books.
David Lillie
5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely awesome.
Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2018
I got tired of buying books with interesting premises that presented shallow characters, plot holes big enough for the entire planet to fall through, and the overall feel of an 8th grade attempt to write sci-fi. So, I bought Scalzi's book and devoured it! Best decision I've made in months.

Scalzi creates not only a complete new sport including rules, players, and strategies, he also creates a new disease with symptoms, treatment, and the ability for the 'Hadens' (afflicted persons) to psychically interact with others AND become the stars of his new sport!

And that's just the background for a whodunnit that is multinational in scope, features two great FBI agent characters, and hinges on a cat! FUN is a serious understatement for this book.

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