Head on

Locations
Call Number: Science Fiction / Scalzi, John, Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / General / Scalzi, John
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Science Fiction / Scalzi, John	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / General / Scalzi, John	4-week checkout	Due 05-06-2024

"A Tom Doherty Associates book."
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.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

A great follow up to the first submitted by kuz_a on July 16, 2018, 1:12pm The sequel to " Locked in" is back with many of the same enjoyable elements of the first: action-adventure crime solving (with robot decapitation to boot!), whimsy (apartment of robot bodied friends arguing about cats), and more musings on the interplay of accommodations and capitalism in a well-rounded bit of speculative science fiction. I once again appreciated John Scalzi's thoughtful approach to an original piece of science fiction.

Robots and crime submitted by gxtan on July 24, 2019, 10:47am Read this without realizing it was a sequel/follow up to another John Scalzi book. I would say you don't have to read the first book (Lock In) to understand Head On. The book overall is a mix of science fiction and mystery/crime novel with some funny moments. Scalzi develops the idea for the threep technology well and uses it to his advantage (a sport involving decapitation, battery failures, getting hit by cars) as the characters investigate a death.

Scifi Police Procedural submitted by anacoluthon on August 26, 2019, 2:41pm I didn't realize this was a sequel to "Lock In," but it could very well be a standalone. I never felt lost in the world or the characters, so it doesn't seem to matter which one is read first.

Scalzi writes brilliant, clever books submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on June 17, 2020, 8:29pm 4.5/5 Scalzi writes brilliant, clever books that are true science fiction in the sense that they take science as we know it today and extrapolate into the future. (Most people wouldn’t see this as scifi because there aren’t space ships and such, but real scifi just means that current knowledge is pushed forward.) _Head On_ is a mystery more than anything else, and it is so wonderfully done that each character fits the story in intricate ways that make use of their societal status (health, relationships, jobs, etc.) to add to either the crime or the solving of it in unique ways.

My only problem with this book is an author choice that so many authors (and others) make and I’m sick of, so am taking my rating down ½ star because of it. Scalzi has one character be not only unfaithful, but have a kink (or several), and so he’s clearly “deviant.” Unfaithful? Go ahead and lambaste him. But the guy wants to explore sexual variations with other consenting adults? Stop demonizing this. “Safe, sane, and consensual,” y’know. As long as both people agree, there’s nothing wrong with it, and I’m tired of authors, media, and anyone else acting like anything other than the missionary position (or a gay/lesbian version of it) means people are evil.

Having spent too many words on that, the book is brilliant, the characters fun to spend time with, and the mystery delightful. Highly highly recommended.

Still witty, still fun, still junk food submitted by mowjac on August 28, 2020, 1:00pm This is the second in a series, although Scalzi is an old hand, so you could start with this if you want. More witticisms, more puns, more fun. Still the same difficulty with diversity--Chris has never struck me as a believable African American character, yet still an enjoyable read if you don't focus on his character too much.