I remembered reading lock-in when I caught the end of a Michael Smerconish segment where he was speculating abt what he'd ask if he ever interviewed Julian Assange - he'd recently read the raffi khatchadourian piece abt Assange in the New Yorker and couldn't help but wondering how Assange coped w living so many years in the embassy - did he disguise himself and go to Harrods? was he just wired differently and could somehow cope ? Scalzi explores all the permutations of lock-in here and makes an action packed political crime novel out of it - whether paralysis, the brain in a vat, the prisoner, or Assange perspective of lock-in is where you start as you begin to contemplate these characters Scalzi's action-packed story moves quickly !