Head On

Description

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. John Scalzi returns with Head On, 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.

John Scalzi is one of the most popular and acclaimed SF authors to emerge in the last decade. 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, and also Redshirts, which won 2013's Hugo Award for Best Novel. Material from his widely read blog The Whatever (whatever.scalzi.com) has also earned him two other Hugo Awards. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.

Scalzi takes his work to an entirely new level -- Cory Doctorow Very clever, wonderfully satisfying fun * Kirkus * A fun, breezy thriller, one that showcases a world that carries with it some extremely astute commentary on some of the real problems that we face in our own * The Verge * Scalzi expands his complex future with master strokes, balancing buddy-cop wryness with thought-provoking social and political commentary. This taut mystery, filled with memorable characters in a well-constructed world, will keep readers on the edges of their seats * Publishers Weekly, starred review *