The Body Scout

An Esquire Pick for the Top 50 Sci-Fi Books of All Time

A New York Times Best Sci-Fi & Fantasy Novel of 2021

"A breathlessly paced techno-thriller characterized by stunning, spiky worldbuilding." — Esquire

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In the future you can have any body you want—as long as you can afford it.

But in a New York ravaged by climate change and repeat pandemics, Kobo is barely scraping by. He scouts the latest in gene-edited talent for Big Pharma-owned baseball teams, but his own cybernetics are a decade out of date & twin sister loan sharks are banging down his door. Things couldn't get much worse.

Then his brother—Monsanto Mets slugger J.J. Zunz—is murdered at home plate.

Determined to find the killer, Kobo plunges into a world of genetically modified CEOs, philosophical Neanderthals, & back-alley body modification, only to quickly find he's in a game far bigger and more corrupt than he imagined. To keep himself together while the world is falling apart, he'll have to navigate a time where both body & soul are sold to the highest bidder.

Diamond-sharp & savagely wry, The Body Scout is a timely science fiction thriller debut set in an all-too-possible future.

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Lincoln Michel is the author of the story collection Upright Beasts (Coffee House Press, 2015), which was named a best book of the year by Buzzfeed & reviewed in the New York Times; Vanity Fair; O, The Oprah Magazine; Tor.com & elsewhere. His fiction & poetry appear in The Paris Review, Granta, Tin House, Strange Horizons, Vice's Motherboard, & the Pushcart Prize anthology. His essays & criticism have been published by The New York Times, GQ, Rolling Stone, & The Guardian. He is the former editor-in-chief of Electric Literature. He is the co-editor of the science fiction anthology Gigantic Worlds (Gigantic Books 2015), the flash noir anthology Tiny Crimes (Catapult, 2018), & the forthcoming horror anthology Tiny Nightmares (Catapult, 2020).