'The Body Scout' by Alumnus and Adjunct Professor Lincoln Michel '09 Coming This Fall

By
Nicole Saldarriaga
February 24, 2021
Lincoln Michel

The Body Scout, a debut novel by alumnus and adjunct faculty member Lincoln Michel '09, will be released by Orbit Books on September 21, 2021. Read the first chapter of this near-future dystopian tale here

Michel's novel, which uniquely intertwines baseball with biocybernetics, follows main character Kobo, who scouts genetically and cybernetically modified talent for New York City's baseball teams—all of which are now owned by pharmaceutical companies—and is a cyborg himself. Kobo has enough problems as it is, what with his outdated cybernetics, the crippling debt he's incurred for those cybernetics, and the loan sharks harassing him for money; but when his brother, a Monsanto Mets player, is murdered at home plate, Kobo takes an even deeper dive into the dark underbelly of his society, determined to uncover the corrupt forces that led to his brother's death. 

In their acquisition announcement, Orbit Books called The Body Scout "diamond-sharp and savagely wry...a timely science fiction thriller debut set in an all-too-possible future, perfect for readers of William Gibson." 

Michel's previous work, a collection of short stories titled Upright Beasts (Coffee House Press, 2015), received great praise and introduced his prose style as captivating, energetic, and at times blisteringly funny. Publishers Weekly said "Michel frequently knocks his brief bursts of prose out of the park," and The New York Times Sunday Book Review said "Michel ably handles modes from lyrical to ironic, but he is most comfortable in a purposefully flat style that reads something like translated Kafka." Associate Professor Sam Lipsyte said Michel's "prose is rich and also spare. He can kill you in two pages or take you for a long, dangerous, kooky ride—and then kill you. And by kill you, I mean thrill you." 

Lincoln Michel's work appears in The Paris Review, The New York Times, Strange Horizons, Granta, The Guardian, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and elsewhere. His essays and criticism have been published by The New York Times, GQ, Rolling Stone, Lit Hub, and The Guardian. He is the former editor-in-chief of Electric Literature and the co-editor of the science fiction anthology Gigantic Worlds (Gigantic Books 2015), the Shirley Jackson Award-nominated noir anthology Tiny Crimes (Catapult, 2018), and the horror anthology Tiny Nightmares (Catapult, 2020). He has received awards and residencies from The Millay Colony, VCCA, LMCC, The Mastheads, and Lighthouse Works. He also teaches fiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College. 

'The Body Scout' book cover