All stories are by Martha Wells (see her Wikipedia page), part of her “Murderbot” series, which includes short stories, novellas, and a full-length novel.) Each is notated with year written (if known), classification, online location (if available), and date of review.
Compulsory
★★★★ (of 5)
2019, short story,
online
version (Wired)
review: 2020.02.02
Part of Wired’s “The Future Of Work” series, this very short story is a prequel to All Systems Red, and has Murderbot working for an unnamed mining company, breaking protocol to save a human worker. If I hadn’t already read All Systems Red, this short story would have been an excellent introduction to it. My favorite part was: “I was... monitoring ambient audio for keywords in the unlikely event that a human said something important.”
All Systems Red
Photo by Wil C. Fry, 2019
★★★★ (of 5)
2017, novella
review: 2019.07.11
Winning both the Hugo and Nebula awards in 2018 (for Best Novella), Wells’ All Systems Red is the first person account of a cyborg security agent who has named itself “Murderbot”. Murderbot is contracted to a scientific survey team on an exoplanet, assigned to provide security to the team — which encounters a mysterious foe on said planet. While the plot centers on the human team and Murderbot’s efforts to protect them, the book’s primary draw for me is Murderbot’s personality. As one reviewer noted, the world created here, and the tale itself, would be “unrelentingly grim” except for the insights into the cyborg’s thought processes.
“As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.”—page 9
I enjoyed Wells’ acute use of clear and precise language (I’m still coming off the disappointment of Clarke’s unclear prose). Without ambiguity, she briefly tells the reader what she needs to know. For example:
“She was unconscious and bleeding through her suit from massive wounds in her right leg and side.”—page 11
For the record, Murderbot isn’t fully robot; there are organic parts that can feel pain. It also doesn’t give itself a gender (even the humans refer to it as “it”) despite it having a human face. Murderbot has hacked its “governor module” to remove certain restraints; it has grown cynical, and has fully formed opinions about humans — it doesn’t like them.
“So, I’m awkward with actual humans. It’s not paranoia about my hacked governor module, and it’s not them; it’s me. I know I’m a horrifying murderbot, and they know it, and it makes both of us nervous, which makes me even more nervous. Also, if I’m not in the armor then it’s because I’m wounded and one of my organic parts may fall off and plop on the floor at any moment and no one wants to see that.”—page 20
Many of Murderbot’s soliloquies reminded me of myself and the way I sometimes think about other humans; I wondered whether Wells wrote it as a reflection of her own perspective or if it was entirely imagined.
The story reads quickly and easily; there’s no feeling of laboring or worrying that I can’t keep track of too many characters, places, or plot elements. It was enjoyable, cute, and even endearing in places. I’m glad my library had this book. I would recommend it to anyone who regularly chooses science fiction.
Meta: 149 pages, Tor, ISBN 978-1-250-21471-3 (hardcover), Wikipedia page
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