Martha Wells, The Murderbot Diaries
Jan. 23rd, 2021 04:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinHere's another science-fiction series of mostly novellas/short novels I got into via the Kindle. If you look at the customer reviews of Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries series, you'll find that they largely consist of complaints about how they're marketed: the first one offered for a low price to get you hooked, then the others are priced higher than what the length arguably justifies. But I thought they were entertaining enough action-adventure comfort food (set in a milieu that is actually disturbing in some ways, but the tone is light). The fifth one, Network Effect, is a full-length novel, and there's another one coming out in April.
The setting is again a future where fast interstellar travel (via wormholes--details are vague) is commonplace, in a part of the galaxy called the Corporation Rim, where most governance is done by rapacious corporate entities vying for resources and artifacts that might produce profit. The protagonist, who secretly and sarcastically self-identifies as "Murderbot", is a SecUnit, an artificial lifeform with mechanical and organic components, constructed as an unstoppable fighting machine, but also enslaved by a behavioral governor. These beings are owned by a company whose main business is selling surety bonds underwriting planetary-exploration surveys; the contract includes supplying SecUnits as security for their customers, against both planetary hazards and piratical corporate rivals. Most of the time, while operating, the SecUnits are encased in faceless armor and the clients think of them as robots; without the armor, they look more like people, if unnaturally standardized ones.
Essentially the very first thing we're told is that Murderbot has jailbroken themself* and does not have a functioning governor, but rather than running murderously amok as one would expect in such a fictional scenario (such as every in-universe TV show that features a rogue SecUnit), Murderbot decides for the time being to pass as a functioning SecUnit, avoid trouble and binge-watch TV serials whenever possible. But in the first volume, All Systems Red, Murderbot gets a group of clients who discover Murderbot's true nature and offer the possibility of freedom.
Unlike the Nnedi Okorafor stories I reviewed earlier, these stories get fairly predictable in structure. Though no longer neurally controlled by the company, Murderbot's desire to investigate the past, save a friend or do someone a favor inevitably results in them falling in with a group of people who desperately need protection from some formidable bad guys, often while exhibiting a limited skill set for remaining alive, and Murderbot returns to fighting form. What makes the stories work is Murderbot's voice as first-person-sarcastic narrator, and their personality as a not-quite-human misanthrope who would rather just enjoy a lot of trashy TV, drawn reluctantly to a community of new friends, human and artificial.
These stories are neither profound nor very hard science fiction (one of the books pulls a common physics flub that annoyed me--the space station orbiting a roughly terrestrial planet that is in a synchronous orbit with a space elevator, but is only a few hundred kilometers up). But I liked them.
*Murderbot has neither sex nor gender and the other characters primarily refer to Murderbot as "it"; this seems a disrespect born of SecUnit status, but as far as I can remember, Murderbot never expresses a pronoun preference--it probably never occurred to them to insist on one--so I'm using "they/them" by default.
The setting is again a future where fast interstellar travel (via wormholes--details are vague) is commonplace, in a part of the galaxy called the Corporation Rim, where most governance is done by rapacious corporate entities vying for resources and artifacts that might produce profit. The protagonist, who secretly and sarcastically self-identifies as "Murderbot", is a SecUnit, an artificial lifeform with mechanical and organic components, constructed as an unstoppable fighting machine, but also enslaved by a behavioral governor. These beings are owned by a company whose main business is selling surety bonds underwriting planetary-exploration surveys; the contract includes supplying SecUnits as security for their customers, against both planetary hazards and piratical corporate rivals. Most of the time, while operating, the SecUnits are encased in faceless armor and the clients think of them as robots; without the armor, they look more like people, if unnaturally standardized ones.
Essentially the very first thing we're told is that Murderbot has jailbroken themself* and does not have a functioning governor, but rather than running murderously amok as one would expect in such a fictional scenario (such as every in-universe TV show that features a rogue SecUnit), Murderbot decides for the time being to pass as a functioning SecUnit, avoid trouble and binge-watch TV serials whenever possible. But in the first volume, All Systems Red, Murderbot gets a group of clients who discover Murderbot's true nature and offer the possibility of freedom.
Unlike the Nnedi Okorafor stories I reviewed earlier, these stories get fairly predictable in structure. Though no longer neurally controlled by the company, Murderbot's desire to investigate the past, save a friend or do someone a favor inevitably results in them falling in with a group of people who desperately need protection from some formidable bad guys, often while exhibiting a limited skill set for remaining alive, and Murderbot returns to fighting form. What makes the stories work is Murderbot's voice as first-person-sarcastic narrator, and their personality as a not-quite-human misanthrope who would rather just enjoy a lot of trashy TV, drawn reluctantly to a community of new friends, human and artificial.
These stories are neither profound nor very hard science fiction (one of the books pulls a common physics flub that annoyed me--the space station orbiting a roughly terrestrial planet that is in a synchronous orbit with a space elevator, but is only a few hundred kilometers up). But I liked them.
*Murderbot has neither sex nor gender and the other characters primarily refer to Murderbot as "it"; this seems a disrespect born of SecUnit status, but as far as I can remember, Murderbot never expresses a pronoun preference--it probably never occurred to them to insist on one--so I'm using "they/them" by default.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-24 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-24 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-24 10:25 pm (UTC)Not a bad analogy. The killer robot that doesn't like to kill if it doesn't have to, who's a bit maudlin and enjoys soaps.