“Overse added, “Just remember you’re not alone here.”
I never know what to say to that. I am actually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are.”
Martha Wells has already received a Hugo Award for two of the novellas in her Murderbot Diaries series, so it’s no surprise that she’s now gotten a Hugo nomination for the first full-length novel featuring the titular Murderbot (that’s SecUnit to you. And to everyone else. The Murderbot name is private.)
The events of the first four novellas have left Murderbot in an interesting place. It’s now part of a team of humans that’s led by a woman, Dr. Mensah, who knows that Murderbot is for all intents and purposes a free being with nothing stopping it from going on a killing spree the way rogue Security Units are always portrayed as doing in the media. And yet she’s given it the responsibility of protecting her and her family, and she’s willing to lie to just about everyone in order to keep its cover intact. Murderbot is in the totally new situation of being able to trust a human completely.
And then on what should be a completely routine mission their spaceship is ambushed and a band of a possibly alien attackers takes Murderbot and Dr. Mensah’s daughter hostage and the attackers have almost definitely murdered the only other being in the world that Murderbot could call a friend AND IT’S ON NOW.
This is one of those series where you really need to read all the previous installments first. We’ve been watching Murderbot evolve from an artificial being that just wants to be left alone so it can watch adventure shows to…an artificial being that just wants to be left alone so it can watch its adventure shows. Okay, so not much has changed there. But there’s four novellas worth of information you need to know about Murderbot’s history, how it became a part of Dr. Mensah’s group, how it had to rescue Dr. Mensah from a kidnapping attempt that the good doctor is still mentally recovering from, and of course how it came to have a “friendship” with the sentient transport pilot program, ART. (That’s Murderbot’s private name for the ship Perihelion. It stands for “Asshole Research Transport”, which should give you an idea of what their relationship is like.)
It’s a sizable amount of backstory to pick up on, especially since there is a lot going on in this book, both story-wise, setting-wise and visually. This is a sprawling universe where research teams are all extended family members with multiple marital partners and second mothers. It’s a universe where computer programs are designed to be sentient, and then usually implanted with something that will literally fry its brain if it tries to disobey an order. (We see a little bit of what a SecUnit’s governor module can do here, and it’s nasty.) There are uninhabitable planets that can be colonized multiple times over the course of centuries, where galaxy-spanning corporations can throw indentured servants at a terraforming project and then leave thousands of people to die because the company had to declare bankruptcy after a bad investment.
Most of the characters have some kind of augment that lets them speak mind-to-mind, hold virtual team meetings pretty much everywhere, and operate machinery with a thought. At any given moment Murderbot can be simultaneously monitoring the feed on one of a dozen or more drones that float in a cloud around it, having arguments with multiple people at once, downloading and sorting information files from whatever local control system it’s effortlessly hacked into, and most importantly trying to watch its favorite adventure serials, either as self-comfort or to try to pull some nugget of information about how humans were supposed to act in one of many situations that are completely alien to it.
There are tons of moving parts, is what I’m saying. This series revolves around some of the hardest sci-fi storytelling I’ve read, and the information dumps are pretty constant. What keeps things lively is also my favorite element of the series.
Murderbot is irritated. ALL the time.
…I wanted to talk to a human right now about as much as I wanted to lose a couple of limbs and have a conversation about my feelings.
The book starts with Murderbot having to deal with the fallout of someone once again not listening to some very good advice about how not to get killed, and while it’s shaking off a bullet wound and implementing an impossible (for a human) rescue, it’s also running a wildly entertaining internal monologue consisting mostly of “stupid ship, stupid humans, stupid hatch, I hate this boat, nobody fucking listens to me.” It constantly has to deal with the fact that humans think they can handle dangerous situation better than an AI that was actually designed to deal with dangerous situations. On a physical and emotional level, Murderbot finds humans squishy and disgusting, it can’t stand having to talk to anyone face-to-face, it really hates having to deal with human teenagers, and it even has a clause in its contract with Dr. Mensah which states very clearly, “no hugging.”
And if there’s one thing, one thing, that’s guaranteed to piss Murderbot off, it’s when anyone comes even remotely close to hurting one of the several beings that it calls (in the privacy of its own head) “my humans”.
…and if anyone or anything tried to hurt them, I would rip its intestines out.
The plot itself is partly a space opera action adventure, but also a murder mystery, on several levels. Murderbot jumps from hand to hand combat, to an exploration of spaceship that’s very much like a Marie Celeste in space, to what may be an alien artifact that’s taking over an entire planet, to a terrifying battle that takes place entirely in cyberspace. I know that we’re talking about an artificial being that’s wired for combat but the author kept surprising me with just how fast Murderbot can react to a threat, virtual or in-your-face physical. There are quite a few moments of fist pumping “yeah!” and also a few of “omigod it’s right behind you RUN,” and some helpful illustrations for just how ruthless an artificial being can be when “its” humans are threatened.
I tore the energy weapon out of Target Two’s hand along with a few fingers, stabbed the weapon into its chest (it didn’t have a sharp end but I made do) and ripped a large hole. Then I used the weapon, and the large hole, to lift Target Two up and slam it into the upper bulkhead. Three times. Fluid and pieces went everywhere.
That was satisfying. I think I’ll do it again.
And despite how unbelievably good Murderbot is at killing, well, pretty much anything, you can never accidentally mistake it for a remorseless killing machine. We’re inside its head for the entire book, and no matter how annoyed it (constantly) is about things like “emotions” and “feelings” and actually caring about people…it is gradually realizing how much it does care. To the point where it will actually go for a non-lethal method because the only thing worse than a dangerous enemy that’s still alive is doing something that will make one of its humans see it as “scary”. It’s stupidly infuriating that it matters, but it matters.
She would never trust me again. She would never stand close enough to touch (but without touching, because touching is gross) and just trust me. Or maybe she would, but it wouldn’t be the same.
Fuck, fuck everything, fuck this, fuck me especially.
What this keeps reminding me of is someone who’s neurodivergent, someone who sees the world differently, interacts with people differently, and who has to keep reminding everyone that this isn’t the same as being broken. Murderbot will never become a cheerful, hugging, open being who will react to the question “how are you feeling” with anything other than loathing. And trying to turn it into someone else, or worse make it pretend to be just like everyone else, would mean missing all of the stunning, infuriating, hilarious, totally amazing things that make it Murderbot, unique in the whole galaxy. And it would probably take away some of the power of those moments when, against all reason and common sense, it finds out that other beings actually care about it.