The Novella Files: All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Subject: Wells, Martha. All Systems Red [Tor.com Publishing, 2017]

Accolades: Winner - Hugo Award (2018), Nebula Award (2018), Locus Award (2018) 

Genre: science fiction

Executive Summary: In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn't a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied 'droid—a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as "Murderbot." Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is. But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth. (From Goodreads).

Assessment: You know from the first chapter that All Systems Red is good, but at first it's hard to pinpoint exactly why. The prose is good but it's a means to an end, not the end goal in itself. The setting - a scientific expedition on a remote and unexplored planet - is reasonably compelling but also well-worn territory. And the main theme - android comes to understand the self via interactions with organic humans - has been done before, including in a recent, high-profile trilogy. Still, as I mentioned, you just know it's good. You know it's good because you feel like you could just read this book forever; you don't even need plot, just things happening in sequence to its protagonist, Murderbot. 

That's the point when you start to get it. It's Murderbot, a uniquely compelling character who is full of intriguing contradictions. Murderbot doesn't think like a human, except when it does. Murderbot has a troubled past, but a uniquely ethical perspective. Murderbot is, in a sense, Chandlerian - but this is not straight SF noir. Not at all.

Another thing to love: Wells is an economical writer; there is no wasted space in this book. There are no tedious, out-of-perspective infodumps, no lengthy (and equally tedious) descriptions of machinery or technology. No necessary exposition at all. Just want you need, delivered with impact. Highly recommended.   

Score: 9/10. 

Nanoreviews: The Silvered Serpents, The Library of the Dead, Fugitive Telemetry

 The Silvered Serpents by Roshani Chokshi (Wednesday Books, 2020)

(Warning: there's no way to talk about The Silvered Serpents without spoilers for The Gilded Wolves, so consider yourself warned.)

I'm not sure what it is about Roshani Chokshi's story of a motley, fractious heist crew in magical Belle Époque not-Paris that draws me in so thoroughly when heist-driven stories in general often aren't my thing . The worldbuilding certainly helps: with an intriguing magic system and history, Chokshi creates a version of an imperialist European nation whose genteel facade doesn't in any way obscure its imperialist exploitation of other cultures. The characters themselves are perfectly placed to underscore that: from mixed race Filipino academic and cake enthusiast Enrique, whose dual heritage leaves him distrusted and shut out of his peers' endeavours; to Jewish, neurodiverse engineering prodigy Zofia, all are people who find themselves on the margins of the elite, recognised and occasionally valued for their talents but never truly accepted. Or maybe these books hook me because they're just great, and they also end with heartbreaking cliffhangers every time and I can't help but finish up wanting more.

The Silvered Serpents picks up where The Gilded Wolves left off: with the found-family heist crew put together by disinherited noble and terrible choice-maker Séverin smashed into tiny pieces by the events of the last book, as Séverin attempts to prevent himself from having to grapple again with the kind of loss brought on by its catastophic revelations. However, when an opportunity arises to pursue godhood in the form of a lost text called the Divine Lyrics, Séverin decides to get the band back together - including Laila, his former flame, who he pushed away in a brutal ending scene in The Gilded Wolves (I warned you about those spoilers!) - and the group end up travelling to Russia, working with Séverin's estranged Aunt and another noble House to uncover the artefact's secrets, and to stop the damage being caused by another, considerably more murderous group seeking to harness its power.

Even more than its predecessor, The Silvered Serpents' thematic focus on bloodlines and heritage means that the emphasis is very much on the characters and the relationships between them, and that works perfectly: there's just so much to enjoy. While I did find some elements strained (honestly, I'm sort of done with "neurodiverse person doesn't realise they are experiencing love because they can only analyse their emotions through the detached lens of physical reaction", no matter how much I was rooting for that particular relationship), on the whole this is a great follow-up and (thanks to that cliffhanger!) I'm definitely keen to see where the final book goes.

Rating: 8/10

The Library of the Dead by T.L. Huchu (Tor Books, 2021)

Tendai Huchu's third full length novel and (I believe) the first published under his Cthulu-anagram penname (I mean, if you could, you would, right?), The Library of the Dead is an urban fantasy in a vaguely post-apocalyptic Edinburgh told through the voice of Ropa, a Scottish-Zimbabwean teenager and speaker to ghosts who ends up embroiled in a mystery involving missing children in her part of the city. As Ropa tries to unravel the case, it draws her into the orbit of the titular Library, whose stuffy regulations and elitism around types of magic and the kind of people who can practice it (i.e. people who can afford hefty membership fees) immediately cast Ropa as an outsider.

The Library of the Dead is another book that excels when it comes to both its place and its characters. Its version of Edinburgh is one where society seems to have basically collapsed for unclear reasons, with grim caravan park slums on the edge of the city, an unrecognisable currency, teenagers who are empowered to drop out of school to join the gig economy as soon as they hit secondary school, a new monarchy and various other indicators that this is not the Edinburgh of our own world - as if the acceptance of ghosts and other supernatural forces weren't enough on that front. (Don't worry, though, podcasts are still a thing). On the character front, Ropa is certainly the main attraction in all her super-smart, code switching, irreverent glory, but there's also plenty of other great supporting cast members, especially Priya, another girl from the library who immediately starts a friendship with Ropa when she finds her way into the institution. What also makes The Library of the Dead strong are the polyphonic voices of its different magic systems, and the way it ties in with Ropa's marginalised identity. In another book, the magic of the Library itself could be the main event, a well-defined anglo-centric "magic system" with alternate magical traditions perhaps getting a sentence or two of flavour to make it seem like part of a wider magical world. Ropa's entry to it, both as a ghosttalker whose profession is not considered to be a "respectable" form of magic and as someone whose family heritage involves magic that isn't part of the Library's interests at all, means the limitations of that tradition within this world are immediately laid bare to us, and it definitely sets up some intriguing material for future books.

The level of set-up vs pay-off is really my only critique here: The Library of the Dead is the start of a series, and as such it spends a lot of time establishing the various forces and elements in Ropa's world, presumably all the better to develop conflicts and unravel deeper mysteries further down the line. Still, if this series gets the time and development it needs, it's set itself up for great things.

Rating: 8/10

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells (Tordotcom Publishing, 2021)

Murderbot! Fugitive Telemetry steps back and looks at Murderbot pre-Network Effect, during its time on Preservation Station. It's also a murder mystery, featuring the mysterious death of a traveller which requires Preservation Station security (who don't have to deal with too many murders, seeing as how they're in one of the few places in the Murderbot Universe that places significant, non-monetary value on human life) and Murderbot to work together to untangle it. The problem is, of course, that Station Security aren't too happy about working with a SecUnit, regardless of the assurances made by Mensah and the rest of its adopted family about its trustworthiness. Murderbot, of course, isn't too happy about working with anyone, and it's also trying to navigate the experience of being a known "Rogue SecUnit" in a society that (mostly) wants to ensure its rights and autonomy, but isn't entirely sure how to do so.

What follows is a fun romp through Preservation, with plenty of the action you'd expect from a Murderbot novella. This being the Murderbot Universe, the exploitative corporate practices of the rest of the galaxy naturally come into play, but the immediate stakes feel lower for most of the book, with the mystery wrapped up neatly over the single novella length. (Also there are a lot of sentences in brackets followed by more sentences in brackets.) (This is a thing Murderbot does a lot in its narration, and it felt like it might have happened more here than in any previous story?) (It's fine, I guess, I just noticed it, like, a lot.) (A LOT.)

Anyway, Fugitive Telemetry delivers no less, but no more, than a solid Murderbot adventure. There's nothing disappointing about that - and Preservation Station is a delightful setting for this particular adventure - but after Network Effect ended with a significant change in Murderbot's life path, it means this episode does feel more like a fun diversion than a book that's really driving the series forward, and that leaves me with less to say about it than I have about previous books in the series. It's still an enthusiastic thumbs up from me overall, though: more Murderbot is never a bad thing.

Rating: 7/10

POSTED BY: Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy

Microreview [Book]: Network Effect by Martha Wells

The further adventures of an anxious, misanthropic cyborg and its human acquaintances

Murderbot is back! After its escapades in the novella series which began with All Systems Red, Martha Wells' multiple Hugo winning series is now back and its in full novel form - welcome news to those of us who have followed its adventures to date. Network Effect has been on my anticipated reads of 2020 ever since it was announced, and I was delighted when I got the chance to find out how life after solving the problems faced in the novella would be shaping up for our favourite misanthropic cyborg.

Murderbot, for those who aren't acquainted, is a rogue SecUnit: a specialised cyborg (though it definitely identifies more on the "robot" side and tends to get a bit weird about its organic parts, particularly the ones that give it awkward things like "feelings") rented out by a company to various contractors in need of security. Murderbot's galaxy is one in which Corporations own most things, and indeed most people, and that arrangement is exactly as bad as it sounds for most of the indentured people we meet, and particularly for bots which aren't supposed to have any autonomy or desires of their own. During its career as a company SecUnit, Murderbot discovered how to hack its own governor module (the thing keeping it from doing anything the company didn't like) after an incident (the one that caused it to give itself a name) was wiped from its memory. What follows is a series of adventures I'm not going to recap for you here when there are four perfectly good novellas to go and read instead. For the purposes of Network Effect, what's important to know is that Murderbot fell in with some good humans, saved them, left them to figure out the mysteries of its past and work out why they've drawn the attention of a particular company, met some more people and bots, and ended up coming back to the first group of humans just in time to save the day more decisively. Now, Murderbot is a tenuous part of a human family on a non-corporate planet called Preservation, and everything would be going just fine if everyone could actually turn up to their relevant therapy appointments and also if the bad guys could give it a rest forever. Also, there are teenagers involved in this family, and that's a whole new ballgame for Murderbot to deal with.

Those concerned that a novel length Murderbot might be too heavy on those (ugh) slow sappy feelings will be happy to learn that Network Effect opens with a ton of action: in fact, we meet it literally in the middle of trying to save the research ship on which it, the aforementioned teenager, and some other family members are working from pirates. Then we segue from pirates and boat battles into space battles, and then into desperate escapes, and then into tense empty spaceship exploration, and by a third of the novel in, I was wondering if we'd ever get space to breathe or if this book was going to be novella-paced action levels maintained for the length of a novel. Of course, this is Martha Wells, so we're in safe hands when it comes to balancing high action sequences with slower, but still tense, interpersonal moments, and things calm down considerably once Murderbot gets its humans all to a point of safety, with the return of an old friend in the bargain. That's good, because it gives us time to establish the new threat and how the returning character fits in, and also for Murderbot to lock itself in a bathroom and sulk for a few hours. To proceed further would be to spoil too much, but suffice it to say that Network Effect takes the series in a new direction that feels like a very natural evolution from the previous arc, while offering a standalone adventure within this book that explores some new background from this particular galaxy.

The highlight of Network Effect remains, of course, Murderbot's character and voice, and while the opening third had me a bit worried that this might be too much more of the same, there's definitely more space for development here, in both natural and, in one case, very left-field directions. The main change this time around is the presence of a group of humans who are already very familiar with Murderbot, and once they team up with Spoilery Old Friend (I feel like it's going to be impossible to get through this review without it looking obvious who this is, but you might be surprised) we get to watch Murderbot confront something we haven't seen it deal with before: people who know you and care about your wellbeing and who won't stop acting on information you've given them, no matter how much you try and hide the important things. It's understated, but Murderbot's progression from "if people know what I really am, they will kill me", and consequent horror at not being able to stop people from picking up on its behaviour, to being able to accept community and trust people around it with knowledge about itself is an arc that only gets more perfect the more one thinks about it, and its handled incredibly well. It also offers a lot of humour, as we see Murderbot's habit of eavesdropping on everything and everyone come back to haunt it. One of the most fun parts of Wells' Raksura novels was watching species with social norms that more closely model humans observing and trying to figure out Raksura dynamics from the outside, while we as readers had a mostly-inside view; Network Effect does similar things with its AI and human dynamics, to great effect.

Of course, the supporting cast has to be strong in order to carry this, and there's definitely a fun group of people here. Of particular note, is the aforementioned teenager, Amena, who also happens to be Mensah's daughter. In the opening chapters, we get a flashback (one of several mysterious out-of-chronology sections) which establishes why Amena is sceptical of Murderbot, and without giving anything away, it's a reason that's much more teenage than any of the human reasoning that the series has dealt with so far (and also establishes Murderbot at 100% in the right, even if we can see why Amena doesn't think so). Having to build a relationship with a young person who is also trying to figure herself out and get hold of her emotions while having a healthy frustration at authority figures - including Murderbot - is an entertaining challenge for our protagonist, while also representing a relationship that's equal in important ways that Murderbot's relationships with human adults generally can't be. Murderbot's relationship with Amena and her family (and, vicariously, Dr Mensah, although she isn't present for the vast majority of this book) also means the stakes are higher than any of its previous adventures, as it has things to protect and far more ways to become, as it puts it, "emotionally compromised" than before.

Given that this is the first novel length entry in the series, and the beginning of a new arc after the four novellas, I had both expected and feared that Network Effect would be more of a"reboot" here - new characters, new dilemmas, and an obvious entry point for Murderbot's ongoing troubles (both physical and emotional). Instead, Network Effect is definitely a "Season 2 opener", and to get the full impact of Murderbot's journey you'll definitely want to have read the previous novellas. However, the plot and returning characters are all pretty straightforward, and Network Effect's opening will plunge you right into the action in a relatively accessible way, so starting with All Systems Red isn't an absolute requirement. All in all, this is another great entry into a series that probably needs very little introduction. Murderbot is a top bot, a great pal, and I'm glad that they're looking to stick around for more adventures to come.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 humans who overcome their inherent awfulness to actually not be too terrible.

Penalties: -1 Action almost gets too much for the first third of the novel.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

POSTED BY: Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy.

Reference: Wells, Martha Network Effect [Tor.com Publishing, 2020]

A Robot Learns to Love Itself: Reflecting on the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

The Murderbot Diaries is an AI self-actualisation story which takes us far beyond the basic "can a robot feel?" question that is still the standard starting point for these kinds of tales.

There's a moment near the start of Rogue Protocol, the third in Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries series (forthcoming August 7, 2018 from Tor.com Publishing), that quietly broke my heart. The self-proclaimed Murderbot, a rogue SecUnit (a human-robot hybrid "construct") which hacked its own governor module after an unfortunate murder-based incident that was subsequently wiped from its memory, is trying to distract itself from the endless, stupid problems of humans by watching a new show. Unfortunately, the plot isn't working out, and Murderbot is eager to get within range of a station so it can download something different. If only, it tells us, this terraforming horror series had a rogue SecUnit character who could stop the squishy humans from all getting horribly killed...

On the surface, this doesn't seem like a big deal. Murderbot watches rather a lot of shows – indeed, extensive media consumption is its most prominent character quirk – and it also does a lot of complaining, so the combination of the two is not exactly unusual. However, this is the first time it has articulated a desire to see itself represented positively in media. In the previous book, Artificial Condition, Murderbot had explained to its new "friend" ART the Asshole Research Transport (long story) why their favourite TV show is Sanctuary Moon, a show in a setting with no SecUnits or security issues at all. ART's favourite shows, in contrast, all tend to involve spaceships protecting their humans. Rogue SecUnits in media are all portrayed terrible monsters, because, it thinks, that's a rational way of looking at rogue SecUnits in general. To even fantasise about the existence of a heroic rogue SecUnit one book later is a serious step forward for Murderbot, even if it doesn't acknowledge the change of heart itself.

It's this constant grappling with the character's identity and self-worth that really lifts the Murderbot Diaries (a series which began with last year's Nebula winning, Hugo nominated All Systems Red, and is due to wrap up later this year with Exit Strategy) from being a merely hilarious story about a cynical construct to being something rather special. Like Moon, the central character in The Books of the Raksura (Martha Wells' other Hugo finalist this year), Murderbot is a convincingly non-human person who blends recognisable emotional responses with occasionally very alien reactions and behaviours; both are outsiders who find themselves offered friendship and community but have to learn how to accept it. In telling story it does, the Murderbot Diaries also turns the traditional robot narrative on its head: Murderbot isn't a robot learning to feel, it's a robot who is already all but overwhelmed by its emotions and has to learn how to manage and express them in a galaxy where many people still treat it as an unthinking tool.

And while Murderbot has it worse than most, it's apparent that a lot of people in this universe – be they humans, bots or something in between – are similarly struggling to establish their right to live and flourish beyond their usefulness to all-powerful corporations, who are not above mass murder to get what they want. When we first meet Murderbot in All Systems Red, it's been hired out to an uninhabited planet with a group of naive but (it grudgingly admits) likeable humans who are conducting a survey, when they find themselves in the middle of a highly subtle corporate assassination attempt. Murderbot, who has already gone rogue by this point but is pretending to be compliant, ends up accidentally "outing" itself as a fully realised sentient when it has to evacuate an injured party member, and spends the rest of the mission attempting to rebuff attempts – particularly from the mission leader, Dr. Mensah – to talk to it about its feelings and treat it like a person.

Murderbot is quick to tell us that this is because it doesn't want to make the humans uncomfortable, and the reader just as quickly realises that this is a planet-sized act of projection on our hero's part. Faced with a group of people with no preconceived notions of what a SecUnit should be, who discover that it's not a heavily armoured machine but a being with a human face, the ability to conduct caring small talk, and a massive addiction to trashy soap operas, means Murderbot suddenly has to cope with being treated like a person, forced to earn trust and friendship from its coworkers and treated accordingly when it does. To someone who has thus far dealt with being emotionally sensitive by insisting that nobody cares and hiding itself behind an opaque visor, this change is nearly impossible to process.

Because behind the sarcastic asides and wry commentary, Murderbot's narration is a veritable bingo sheet of unhelpful thinking styles; its propensity to internal self-sabotage is both relateable and excruciating to watch. Everything Murderbot does right is disqualified from positive consideration because it's just what SecUnits do, while everything that goes wrong is a total disaster that's all its fault. All of Murderbot's strengths are flukes or basic programming, while its weaknesses are all-consuming. Because Murderbot is very anxious around people, people must be objectively difficult things (except in media, where they are fascinating and enjoyable). All Rogue SecUnits are terrifying, terrible individuals who are very rightly the villains whenever they appear in media, and would be awful to meet in real life. Oh, and of course it's labelled itself Murderbot (and the first bot who sits down to watch TV with it "Asshole Research Transport"). While our hero does indeed recognise and label its own thinking as "anxiety", and can demonstrably think things through or talk itself down when required, the narration doesn't give us much second-order thought or self-reflection, leaving the mechanics of growth behind the scenes and leaving us with only subtle signs of growth behind Murderbot's aggressively curated self-image.

Later instalments have Murderbot truly going rogue and, in the process, straying even further outside of its comfort zone, passing as human while it pieces together evidence against the company which attacked its humans and discovers more about its own past (including the event which led it to call itself "Murderbot" in the first place). Intentionally or otherwise, it finds itself spending more time with humans similar to Dr Mensah's group: people it ostensibly finds insufferable, naive and incapable of staying out of danger but who treat it like a person, even when the "augmented human" identity slips.

We also get interactions between Murderbot and other bots and constructs, most notably ART in Artificial Condition, and the irrepressibly friendly (and, apparently, extremely annoying) Miki the helper bot in Rogue Protocol. Murderbot is rather rude about both of these characters, especially Miki, who it dismisses as a "human's pet": a dismissal which likely reflects its feelings about being offered a similar choice earlier in the series, rather than being directly Miki's fault. However, even while it's calling its fellow bots assholes and pets, Murderbot is also completely willing to accept them as people and in many ways treats them the same as humans: trustworthy in some ways but likely to betray you when their "programming" requires it. Even bots with demonstrably low capability get treated with respect by Murderbot, although it always puts its own self-preservation first. We are led to suspect the only thing that isn't a person to Murderbot is Murderbot itself: an ironic conclusion for the character to arrive at, given its narration leaves the reader in no doubt that Murderbot is quite definitely "one of us".

The Murderbot Diaries is an AI self-actualisation story which takes us far beyond the basic "can a robot feel?" question that is still the standard starting point for these kinds of tales in SFF. The series presents us with a robot character who we immediately accept as a funny, cynical, highly competent and resourceful person, and who I suspect many of us would love to hang out with, even knowing it would probably complain internally and make up rude nicknames for us if we did. In doing so, The Murderbot Diaries gives itself room to ask more complex questions about the relationship between how we see our own personhood and self-worth compared to how others see us; and how to find healing, growth and self-expression even when all one wants to do is self-isolate. For Murderbot, it's a slow, frustrating journey, and one which is largely obscured by bluster and sarcasm. But when the moments of growth shine through – when the Murderbot accepts that it might just be hero material – it's are all the more poignant and exciting for being so hard-won.

POSTED BY: Adri is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke.


References: Wells, Martha. All Systems Red [Tor.com Publishing, 2017].
                    Wells, Martha. Artificial Condition [Tor.com Publishing 2018].
                    Wells, Martha. Rogue Protocol [Tor.com Publishing 2018]