141. (January 2025) Parts 1 and 2 of the Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells — The Tabletop Roleplayers' Book Club

Murderbot Q1. Overall impressions

NeilNjae — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 19:33:02 +0000

These were a couple of novellas, a change of style form our usual approach. And the books were light, breezy action-adventure stories. What did you think of the overall? Are these good books? Are you interested in reading any more books in the series?

Are there any good parts or bad parts that stood out for you?

Murderbot Q4. Violence and action

NeilNjae — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 19:34:52 +0000

Murderbot is a creature of violence. Sometimes that violence is used to protect, such as rescuing Bharadwaj at the start of All Systems Red. Sometimes its a tool to achieve ends. Sometimes, such as the rescue of Tapan at the end of Artificial Condition, it's vindictive.

What do you think of the way violence is portrayed in the book? Was it something you enjoyed, or put you off? What did you think of how various characters (Murderbot, the PreservationAux team, Tlacey) used violence to achieve their ends?

Murderbot Q7. Gaming

NeilNjae — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 19:41:45 +0000

How would you use the Murderbot setting in an RPG? Would a collection of SecUnits (or ComfortUnits) make interesting player characters, either with or without governors? How about other machine intelligences like ART? Or you could always play a team of scientists on a mission somewhere.

What would your Murderbot-inspired games look like?

Murderbot Q3. Characters and Neurodiversity

NeilNjae — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 19:34:20 +0000

Murderbot is the central character and is pretty clearly meant to be autistic (and, if you watch the interview with Wells, she was surprised that it revealed how neuro-divergent she is). Do you think the portrayal of Murderbot was believeable? Did these books give you any different insight into the inner life of autistic-spectrum people?

Murderbot is also asexual and aromantic. Did this affect how you enjoyed the character? Was the absence of romance in the story something you missed, or even noticed?

What about Murderbot's affection for trashy soap-opera dramas?

What about other characters? Murderbot mentions that many of its previous clients were unpleasant people, especially towards the SecUnits. Do the humans we saw fit that description? Were there any characters you especially liked or disliked?

Murderbot Q6. Libertarianism

NeilNjae — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 19:41:15 +0000

The world of Murderbot is a libertarian one, with corporations controlling things and no governments that we can see. Justice is seemingly served purely by civil lawsuits, with no criminal offences. The punishment for killing everyone in the DeltFall trip seems to be a fine, albeit a very large one.

Is this setting meant to be a utopia, a dystopia, or just an interesting alternative way of organising people?

Murderbot Q5. Technology

NeilNjae — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 19:35:19 +0000

This is clearly a sterotypical science-fiction story, with spaceships and robots and computers and all that stuff. What did you think of the technology? Does this story count as "hard SF"?

What did you think of the state of information security, given that both Murderbot and ART were able to control just about every computer system they came across?

Murderbot Q2. Slavery

NeilNjae — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 19:33:37 +0000

The SecUnits and ComfortUnits are slaves. They're intelligent beings, bound to serve humans. In many respects, they're perfect slaves as their governor modules mean they have no conception of freedom or independence. Do you agree with this reading? Do you think there's a moral difference between enslaving humans and "enslaving" non-humans designed to serve? What do you think of the occasions in Artificial Condition where ComfortUnits acted on their own initiative (the ones who tried to save the people in Ganaka Pit, and the one working for Tlacey.) How about the reactions of Mensah et al. after Murderbot first showed its face?

A different take on the idea was ART, the spaceship intelligence. Was ART also a slave? How was it controlled?

Talking of Mensah, one way of reading Mensah's actions of buying Murderbot is as being intensely paternalistic, making decisons for Murderbot and how it should live, without Murderbot's involvement in the decisons. Do you think Mensah was a good person?

About Martha Wells

RichardAbbott — Thu, 26 Dec 2024 16:22:21 +0000

Martha Wells has been an SF/F writer since her first fantasy novel was published in 1993, and her work includes The Books of the Raksura series, The Death of the Necromancer, the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy, The Murderbot Diaries series, media tie-in fiction for Star Wars, Stargate: Atlantis, and Magic: the Gathering, as well as short fiction, YA novels, and non-fiction. She has won Nebula Awards, Hugo Awards, and Locus Awards, and her work has appeared on the Philip K. Dick Award ballot, the BSFA Award ballot, the USA Today Bestseller List, and the New York Times Bestseller List. Her books have been published in twenty-two languages.

Cover blurb for The Murderbot Diaries parts 1 and 2

RichardAbbott — Thu, 26 Dec 2024 16:21:24 +0000

Part 1: All Systems Red

A New York Times and USA Today Bestseller
Winner: 2018 Hugo Award for Best Novella
Winner: 2018 Nebula Award for Best Novella
Winner: 2018 Alex Award
Winner: 2018 Locus Award
One of the Verge's Best Books of 2017

A murderous android discovers itself in All Systems Red, a tense science fiction adventure by Martha Wells that interrogates the roots of consciousness through Artificial Intelligence.

"As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

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.

Part 2: Artificial Condition

A USA Today bestseller

The "I love Murderbot!" —Ann Leckie

Artificial Condition is the follow-up to Martha Wells's Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus Award-winning, New York Times bestselling All Systems Red

It has a dark past—one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot”. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.

Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.

What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks…