Summary: A sentient security robot who would rather watch soap operas than interact with humans, has to save the humans who are on his job from both the planet they are surveying, and those who are trying to keep the secrets of the planet.
I am in a season where I have too much data entry work to do, and I have been reading long heavy books recently. With the interest in Project Hail Mary and the Dungeon Crawler Carl books, I have been seeing a lot of social media posts asking for suggestions for science fiction books recently. A series that I have seen frequently recommended is the Murderbot series. All Systems Red is the first book and it was novella length and available from my library and I finished it in one morning.
The robot refers to themself as “murderbot” but doesn’t have a name. The narrator is male, but the book says they are not gendered as a security robot (only sexbots are gendered, the rest are not.)
After an accident where murderbot, I think accidentally, killed a bunch of people on a previous job, the robot figured out how to hack its security system so that it would not be required to follow orders from “the company”.
The robot has very high social anxiety and would prefer not having to interact with humans and tries to spend as much time as possible watching TV, especially soap opera serials. This book was novella length (as is the second in the series) with a simple plot. The character is engaging and I enjoy the dry humor, and the audiobook narration. At the end of the first book, you understand why this is framed as a first person narrative style and it works as a good set up to a longer series.
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I listened to Artificial Condition, the second book, on the same day as I listened to All Systems Read.
Both are novella length and each made sense of the length for the story presented. But they felt “chapters” of a longer story more than fully self contained books. I enjoyed both enough that I want to keep reading.
The first set up the framing of the larger universe and introduced the character. The second book set up the “quest” for what I assume will be the rest of the series. This is a wandering hero story who can never stop wandering because they are being chased. This feels like A-Team or the 70s version of the Hulk. There is a quest from the main protagonist, but along the way he will be helping those around him, the poor, the defenseless and the vulnerable. He is putting it to the man (the company) while searching for his own history and story, which presumably will further bring down the corruption of the man.
It is a good way to write a novella length series. I don’t love books of this length but I get the attraction. When I was a kid, many of my uncles were long haul truck drivers. And they were fans of old westerns. I picked up a number of their Louis L’Amour or Zane Grey books. There was never that much difference between the plots from one book to another, but they were short entertainment. You could read the whole thing in a couple hours. And that feels similar.
All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries #1 by Martha Wells Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook