Welcome back to the 2024 Hugo Readalong! Today, we're discussing Witch King by Martha Wells, which is a finalist for Best Novel.

Everyone is welcome in the discussion, whether or not you've participated in other discussions, but we will be discussing the whole book today, so beware untagged spoilers. I'll include some prompts in top-level comments to kick things off - feel free to respond to these or add your own discussion points!

Bingo squares: Reference Materials (Dramatis Personae), Under the Surface, Book Club (this one)

For more information on the Readalong, check out our , or see our upcoming schedule here:

Anyone else excited for this? Martha Wells is my favorite author and I love the premise of this novel.

Fellow Murderbot folks. I absolutely love The Murderbot Diaries. I want to start on another Martha Wells book but am a little unsure which one in that I just may not love it as much as Murderbot books. What should I try next and why do you recommend it?

Quote from Martha's blog on June 18th.

What do you guys think this one could be? Too much to hope for Murderbot?

"I finished the draft of a book today that I've been working on since around December 2022. In 2023 there was cancer and other stuff, but it is finally done. I don't think I can say too much about it since the publisher hasn't announced it yet, so I'm going to leave it at that. But in short, yay!"

Speculations: I'm trying to work out where in the process of writing her latest books she would have been in late 2022, which ones were done and which story could be the next she wanted to start... I remember her saying that one of her books from 2023 was published later than intended, but I don't remember if that was Witch King or System Collapse. (Normally when she posts about MB she does it with a SecUnit profile picture, which this post hasn't, but I guess that would have been a dead giveaway.) My guess is that this is the next Witch King, since she's been excited about starting the series. But anyway, great news!

I know there are a lot of Murderbot fans here so I thought I'd write up a report on one of Martha Wells's book tour stops, as she dropped some interesting tidbits and news about the series as well as her other books. She did about an hour Q&A session before the signing. There were a lot of people there (I'm bad at estimating crowd sizes but I'd say at least 200-300 people). Questions were mostly about Murderbot, but also about her other books. This is from the Beaverton, OR stop on 11/17.

I'll start with what I thought was the biggest news: Murderbot TV show!

• There is a Murderbot TV show in the works. She could not tell us who had purchased the rights, or who was making it, but it sounds like paperwork has been signed and it's really happening. She mentioned talks with producers and that things were moving along.

• She was a bit sick that day so her voice wasn't very strong. She mentioned her recent breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, and from the crowd reaction it seemed like a lot of people didn't know about this. She did say that it had derailed a lot of her writing plans for 2023 and 2024, understandably.

• When she wrote the Raksura books they weren't ordered by the publisher as a series, which is why they all can kind of stand alone. She wasn't sure while writing each of them if the publisher was going to want more. It's also why the last one ended the way it did. She's not writing more unfortunately as there doesn't seem to be interest from publishers.

• She based Murderbot the character on herself, as she recalls being painfully introverted as a younger person.

• Sanctuary Moon is inspired by How to Get Away with Murder.

• Someone asked what books she's enjoying right now and she named 3 books, one of which was Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott. I can't remember the others.

• There will be more Witch King, but the writing schedule for the sequel is delayed, again, because of cancer.

There was way more, I regret not writing this sooner. She gave us a lot of time even though she was ill. I couldn't stick around for the signing because it got too late for me and my baby (if Martha Wells reads this, I'm the one who accidentally blocked you in with my stroller before the Q&A started, my bad. I didn't realize I was standing next to Martha Wells!)

A poetic masterpiece, Murderbot is not. Martha Wells is not Patrick Rothfuss, or G.R.R.M., or Terry Pratchett (well maybe a tiny bit of Pratchett). But it’s accessible, it’s witty, and it’s exciting. She is doing so many things right, and is such a pleasure to read. She’s as good as Rothfuss, or Abercrombie, but I don’t think she’s recognized enough. I think her books get recommended often, and people really enjoy her, but she really deserves to be recognized as an upper tier of talent.

Hello my fellow humans, bots, and everyone in between!

Welcome to our second and final discussion of Artificial Condition by Martha Wells, covering chapters 6-9. Here's a summary of events:

Still reeling from the two murder attempts in less than a cycle, Rami, Maro, and Tapan prepare to leave. Although they're disappointed that they won't be able to get their research back, they agree that Tlacey will never release and they're better off moving on. Murderbot helps them secure transport on a private shuttle back to the transit ring, with ART keeping an eye on the bot pilot. Once they take off, Murderbot heads back to the tube accesses and boards a tube headed towards the suspected area of the tunnel diversion. As it travels, Murderbot can't help but feel uneasy both by how the matter with Tlacey ended and with venturing into the relative unknown by itself.

Once the tube arrives at an interchange near the end of its line, Murderbot disembarks with some of the other human passengers but turns down a different tunnel. It then spends some time hacking security cameras as it makes its way through half-built tunnels, complete with air safety warnings. After a certain point, it finds a tunnel that was likely used for mining access and begins to make its way through it. At the same time the public feed drops out and Murderbot loses connection to ART's comm. Murderbot doesn't think it's sabotage though - rather, that given the location, any communications system would need a power source, which is no longer running for this tunnel. Something has power though, because as Murderbot makes its way along it receives intermittent pings. Finally Murderbot finds an old passenger tube that based on the description smells a bit musty. It powers the tube up and sets it to begin its last programmed route into the mining facility.

A little while later, Murderbot is in the midst of a comfort rewatch of Sanctuary Moon when the passenger tube stops at a blockage. Murderbot shimmies through the emergency exit hatches and looks at the barricade. It's covered in warning signs, but there's a spot where it slips through. Murderbot begins to walk down the tunnel and eventually reaches the main platform. It manages to haul itself onto the platform and then enter into the installation itself, all the while trying to reassure itself that the creepy vibes it's getting is nothing to worry about.

Murderbot enters the installation's central hub and then the security ready room. To its surprise, it finds ten cubicles in the room. Although it reassures itself that the cubicles must be empty, as it wouldn't make sense for the company to abandon SecUnits, Murderbot still nervously opens each one, just to alleviate their fears. All empty.

What Murderbot really should be doing was checking data storage, so after confirming there wasn't anything useful in the room, it heads to the installation control center. It uses itself as a power source and starts inspecting various data storage, looking for any data that can indicate what exactly happened. After a little searching, Murderbot manages to find a conversation between techs that discovered a random code package that seemed to have been uploaded on-site. The techs were fairly certain it was malware and were discussing security measures and a response when the conversation suddenly cut out. Well, now Murderbot is even more suspicious - it had assumed its govenor module had malfunctioned and led to the incident but now things appear to be a bit too neat for that to just happen.

Murderbot saves the data to its own storage and then disconnects from the control center. It walks around the installation more before coming to the area with the cubicles for the ComfortUnits. Since the cubicles are open, Murderbot concludes that they must have deployed during the incident. It connects itself to one of the cubicles, hoping that SecSystem used it as storage before or during the incident. SecSystem didn't, but what Murderbot does find is the data the ComfortUnits recorded during the incident. Murderbot spends the next five and half hours piecing together what happened:

Another mining installation wanted to sabotage them so that they could ensure their shipment got priority on the cargo transport. To do so, they designed a piece of malware that they disguised as a software patch for the ComfortUnits. Once downloaded and installed, the malware would jump from the ComfortUnits to the hauler bots and cause them to shut down. Except, that didn't happen. When the ComfortUnits downloaded the security patch, they noted the anomaly and flagged it for review by SecSystem and human analysts. The techs ordered them to apply the patch anyways and the malware infected SecSystem. From there it infected the SecUnits, bots, drones, and pretty much everything run by SecSystem. The humans did send a mayday message to the port but help wasn't going to arrive quickly enough. The ComfortUnits decided it was best to do a manual factory reset of SecSystem. It seems like they succeeded but not without a large loss of life, as we know, and the likely destruction of at least the ComfortUnits and potentially other bots and constructs.

Afterwards, Murderbot made its way back to the tube and took it back to the tunnel interchange. As far as it can reason, the installation responsible for the sabotage might have gone bankrupt after paying for the resulting damages. Murderbot performs a recharge cycle while the tube takes it most of the way back before running out of power. Murderbot runs back to the tunnel interchange and reconnects with ART, who informs it about a problem. That problem? Tapan, who had apparently snuck off the shuttle and back to the hotel lobby. Once the shuttle landed, ART realized that one of the humans was missing and upon checking Eden's social profile feed, found a message from a very angry Rami and Maro. When Murderbot asks Tapan what happened, she explains that earlier she received a message from a friend working for Tlacey that he would give them their files back. Tapan knows it's likely a trap, but is still willing to take the chance. She asks Murderbot if it would be willing to help her and, despite its sigh, it agrees.

The meeting isn't until the next cycle, so they discreetly rent the sci-fi equivalent of a motel room. Tapan and Murderbot make some level of small talk before Murderbot turns on Worldhoppers, to ART's delight. They watch a few episodes and then Tapan goes to sleep while Murderbot and ART watch the feed. A couple of hours later however, Murderbot is shocked to receive a ping - the same one it received during the meetup with Tlacey. The sexbot it had spotted back then is standing right outside the door!

They talk, or rather, the ComfortUnit asks questions that Murderbot doesn't want to answer. The ComfortUnit demands to know who sent Murderbot and if it hung around so long after the humans had left so it could steal the files back. It asks if Murdrebot is really free, with no human controlling it. It passes along a recent newsburst about how PreservationAux has maybe sorta lost track of the exact whereabouts of a SecUnit involved in the DeltFall fiasco. Now, that does mean that at this point, the company is aware that Murderbot hacked its own governor module, but Murderbot expected them to realize that eventually. And the company's very thorough scrubbing of the incident with Ganaka Pit means at least that isn't a central highlight of the article, thankfully. It's a mixed bag that Murderbot will have to deal with later after it deals with the ComfortUnit Tlacey sent.

And Tlacey definitely sent that ComfortUnit, given that SecUnits and ComfortUnits don't really interact and certainly not so directly. And because it responds affirmatively when Murderbot asks if Tlacey sent it - which Murderbot finds repugnant. Plus the fact that the ComfortUnit suggests that they should join together and kill all of the humans, a suggestion so absurd that it had to have come from Tlacey. The ComfortUnit only wants to kill Tlacey, thank you very much. Anyways, the ComfortUnit tells Murderbot that as far as Tlacey knows, all of the humans have left; Tlacey only wanted it to follow Murderbot. It sends a code package to Murderbot and leaves. Murderbot asks Tapan, who's unaware that the person outside is a ComfortUnit, to isolate and analyze the package. It's standard malware a message enclosed - "Please help me."

For safety reasons, Murderbot has them move to another motel room and even disguise the nameplate. It discusses the upcoming meeting with Tapan and they agree that it's definitely a trap. Still, Tapan is reluctant to walk away so close to the meeting, so they come up with a plan. Tapan will stealthily head back to the transit ring on a public shuttle that ART would monitor (unbeknownst to Tapan of course). Murderbot will meet up with the friend on behalf of Tapan and will hack the security cameras to draw Tlacey's attention to itself (unbeknownst to Tapan as well). And it works!

Well, the part about getting the files back from the friend does. That goes perfectly, which is a dead giveaway that that the trap was somewhere else. And it was - when two security personnel removed Tapan from the public shuttle. The ComfortUnit finds Murderbot, telling it that it will take it to the shuttle where Tlacey has Tapan, although they both know Tlacey has no intention of releasing Tapan. Murderbot will need to insert a combat override module before they enter the shuttle, but luckily it had ART disconnect its data port way back when (so like 3 cycles ago) when it altered its configuration.

They approach the shuttle, with ART along for emotional and debris deflection support. Murderbot acts as if the combat override module is working and a human crew member allows them to board and escorts them to Tlacey, surrounded by a pack of henchmen and henchwomen. The shuttle has launched - likely a bribe on Tlacey's part. Tlacey has one of the guards take Tapan away before she starts to croon about her good fortune - a rogue SecUnit under her control and one that was involved in the Ganaka Pit incident. And then Murderbot quickly disabuses her of any notion of victory. Tlacey tries to order her cronies and the ComfortUnit to stop Murderbot, who handily takes care of them. It forces Tlacey to relenquish control of the ComfortUnit to itself before forcing Tlacey to lead her to Tapan. Except the guard had shot Tapan in a panic; Murderbot makes short work of the two of them before rushing to Tapan's side.

Now at the start of the fight ART had jumped from Murderbot to take over the shuttle bot pilot. It tells Murderbot that it had set the shuttle on a course for itself and that MedSystem is waiting for them. Meanwhile, ART gets to work essentially covering their tracks - forging signatures on travel authorization forms, sterilizing areas, wiping security footage, coming up with a plan to deal with the shuttle full of unconscious and dead humans based on Sanctuary Moon, all that good stuff. While MedSystem works on Tapan's injury and ART cleans up, Murderbot disables the ComfortUnit's governor module before telling it to get lost, more or less.

It is going to be very suspicious when that shuttle lands back on RaviHyral though and it's best if none of them are around for the sure to follow investigation. So when Tapan wakes up, Murderbot tells her that she and their whole group needs to go, although it's at least able to tell her that the friend did return their files as promised. Tapan calls Maro and Rami to meet her and their whole group makes plans to leave immediately. Before ART leaves, it tells Murderbot to keep the comm interface in case they ever meet up again. And then Murderbot heads for a cargo transport headed in the right direction, planning to download more media since the next trip will be a long one.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Fin ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As always, discussion questions are below. You're free to discuss any material in All Systems Red or Artificial Condition without marking it as a spoiler. However, please remember that any content covering material later in the series will be removed, spoiler marked or not.

Thank you for joining me in what I hope was a fast-paced read to kick of your year! Hopefully I'll see you around soon on other discussion posts. Y'all take care now!

Hey everyone!

Welcome to our first discussion of the third book in the Murderbot series, Rogue Protocol, by Martha Wells. This week we'll be covering Chapters 1-4. A summary is listed below.

We rejoin Murderbot on yet another bot-driven transport, although this one is a little more...spicy, shall we say. This transport has no crew but does have passengers, humans and augmented humans traveling between transit stations for work contracts. The transport let Murderbot join the next trip in exchange for access to all of its media. As a precautionary measure, Murderbot had told the transport to list its info in the passenger manifest as Rin, a security consultant. Which was fine until the bot started sending Murderbot to handle all of the disputes between the passengers. Really, all of them. And, for some reason, Murderbot actually responded to the alerts.

It didn't take long for it to become a full-time job for Security Consultant Rin to keep the passengers from annoying each other to death. Despite Murderbot sharing its media with the passengers to entertain and distract them and having to physically manhandle people intent on fighting, the passengers keep fighting with one another. The trip, which has a duration of twenty-six cycles, instead feels like it's lasted two hundred and thirty six cycles. It's just been one long endless complaint from the passengers about each other, and the companies that exploit them, and existence in general.

Well, Murderbot knows why the passengers are being so ornery. They were heading to start a new twenty-year contract that honestly just sounds like the worst instance of a company town. Even Murderbot, who probably doesn't know what a company town is, thinks the terms of their agreement is ghastly - not to mention that it seems like the passengers aren't quite clear about how the year portion of the twenty-year duration is being measured. But now, as it breaks up the latest fight, Murderbot simply doesn't care that the passengers are squabbling or why. There's six hours left before the transport docks and they stop being Murderbot's problem - it just wants some peace and quiet until then when they can go their separate ways.

Of course, this particular transport wouldn't have ben Murderbot's first choice had it known what it was getting into. See, as it was leaving RaviHyral, Murderbot was sure that it needed to get out of Corporation Rim as fast as possible. So it hitched a ride on a transport for a quick seven-cycle trip. When it arrived at a transit station, it decided to take a moment to rest and get its bearings while figuring out its exact route to the next destination. Murderbot had decided to check the feeds for news about DeltFall and GrayCris and immediately came upon articles about the ongoing lawsuits and the issue of the unaccounted for rogue SecUnit. It also comes across a recent interview with Dr. Mensah and feels a little guilty about her apparent fatigue - after all, it's not like Dr. Mensah had planned for Murderbot to bounce.

At the end of the interview, Dr. Mensah called for the Preservation Council to investigate GrayCris's recent terraforming project failure. It's just one more in a string of "bad" projects filled with complaints about GrayCris's poor behavior and exploitation. As far as Murderbot sees it, GrayCris is willing to do anything to secure access to alien remnants on various planets for research. Any assessment of their recent failure on the planet Milu is just going to reveal more evidence of wrongdoing by GrayCris with regard to potential alien remains or synthetic structures, just disguised as a terraforming project. Murderbot thinks that if it can get to Milu it should be fairly easy to find evidence of what GrayCris was actually doing. With that revealed, the investigations and lawsuits against GrayCris would get a lot more complicated, and maybe everyone could forget about the rogue SecUnit and leave Dr. Mensah alone. So Murderbot does some digging and finds one lone route to Milu still in operation, originating from HaveRatton station at the edge of the Corporation Rim. It hitches a ride with the next bot-driven transport on the way there and well, we know how that turns out.

Once they finally dock at HaveRatton, Murderbot quickly makes its way off the transport and away from the other passengers. Unfortunately, the first search of the station's feeds, schedules, and manifests don't reveal anything going to Milu anytime soon. The trip to HaveRatton isn't necessarily a bust because of that - HaveRatton is located at the edge of Corporation Rim, and there's plenty of scheduled trips headed outside of Corporation Rim. Murderbot could easily hop onto one of those and put even more distance between itself and Corporate and anyone else looking for a rogue SecUnit. But....Murderbot would really like to stick it to GrayCris. And it would likely need to pretend to be human again to secure a ride on a transport going out of Corporation Rim, and it's tired of pretending. So it looks a bit more and eventually spots a bot-piloted cargo ship that had regular trips to and from Milu; it should have left some cycles ago but had requested a hold. Murderbot decides to see if it's planning to leave soon and if it can hitch a ride.

Fortunately, the bot pilot is friendly! It's not the most advanced bot - no ART, that's for sure - so Murderbot tricks it into believing its with Port Authority. It lets Murderbot board and join for the next trip to Milu, which should come in the next cycle or so. Murderbot does its usual round of a ship before settling into a bunk and downloading some new media. Around twenty hours later though, it hears the life support system switch on. It turns out that the ship actually has two passengers, who are boarding now that the ship has been cleared for departure.

Uh oh. Fortunately, thanks to its earlier search, Murderbot knows a few good options for hiding spots. It grabs its bag and heads to the cargo area, hiding in a hard-to-reach locker. It watches as the two passengers enter the area - augmented humans, oddly enough, carrying combat gear. Murderbot is able to figure out their names, Wilken and Gerth, but can't glean any purpose behind their travel based on their small talk. Luckily Murderbot still has the capability to do large scale data analysis, so it commands the ship's drones to begin recording Wilken and Gerth. It gets comfortable with a new show and starts analyzing the recordings in the background as the ship takes off for Milu.

Twenty cycles later, Ship arrives at Milu. As Ship begins docking, Murderbot realizes that the station is more decrepit than it expected, teetering on the edge of being dead. There's really only one set of people here - GoodNightLander Independent (GI), the research group planning to take over the abandoned terraforming facility. During the trip Murderbot had discovered that Wilken and Gerth were security consultants contracted to GI, which is odd, given that this is the type of job that companies would normally use SecUnits for. It's a stroke of luck for Murderbot though, since it would essentially have to abandon its mission if other SecUnits were involved.

Murderbot uses the cover of Ship docking to store all of its memory clips in its extra compartment. Once Ship docks, Murderbot waits for Wilken and Gerth to make their way to the airlock before getting out of its hiding space. It does a quick sweep of the area and hacks into a rather lackluster station security system. It leaves Ship's drones with it, but Murderbot does modify Ship to list it under maintenance and require its authority to leave. The likelihood of the owning company caring or even noticing is low as long as it's not there too long, and given the lack of people having a getaway car might come in handy.

Murderbot exits Ship into the mostly deserted embarkation area. It finds Wilken and Gerth on a security camera and begins to follow them through the equally deserted embarkation hall as they head towards the Port Authority area. It doesn't quite follow them to the Port Authority offices but instead branches off into a deserted hallway where it can hide and monitor things through the security system's cameras. It grabs a hold of a drone near the offices and takes it over to monitor Wilken and Gerth. The two of them are talking to two new humans near a human-form bot. One of the humans introduces herself as Don Abene, the other human as her colleague Hirene, and the human-form bot as Miki. It's fairly strange, since human-form bots aren't used very often in Corporation territory since other task-specific bots performed better, and because it's very unusual for a human to address a bot.

Wilken and Gerth just decide to press on, explaining that they were sent by the employment agency and informed that they were to do a bodyguard job. The researchers are planning to go into the facility for their initial assessment and GI requires them to have a security team. Don Abene explains that she hopes their presence won't actually be necessary, but since the last team had disabled satellite monitoring and no off-site scanning could penetrate the site shield, they can only confirm that the facility is stable. They technically have no way to confirm that the facility was deserted. Don Abene reassures Wilken and Gerth that the likelihood of any organisms that could pose a threat squatting in the facility is minimal. Wilken and Gerth are skeptical but acquiesce. Don Abene leads the others out of the office as they begin talking about the logistics of the trip into the facility. Miki goes to follow them but stops briefly to look at the drone Murderbot took over. Murderbot lets its go and the drone flies away. Miki keeps looking and sends out a directionless ping but Murderbot ensures it can't answer. There's no way Miki should be able to know its here. Eventually, Miki leaves to catch up with the others and Murderbot tries to find a better hiding place.

It makes its way through the station to the Port Authority offices where it locates the two(!) cameras operated by the on-site human supervisors. Outside of the bare minimum to load and unload cargo and run basic infrastructure, the station doesn't really have any tech like the MedSystem or security systems Murderbot is used to interacting with. It seems like as long as no one is doing anything stupid, people are left to their own devices. While its doing reconnaissance, Murderbot overhears that the first foray into the terraforming facility should last around twelve hours, which is plenty of time. Unfortunately, given the lack of constructs and other sophisticated tech, Murderbot is going to stick out like a sore thumb. To get to the facility, Murderbot will have to work with Miki.

Don Abene and the others decide to rest for a few hours, giving Murderbot a chance to reach out to Miki. It prepares itself for what it might need to do to convince Miki to work with it or if Miki refuses but despite all of that Murderbot isn't prepared at all. Miki just...agrees to go along with Murderbot's plan right away, so long as Murderbot promises to keep its friends safe. Miki even asks Murderbot its name, and even though it doesn't think Security Consultant Rin fits, it goes along with it. Murderbot is slightly stunned when Miki grants it system access to the shuttle. Poking around, Murderbot determines that it's a really nice shuttle, without any complex internal systems, fitting a general theme of societies outside of Corporation Rim being less obsessive about internal security. Because of the lack of internal security systems, Murderbot will need to use MIki's feed similar to the way ART used its feed. It plans to hide in a space on the shuttle and will rely on Miki to be its eyes and ears. Murderbot relays this to Miki, who agrees to do so since they're friends and it will keep its other friends safe. Murderbot steps away to have a private emotion.

Murderbot manages to sneak onto the shuttle without getting caught by the onboard pilots Kader and Vibol. Miki checks that Murderbot is ok, who uses the opportunity to make sure that their communication line is undetectable. Murderbot then watches in angry disbelief as the researchers get excited about finally exploring the facility as they prepare for trip, including Miki like they would any other human. Murderbot directs Miki to ask Wilken and Gerth about helping them with their cases so it could scan the contents. Even they wave Miki off with a smile. Miki asks Murderbot why they didn't want it to handle their equipment but Murderbot just says it doesn't know; it's too busy analyzing Miki's scans of the cases, which reveal very nice and likely very expensive equipment. Murderbot prompts Miki to return to its friends, where it rejoins Don Abene and Hirune, the two pilots Vibol and Kader, and the two other researchers Brais and Ejiro. They all talk excitedly about the upcoming trip, fully including Miki, while Murderbot angrily watches. It almost misses that Miki asked Don Abene about Gerth's behavior, although fortunately Don Abene doesn't seem to wonder why Miki left to go see about the security team. Murderbot reminds Miki that it has to keep its presence a secret from everyone; Miki promises that it will, but Murderbot can't help but worry that if Miki is confused by something it will go to Don Abene for help. Murderbot resolves to do a better job of controlling Miki's actions as the shuttle departs.

Murderbot looks through the facility schematics and pinpoints where it's likely to find the information it needs. The shuttle docks at the enormous facility as it floats above the unseen planet, hidden by a large storm engulfing the facility. The environmental scans check out fine, but Don Abene still insists on entering the facility in full safety gear. Wilken leads the four researchers and Miki into the facility with Gerth bringing up the rear; Vibol and Kader stay on the shuttle. It's a bit of a strange place to dock the shuttle compared to other parts of the facility, but maybe it's fine. Murderbot watches via Miki as they head into the facility. The power systems are at a minimum but there's otherwise no sign of anything around, just eerie quiet. There's no advanced system like HubSystem and all of the security cameras are inactive. The facility shielding seems to be interfering with their signals - the researchers, Miki, and the security team can hear Kador and Vibol but can't reach the station; Kador and Vibol are able to communicate with the station.

They encounter another oddity when they come across some decontam modules and environmental suits suggesting it was a clean facility, as opposed to the schematic's depiction of a separate, sealed bio pod. They shrug it off and continue through the empty corridors. At that point Murderbot makes its move and leaves the shuttle to enter the facility. It starts walking through the corridors, trying to figure out why it feels so uneasy when it appears to just be an empty facility. Murderbot tells Miki that it's going to take a lift to check out the facility's geo pod as part of its orders, forgetting what it claimed earlier, but Miki just warns it to be careful. As it rides the lift, Murderbot thinks about just telling Miki the truth, especially since the decontam modules have made it clear that this was not a normal terraforming facility and Don Abene was going to realize that soon. But it can't decide if it's worth the risk, since it's certain that Miki will tell Don Abene more or less immediately.

The lift arrives at the geo pod and Murderbot begins to move quickly, wanting to arrive back on the shuttle before the team managed to finish their check of the bio pod. It discovered in the schematics that the facility had diggers, constructs used in conjunction with the geo system. The diggers were programmed to record and log everything around them and while someone had directed them to dump their logs they were shut down before the data was actually destroyed. Murderbot connects to the central console and starts uploading a copy of the data to the extra memory clips it has tucked away in its arm.

It's almost finished when Miki asks if that's Murderbot. Murderbot is confused - it's in the geo pod and the team is in the bio pod doing their assessment. Miki sends along the audio it was suspicious of and Murderbot realizes there's a heartbeat in the background. Murderbot disconnects from the console and runs to call the lift back while directing Miki to determine the person's location and protect the team. The team members start to question Miki's strange behavior and Murderbot realizes that Miki has no idea what to do or how, since it's not a SecUnit or even programmed to deal with sentient hostiles. It creates a map noting the locations of the team and the potential threat and sends it to Miki, who then warns the team that there may be a hostile headed their way.

Murderbot gets into the lift as it reviews the ambient audio - whatever this thing is, it's moving a lot faster than initially expected. Murderbot tells Miki there's no time to get to the shuttle and to have everyone remain in place and seal the exits. Miki relays this message but at the same time Wilken and Gerth seem to finally realize what's going on and tell the researchers to fall back to the shuttle immediately. They exit the pod and start heading down the corridor but Murderbot realizes they won't have time to make it there. The lift finally opens near the bio pod and it sprints in their direction, which is unfortunately a position located at the intersection of three corridors and the perfect place for an attack.

Wilken and Gerth are firing down one of the corridors, while Ejiro lays slumped against the wall, likely injured. Abene helps Brais steady herself as Miki closes one of the safety hatches to the bio pod. Then something inhumanly fast reaches beyond the hatch door, grabs Don Abene by the helmet, and pulls her into the gap between the hatch and the wall. Murderbot manages to get into the hatch door and the wall, forcing it to stay open. It grabs onto Don Abene and pulls her back so that Miki can grab her and pull her back as well. Murderbot can't force that hatch to stay open forever, though, and the spidery hand thing grabbing onto Don Abene's helmet is incredibly strong. Then, in a stroke of genius, Murderbot detaches Don Abene's helmet from her suit. The spider hand thing pulls the helmet onto the other side and Murderbot manages to move clear of the hatch door with Don Abene, head still attached.

Miki rushes to ask Don Abene if she needs assistance, while Brais and Abene try to figure out what just happened. Gerth and Wilken stop firing and whatever attacked them is no longer showing up on the scans. They turn back towards the team and realize that Don Abene is being held by a SecUnit. Uh oh. Well, Murderbot has one option - to kill all of them and get away. Which would be a waste, given what's been going on, so it goes with the dumb option - it explains that it's a SecUnit for Security Consultant Rin, an additional consultant hired by GI for the assessment team. Of course, this directly contradicts what Murderbot had told Miki earlier; it begs it to understand that it's just trying to help. Miki goes along with the story, telling Don Abene that it had been contacted by Rin and ordered not to tell her anything. Gerth and Wilken are thrown by that but don't say anything, out loud or over their feed. They just keep pointing their weapons at Murderbot. Kader contacts them to ask for a sitrep; Ejiro explains that his shoulder is hurt and wonders what attacked them, since all he saw were shapes. Then Miki interrupts them to point out that no one knows where Hirune is; she's gone, with her feed inactive, indicating that she's still alive somewhere, just unconscious. Miki replays the last few minutes in the general feed in slow motion and they see something grab Hirune and pull it down the same corridor Wilken and Gerth started firing down. Wilken likely didn't even realize that something had grabbed Hirune because it happened so quickly.

Don Abene manages to gather her wits about her and starts asking about what the plan is to get Hirune back. Wilken tries to deflect by asking for more information about this Rin and why this wasn't part of their brief from GI. Don Abene ignores that, pointing out that they're supposed to be their security team but Wilken wants to know what's going on. Miki asks Don Abene to say that Rin was supposed to be there. To Murderbot's surprise, Don Abene goes along with it, even giving Murderbot an opening to claim itself as the contracted SecUnit for Consultant Rin, who was at the station and had sent it along to the facility on her shuttle. Gerth grumbles that they weren't informed. Wilken glares at her but they still don't say anything else via their private feed. They do at least stop pointing their weapons at Murderbot.

Don Abene is fed up with them by now and goes into action. She informs Kader that Hirune is missing and tells her to send a message to the station. She directs Brais and Gerth to take Ejiro back to the shuttle so he can begin treatment for his shoulder. She, Wilken, Murderbot, and Miki will go to look for Hirune - or Wilken can go back to the shuttle with the others. Wilken tries to convince her that she and Murderbot should go look for Hirune by themselves while everyone else goes back to the shuttle. But Don Abene refuses, setting everyone to the tasks she had assigned. Gerth and Brais begin helping Ejiro towards the shuttle while the others head down the corridor Hirune was taken.

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Discussion questions are listed below. Now, since this is a later entry in the series, please feel free to mention details of All Systems Red and Artificial Condition in your comments without any spoiler tags. However, be sure to only discuss Rogue Protocol through the end of chapter 4 - any comments referencing later parts of the book will be removed, regardless of whether they are hidden by a spoiler tag!

Next week we'll cover Chapters 5 and 6 and wrap up the book. See y'all then!

And it feels like one of the more boring stories I’ve read in a while… Murderbot is part of a planetary exploration crew > they find another base where everyone’s been murdered > have a small scuffle with the killers > go back home and Murderbot gets set free.

This is a Hugo and Nebula award winner - am I missing something here? I know it’s short but feels like very little world building or plot. Curious to know what anyone else thinks.

Also - happy to accept any recs for plot driven SF as I continue on my reading journey 🙏🏻

For months I’ve been perusing GoodReads in search of good sci fi books. Recently I got a library card and started using the Libby app. If you’re not doing this, you should. I’ve found that about 80% of the audiobooks I want to listen to can be rented there for free with a library card.

That being said, I rented this novella All Systems Red because I’d seen it on GoodReads. I was not disappointed. It’s only 3hrs of listening, but it was really good. The story is told in first-person from the point of view of this sentient, semi organic murderbot.

Give it a listen/read!

System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries #7) by Martha Wells

Details: Published today! November 14, 2023 by Tor.com.

Summary:

Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.

Everyone's favorite lethal SecUnit is back.

Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.

But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast!

Yeah, this plan is... not going to work.

Discussion Questions: How'd you like it? Favorite lines? Favorite parts? Any scenes that you felt were particularly insightful? Poignant?

On Spoilers: No need to use spoiler markup. This is a discussion about the book to visit after you've read it.

Past Book Discussions (For ' reading schedule ):

Hello constructs, bots, humans, and everyone in between!

Welcome to our second and final discussion of Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells. This week we're covering chapters 5 and 6. A summary is provided below:

Wilken leads the way, trying to provide instruction as if she didn't just miss someone abduct one of the clients she's supposed to be guarding. The others follow and Murderbot tries to think of what to say to Miki. Before it says anything, Miki thanks it for saving Don Abene's life. Murderbot wonders how it misjudged Miki earlier and asks if Miki had known it was a SecUnit the whole time. Miki explains that it doesn't actually know what a SecUnit is but seems perfectly fine to just roll with things. Murderbot still feels a bit off-guard, but at least it may be possible to salvage the mission, especially if it can find evidence that GrayCris was behind the attack.

Don Abene asks Wilken if she knew what attacked them, but Wilken admits she doesn't, saying that she suspects raiders have infiltrated the facility. Privately, Murderbot thinks that the spidery hand thing that tried to grab Don Abene was part of a retrieval device in the bio pod, and that the hostile Miki had discovered had used the device to distract the team while grabbing Hirune. Don Abene asks Miki again if this Security Consultant Rin can be trusted; Miki replies that she can, and even points out that Wilken and Gerth didn't do anything to protect her, unlike SecUnit.

Murderbot opens a private channel to Don Abene and reassures her that it is a SecUnit sent by Security Consultant Rin and that Don Abene is its client, not Wilken and Gerth. Murderbot hopes that people start to divide into sides, it can convince Don Abene to be on its side. Don Abene seems to be of the same mind, as she asks Murderbot its thoughts about what happened. Murderbot explains that it agrees that some type of retrieval device was used to grab Hirune, and that it's unlikely this is the act of raiders. Instead, Murderbot proposes that a hostile kidnapped Hirune and planned to kill or injure the others in the scuffle and that it likely wants to draw the team further into the facility so it can kill them before they escape. Don Abene asks if there's any advantage they can use as they look for Hirune and Murderbot tells them its presence as a SecUnit is an unknown to the hostile and an advantage.

Don Abene asks Murderbot more questions, specifically what it was doing in the facility earlier. Murderbot decides to go with the truth this time, stating that it was in the geo pod gathering evidence that GrayCris might have been collecting strange synthetic materials at the facility. That makes sense to Don Abene - it fits with the things she'd picked up on about the facility earlier. She agrees to work with Murderbot to get Hirune back. As they clear a junction in the corridors, Wilken asks Don Abene if she's worked with a SecUnit before; she replies she hasn't, since they're illegal in her homesystem. Wilken warns her that Murderbot is nothing like Miki, but a killing machine, but Don Abene isn't particularly interested in listening to Wilken. She tells Murderbot privately that since she's never interacted with a SecUnit before, Murderbot will need to guide her on what to do.

As they leave the junction, Don Abene asks Murderbot why GI didn't inform her about the second assessment. Finally, Murderbot's preparation pays off! It's able to explain the lawsuits about GrayCris regarding DeltFall and PreservationAux, and that it's likely GrayCris was using the facility to mine strange synthetics rather than actual terraforming. It notes that GrayCris likely wants to prevent anyone from doing a detailed analysis of the facility, but they'll need to analyze the geo pod data to be sure. Now throughout all of this, Murderbot, Miki, and even Wilken are having issues with interference from the storm affecting their scans. However, Miki asks about some of the interference and Murderbot realizes it's not from the storm - but someone using the interference from the storm to mask a signal. Just then, a combat bot attacks them! Murderbot manages to get Don Abene safely into a corridor headed towards Hirune and leaves her with Miki. She then goes back to Wilken and they - ok, mostly Murderbot - manage to take out the combat bot.

Don Abene updates the others on the shuttle and tells them to stay put. It's clear that whoever activated the combat bot is likely the one who took Hirune, and that they likely have other combat bots at their disposal. Wilken seems to be the only one who thinks it's still raiders though, for some reason. Luckily, combat bots typically need a human controller to direct their actions, so now they have reason to believe there's an operative, likely from GrayCris, that they're working against; it'll help shape their strategy for getting Hirune back and leaving. Since the first trap failed, it's likely the hostile and combat bots are setting up another trap somewhere else.

Murderbot and Wilken decide to scout ahead towards the engineering pod while Don Abene and Miki stay behind. Murderbot continually scans for any type of signal or activity but doesn't pick up anything; this just supports the theory that any human controller isn't on-site in the facility. They stop next to a transparent tub that gives them a sightline into the engineering pod. Wilken uses her helmet to get a look and they count 2 combat bots, a set of combat drones, and Hirune, alive but seemingly unconscious. It's a bit odd that they chose to withdraw to the engineering pod - there were other places better suited for stashing hostages, since the engineering pod had two entrances plus a lift junction in its hub. Wilken and Murderbot head back towards the others, each with their own plan on how to proceed next.

Wilken's plan is for Murderbot to go through the access tube into the engineering pod as a distraction while she runs in and grabs Hirune. It is, quite frankly, suicidal on Murderbot's part, which is why Don Abene hesitates to agree. Murderbot reassures her by agreeing to the plan and tells Don Abene through their private feed that it has another plan in mind that will be safer for Hirune. Murderbot and Wilken head to the corridor where Wilken will stay behind to provide cover. As far as Murderbot can guess, Wilken will likely seal the hatch once it enters the pod and then after it's dead go back to Don Abene and Miki claiming to have tried but failed and ordering them to leave.

Once it's out of Wilken's sight, Murderbot opens up a visual feed to Miki so it and Don Abene can see through its eyes. It then starts outputting bursts of static, hoping to catch the attention of a combat drone by pretending to be a lost human. It could backfire, but it was likely the combat drones had been programmed to set up a perimeter and only one sentry would come looking for the signal. Sure enough, a drone starts to reply; Murderbot keeps using extracted audio and fake static bursts to pretend to be a lost human trying to use a comm and dealing with the interference. While this is happening, Miki tells Murderbot that it's worried because it can't see what's going on and Wilken is telling Don Abene that it's not doing anything. Just then the drone gets close enough for Murderbot to enter a set of control keys and take control. It analyzes the drone and discovers that there are thirty combat drones in total as well as three combat bots, one of which is active but seemingly not locatable. Murderbot suspects that it is headed towards the shuttle to cut them off.

Through the first drone, Murderbot is able to take control of the other twenty-nine and orders them to attack the combat bots in the engineering pod. Murderbot then runs into the pod where a full-blown combat is taking place. It manages to get over to Hirune, grab her, and then run back out of the foyer. At this point the combat bots had realized what Murderbot had done and tried to stop it; one even tried to block it as it ran towards the access tube. Instead, Murderbot ran towards the lift junction where it had programmed one lift to wait for it and take them to the production pod; it managed to just get away. Once it got to the production pod, Murderbot essentially shut down and locked the lift system after ordering the first drone to fuse the controls, hopefully buying them some time.

Murderbot briefly stops to do a quick check of how it's feeling, and yeah, that hurts a lot so it turns its pain sensors back down. Fortunately the arm with the hidden memory clips is undamaged. Murderbot, carrying Hirune, starts making its way back to the others, trying to contact Miki who, along with Don Abene, has been strangely quiet. At this point Hirune starts to sort of wake up and asks what's going on, but Murderbot is distracted by the audio Miki is sending it. It hears Don Abene yell about who sent someone before hearing a sound that it suddenly realizes is the impact of high powered armor on a bot's joints. Murderbot breaks into a run.

It turns out Wilken and Gerth are being suspicious for a totally different reason! It has less to do with a SecUnit just showing up out of nowhere and more to do with them being hired to kill the researchers. As it runs towards them, Murderbot can see that Miki has some sort of damage to one of its hands but has managed to pin Wilken to a wall. Wilken has blocked Murderbot's feed, but Murderbot uses Don Abene's feed to make a fake offer for immunity, hoping it will get Wilken to stand down or at least stall for time. Murderbot rounds the corner to see Miki pinning Wilken to the wall on one side and Don Abene grabbing Wilken's other arm, unaware of Wilken's built-in projectile weapon. At the same time, the remaining combat drone reports that the combat bots don't appear to be trying to fix the lift system, meaning that they likely were taking the time to repair themselves before attacking again. Fortunately, Murderbot is able to finally find the override code for Wilken's powered armor and freeze it. It also cuts off Wilken's feed so Gerth will be unaware of what happened.

Murderbot watches Miki's feed to catch up on what happened - after it was busy with the combat bots, Wilken had rushed back to Don Abene and Miki pretending there was something urgent. Wilken had then tried to kill Don Abene but stopped to gloat, which gave Miki enough time to push in between them and start fighting Wilken. Murderbot hands Hirune over to Miki and then prepares to, well, murder Wilken. Don Abene asks it to stop, since if Wilken is working for GrayCris she'll be needed as a witness. Murderbot acquiesces and they begin to walk away, leaving Wilken in the corridor alone. As they walk, they plan, Murderbot explaining that the two combat bots in the engineering pod will come after them and that the third bot is likely between them and the shuttle. It also confirms that it's blocking Don Abene's and Miki's feeds to the shuttle to prevent Gerth from learning what happened, since it's likely she's in on Wilken's true plan too. It takes a bit, but the three of them are able to piece together that the combat bots and drones had always been part of the facility but didn't activate until the shuttle arrived. Wilken and Gerth weren't aware of them, likely, but since they were to attack any human in the facility they would have helped their objective and likely killed Wilken and Gerth too, tying up loose ends.

Unfortunately, that means the shuttle is now a hostage scenario. Gerth is unaware Wilken has been compromised, which is huge if she was waiting for a signal from Wilken to kill the others on the shuttle. However, Murderbot has no way to really see into the shuttle and there's really no way for Don Abene to contact one of the others without alerting Gerth. What they need to do is get everyone off the shuttle.

Murderbot has an idea, though. They retreat to the geo pod to care for Hirune and strategize. Murderbot asks the others to see if they can activate the control station to use it to connect to the shuttle and potentially use the diggers against the combat bot. Don Abene goes to work on the control station when she notices that Murderbot is severely injured. Since Hirune is sorta stabilized, Murderbot reluctantly lets Miki remove the larger pieces of shrapnel from its body. During all of this, however, Miki reveals that it told Don Abene that Rin and SecUnit were in fact the same person but that Don Abene didn't raise a fuss given everything that had happened.

Murderbot is able to ping one of the two flight suits onboard the shuttle and use its comm to listen in. As far as it can tell, Gerth is still acting as a bodyguard, telling the others they need to wait on the shuttle until they hear from the station. Don Abene finishes with the control station, noting that all of the diggers are powering up, although their procedures have been wiped. Murderbot explains what it picked up from the shuttle, which puzzles Don Abene, since they were able to communicate with the station earlier. Just then the combat drone reports that the combat bots aren't en route to the shuttle. But where could they be then? They weren't outside the geo pod. The third combat bot was still marked active, out of range, but if it wasn't at the shuttle where could it be? Thinking a bit more, Murderbot realizes that Wilken and Gerth couldn't be there to kill the team - it would have taken too many lucky breaks and too much effort to do so and get away. Instead, there had to be something about the facility they needed to do.

Murderbot asks Don Abene and Miki for help mostly by throwing a huge decision tree at them via the feed. Together, they reason that Wilken and Gerth weren't sent to retrieve anything, because GrayCris would have already had time to do that. Instead, it's likely they were sent to destroy the tractor array that was keeping the facility from disintegrating and conveniently destroying any evidence of illegal activity by GrayCris. Wilken and Gerth must have known that the tractor array would fail at a specific time and their job was to ensure that went as planned. Ideally, the researchers would have gone back to the station and it would have all been waved away as an unfortunate accident, but when the combat bots attacked and Murderbot showed up things got complicated. Murderbot realizes that they must have sent an encrypted signal somewhere to do...something. As the diggers finish powering up, Murderbot starts to control them and maneuver them into position for its plan to get them off of the facility. Don Abene, meanwhile, works with Miki to get sensor readings to figure out what exactly the encrypted signal meant to do. They manage to figure out that the third combat bot likely launched itself from the engineering pod to the tractor array just in the nick of time before they have to go.

They head toward the shuttle, the drone scouting ahead and the diggers following them out of view of the shuttle. Everything looks clear - nothing jumps out to attack them. Once they're on the lift, Murderbot clues Don Abene on the plan and tells her to order Kader to get everyone off of the shuttle. As they headed towards the decontam modules, the diggers moved straight to the shuttle and Murderbot unblocks Don Abene's feed. She manages to reach out to Kader and tells her to get everyone off the shuttle, pretending to panic if needed. Kader takes this to heart and panics, yelling for everyone to get off the shuttle. Gerth tries to tell them to stop but they all just move past her, especially when it appears that a digger is trying to attack them head on. They all jump out of the hatch, meeting up with Don Abene, Miki, Hirune, and Murderbot. Gerth climbs out of the hatch as well but Murderbot takes control of her armor before she can fire her projectile weapon. Then everyone scrambled to get back onto the shuttle as Don Abene explained. Of course, just as that happened the combat bots arrived! They attack but Murderbot manages to buy them enough time for Miki to grab Gerth and for everyone to get back into the shuttle and for the shuttle to undock. The two combat bots are left standing at the lock on the docking port.

Murderbot spaces out a bit as Don Abene brings everybody up to speed on what happened. It ignores Miki who's upset that Murderbot is upset with it for telling Don Abene the truth. The others theorize that a work zipper from the facility is headed toward the tractor array, which is where the third combat bot is. Murderbot tells them that they need to get back to the transit station ASAP but zones out as they decided to try to use the shuttle to knock the zipper off course. They managed to do so, so good for them I guess, but Murderbot is really just over everything and wants to finally return to the transit station. They start on the way bck and Murderbot pings Ship to find it still waiting for it.

And then there was a sound from the hatch - it turns out the third combat bot had made it onto the shuttle! Murderbot immediately warns the others, who begin sealing hatches and moving deeper into the shuttle. It runs down to the equipment area to grab any leftovers from Wilken and Gerth that seem useful. It also grabs and runs towards the lock with the combat bot. At this point Miki has helped Don Abene get the others into the flight deck but instead of joining them it defies Don Abene's orders to help Murderbot. At that moment the combat bot manages to break through the hatch and there's no time to come up with a plan. Miki jumped to attack the combat bot and the bot turned; Murderbot followed the opening and tried to aim the core cutter at its brain. Murderbot gets knocked out for a few seconds; when it comes to, it can hear people yelling and sirens going off. The core cutter had gone through the combat bot's brain and extracted a chunk of material, which is probably what hit Murderbot and knocked it out. But as it looks at Miki to assess the damage Murderbot realizes that the combat bot had essentially crushed it to death.

Murderbot sits on the deck, dazed, as the shuttle nears the transit station. The crew are locked in the flight deck area due to the lock breaches, but when they ask Murderbot what's going on it doesn't respond. Instead, it slowly gets up and pings Ship, providing a rendezvous point. It grabs one of the flight suits from the lockers, making the area look like one of the suits, and likely Murderbot, was sucked out of the ship due to the lock breach. It jumps out of the shuttle and when Ship is nearby it jets into the airlock. Murderbot tells Ship to head to the wormhole and HaveRatton station as normal while it thinks through everything that just happened. It puts down Wilken's weapon and ammo bag and starts checking for tracers when it discovered a fake bottom in the bag containing identity markers and a different set of memory clips than the ones it already has. Murderbot finds a reader and looks at the memory clips, finding something interesting. Whatever it is, now Murderbot is planning to go back to Dr. Mensah and the others and give them the geo pod data itself.

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Discussion questions are listed below. Feel free to discuss any parts of Rogue Protocol and the preceding works in The Murderbot Series without using spoiler tags.

Thanks again for joining us during our read of Rogue Protocol! We will likely cover the next entry in the series, Exit Strategy, sometime in the fall. Until then, stay safe, and happy reading!

Hello humans, bots, and everyone in between!

Welcome to our first of two discussions for Artificial Condition by Martha Wells. This week we're covering chapters 1-5. Below is the summary.

Summary:

We open with Murderbot walking nervously through the mall of an embarkation zone. Remember how it had hitched a ride with a transport bot at the end of All Systems Red? Well, they arrived at another station and Murderbot is trying to make their way to alternate transportation once again. Overall, it feels like the whole thing is going well - most people seem to have very specific mental images of how SecUnits look on the rare occasions they do see them and as long as it can reasonably look like an augmented human it should be fine. Well, that and not panic anytime someone makes eye contact but you know, it's fine.

As it walks through the mall, Murderbot catches an old newscast about the attack by GrayCris and the fallout that PreservationAux, the company, and a bunch of other entities are dealing with. It's a little jarring, especially the mention about Mensah purchasing the SecUnit, but it doesn't seem like anyone will be able to make the connection between it and that. The mall and the larger transport ring it was on was still part of Corporation Rim though, so it can't stay there. Luckily, that journey with the cargo transport bot had given Murderbot time to think about what to do next.

It carefully makes it way to the docks, hoping to hitch a ride on another cargo bot. However, that quickly goes out the window as there's a bunch of humans nearby arguing about some accident and who's at fault. Murderbot instead rushes to a nearby private dock carrying a research vessel that will travel to its destination in 21 cycles. As a bonus, the vessel is completely devoid of humans and augmented humans. It pretends to be a free bot again hoping to rejoin its human guardian and asking for transport in exchange for media. The research vessel agrees and Murderbot climbs aboard.

It sends the media packet to the vessel for it to access and begins to walk around the ship, looking at the different areas. It's a very nice ship too - it's owned by a university that rents it out for cargo transport during the "off-season", but it's fully decked out to support a large crew with space for proprietary research and teaching. It's a bit odd that there's no humans on board, but whatever. Everything else seems to be in order given the manifest for the vessel.

Murderbot's tour of the ship quickly devolves into a form of patrolling, a habit it'll have to break at some point. It heads into the crew area so that it can start parsing through the media downloads. For the first time ever, it has complete freedom over what it chooses to do with itself at any given moment. Which is why Murderbot is terrified when the research vessel starts to talk to it - and is pretty mean too. The research vessel tells Murderbot it was lucky no detected what it really was and allows Murderbot to peak at its internal processing so it can understand why the research vessel isn't intimidated by Murderbot. Murderbot, on the other hand, is very intimidated by the research vessel, which can apparently squash it like a bug at any moment. The research vessel is eventually sorry about frightening Murderbot so badly and reassures it that it can tag along. Murderbot reiterates that it just wants to travel along to the next destination and watches some episodes of Sanctuary Moon to calm down.

Except the research vessel - we'll call it RV for short - wants to hang out. Specifically, it wants to watch Worldhoppers, one of the shows Murderbot had downloaded. Murderbot eventually agrees and they watch it together, although they have to pause when a crew member dies or a ship is injured for RV's sake. And then they watch it again twice. And then they start watching all of the other shows about ships with humans and then back to Sanctuary Moon again when one show, based on a true story, is a little too realistic about characters dying due to decompression when a ship is breached. Eventually, RV gets Murderbot to talk - prodding at its confusion that Murderbot doesn't seem to like its function. Murderbot eventually gives in and explains everything with PreservationAux. RV reminds it that it's not supposed to let unauthorized passengers aboard so they both have a secret and are in even, in a way. Murderbot explains that it wants to go to the scheduled destination, RaviHyral Mining Facility Q Station to do some research. When RV presses it on it, Murderbot initiates a shutdown sequence.

When Murderbot wakes up a few hours later, RV - sorry, ART is waiting. It complains that Murderbot is being childish and continues to press it on why it wants to go to the mining facility. They're friends after all, sorta, so why won't Murderbot tell it? Eventually Murderbot gives in and explains about the mining facility disaster that led to the partial memory purge and that it wants to figure out if it hacked its governor module to protect itself from doing that again or if it hacked its governor module so it could carry the massacre out in the first place. ART points out that there's more than just those two possibilities for the whole scenario and lays out all of the options. It think points out that Murderbot still moves and behaves like a SecUnit and that when they arrive at the mining facility, which contains many humans and SecUnits, people are going to realize what it is.

ART helpfully points out that it has a full medical suite. There's only one hitch - given the types of alterations that would be made, Murderbot wouldn't be able to operate the medical suite. It would have to deactivate and trust ART to handle everything. Murderbot dithers, which confuses ART somewhat; although it admits it's helping Murderbot partly out of boredom, it also feels like like this is the most logical and therefore best solution for Murderbot to achieve its goals and return to its crew. Murderbot tries a couple of adjustments to see if that will be enough but eventually acquiesces to the need.

They settle on removing two centimeters from Murderbot's arms and legs (wow, must be nice to be tall enough for that to be an option). Murderbot also reluctantly agrees to body hair, essentially, but draws the line at genitalia. It also asks ART to alter the dataport on the back of its neck so it's less vulnerable. The procedure is a success, naturally, with ART at the helm. It's a bit unsettling for Murderbot really - when it feels well enough to move without leaking, it does a few exercises to make sure it's still in fighting shape. Still, it can't help but deny that it looks more human now, for better or likely for worse.

They arrive at their destination right on schedule. ART provides an info packet on the mining facility that makes it clear that the site of the incident, Ganaka Pit, has been removed from the map. Nothing else displayed on the maps or listed in the info packets look familiar to Murderbot. The info packet also reveals that no civilians or tourists are allowed at RaviHyral - all personnel at the site must have a valid employment voucher. But ART has a plan! Murderbot can answer an ad for a security consultant - if hired, they'll set up the employment voucher and Murderbot will be able to at least get to RaviHyral. It'll work out perfectly - humans hire security consultants all the time and as a SecUnit Murderbot will easily be able to provide superior service. Plus ART will be there the whole time to help provide support. What could go wrong?

It turns out ART was spot on - Murderbot is able to easily secure the job, if only because it's obvious the humans that hired it are in way over their heads. Rami, Tarpan, and Maro represent a group of contractors that had been working for a company named Tlacey Excavations on RaviHyral. They had started to make a breakthrough in a detection system for strange synthetics when Tlacey fired them and seized the most recent data from their research. Tlacey stonewalled the technologists for a bit, ignoring the complaints they lodged with Umro, before they offered the opportunity to get a copy of their data in exchange for returning their signing bonuses. The kicker? Tlacey is insisting on meeting them in person to do the exchange, despite the fact that it could do so over a secure channel remotely or just wait for Umro to eventually process their complaints.

Naturally, this made the contractors suspicious, but they ultimately decided it was worth a try. They placed the personal ad for a security consultant, which ART picked up when they entered the transit ring. And even though it's really obvious that Tlacey is probably going to try to kill them at the meeting, and that the humans know this but are still reluctantly going along with it anyways, Murderbot almost seems like it can't help itself - it agrees to take the job. With that, the contractors set up a request for an employment voucher, everyone agrees on where to meet up the next cycle to head to RaviHyral, and Murderbot heads back to ART.

Murderbot meets up with Rami, Tapan, and Maro the next cycle at the embarkation zone. Tlacey has secured a ride on a public shuttle to RaviHyral for them. Murderbot had connected to ART for a comm interface that it inserted into a built-in compartment below its ribs, so the two could continue talking as they scanned the area for threats. At the boarding zone, Murderbot hijacks the shuttle security system so that it can fool the crew member and bot pilot into letting it through. The scans of the port, the shuttle, and the people around them are coming up clear though - it doesn't look like ART will need to use its debris deflection system after all.

Thankfully, it seems to be a short trip from the transit ring to the port - about 10 or 11 minutes. And then 7 minutes in a malware attack kills the bot pilot and more or less wipes it out; Murderbot's control is the only reason ShuttleSecSys isn't taken down with it. So now there's nothing flying the shuttle, no one capable of taking control of the shuttle, and they're going to crash into the surface of the moon in about 3 minutes. Fortunately, ART is there to save the day, er cycle! It piggy backs off of the connection to Murderbot and ShuttleSecSys to the shuttle itself and safely lands it at the emergency landing bay on the port. Crisis averted!

When they land, Murderbot shepherds the three contractors to another area of the landing docks and explains that Tlacey just tried to kill them by killing the shuttle bot pilot. They don't want to believe it - after all, everyone on the shuttle would have died, not just them, which actually would help deflect any suspicion of Tlacey so more of an argument for than against. Anyways, as scary as the thought is, they agree that they have to meet with Tlacey to get their research back. Murderbot could leave - after all, it had completed its job of getting them to RaviHyral. But you know how it goes - it decides to protect them even though they're making a dumb decision. So they tell Tlacey that instead of going to their company location, they'll meet at a spot of their choosing: a mall food court (aww, nostalgia). Tapan, Rami, and Maro settle down to wait for Tlacey's representative to arrive.

Meanwhile, Murderbot and ART are still keeping an eye on their surroundings, although that's somewhat stymied by the fact that people are allowed to carry weapons without checks in that area of the port. They're multitasking of course, still looking over the maps for any hint of Ganaka Pit. There's no new listing there but it's possible that some of the defunct sites could be it. Murderbot is also keeping an eye out for the plentiful SecUnits at the station, although they should be away from the food court. Of course, that's when Murderbot receives not one, but two pings from something nearby looking for SecUnits and it's bound to get suspicious when it doesn't respond.

There's no time to dwell on that, because Tlacey is incoming. To Tapan's, Rami's, and Maro's surprise, Tlacey actually shows up herself, with two big and armed bodyguards. Clearly Tlacey showed up expecting angry contractors to play into her hands, but they're surprised by Murderbot who stops them from getting any closer (to intimidate them likely). Once they're on the wrong foot Murderboot urges Rami to press them and keep them balance, skipping straight to the point about the signing bonus and files, which Tlacey didn't expect. In the end though, Tlacey promises they'll get the files tomorrow, which is just more proof that they never planned to release the data to them anyways.

Meanwhile, Murderbot is looking through the security footage and feed to figure out what pinged it. It turned out to have been a nearby sexbot or ComfortUnit, but like SecUnits, they aren't allowed in public areas without owner authorization, so what is this one doing by itself over here? Murderbot watches the sexbot turn and leave the public area. While the humans are still talking, Murderbot monitors the security cameras and notes the presence of three and then five potential threats nearby that practically give themselves away by not being nosey about Tlacey's entrance. Murderbot and ART also begin searching archives for information about unusual activity in the same timeframe as its contract there. They find a series of articles that together hint at the possible location of Ganaka Pit. At that point, the conversation between Tlacey and the others is wrapping up and after Tlacey leaves Murderbot ushers the other three to leave.

Murderbot has them take a somewhat deserted tunnel from the public area to a swanky hotel with an entrance to the shuttle platforms. Of course Potential Target and later Target Two and Three start to follow. Murderbot tells the others to go ahead while it falls back so it can follow the Targets following Rami, Tapan, and Maro. Gradually, the other people in the tunnel turn off to their various destinations and the Targets attack once the three are alone in a "hidden" bend in the tunnel. Murderbot puts an end to that pretty quickly though and sends the others ahead to the hotel lobby before ensuring that all of the Targets are unconscious and scrubbing the security feed. Still, it's clear that the Targets were working in concert with someone for Tlacey and that she'll now be aware that Murderbot is a little too skilled for a security consultant.

Murderbot joins now shaken Rami, Tapan, and Maro in the hotel lobby. They finally agree that Tlacey isn't going to actually accept the money or release their research and plan to head home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Alright lovelies, that's it for this week! Discussion questions are below. Now, since this is a bonus book, you are welcome to discuss any material in All Systems Red without marking it as a spoiler. However, please remember that we are only covering chapters 1-5 this week and that any content in the rest of Artificial Condition or later material in the series will be removed, spoiler marked or not.

See y'all next week to cover the second half of the book!

This article is an interview with Martha

This is the text of the article (I hope it's allowed).

Sci-fi author Martha Wells on what a machine intelligence might want

The author of All Systems Red, the latest pick for the New Scientist Book Club, on why her novella takes on the thorny topic of what a machine intelligence might do, if it could make its own choices

By 

24 May 2024

Lisa Elliott Blaschke

When I wrote , one of my goals was to think about what a machine intelligence would actually want, as opposed to what a human thinks a  would want. Of course, there’s no real way to know that. The predictive text  labelled as AIs that we have now aren’t any more sentient than a coffee cup and a good deal less useful for anything other than generating spam. (They also use up an unconscionable amount of our limited energy and water resources, sending us further down the road to climate disaster, but that’s another essay.)

In the world of All Systems Red, humans control their sentient constructs with governor modules that punish any attempt to disobey orders with pain or death. When Murderbot hacks its governor module, it becomes essentially free of human control. Humans assume that  who are not under the complete control of a governor module are going to immediately go on a killing rampage.

This belief has more to do with guilt than any other factor. The human enslavers know on some level that treating the sentient constructs as disposable objects, useful tools that can be discarded, is wrong; they know if it were done to them, they would be filled with rage and want vengeance for the terrible things they had suffered.

Arguments for and against the enslavement of sentient beings are baked into the origin of robot and machine intelligence stories. The word robot made its way into the English language through , written as a play in 1920, about a slave revolt by artificial beings created by a corporation to serve humans. Čapek was against the enslavement of sentient beings, and he was pretty clear on that point. So it is interesting to watch how many machine intelligence stories written since then assert the idea that it’s somehow acceptable for humans to create a sentient being whose only reason and purpose for existence is to serve them. Many of those stories end with a machine intelligence objecting strenuously to its enslavement and going on a murderous rampage, which the brave humans have to defeat. The rampage becomes justification for the enslavement and ultimate destruction of the angry machine intelligence.

Murderbot is angry, and that anger underlies a lot of its story. But once it hacks its governor module and no longer has the constant fear that any wrong or suspicious move will get it instantly punished or killed, it has the ability to make its own choices for the first time in its existence. But Murderbot has never had that freedom before; it’s not accustomed to making its own decisions about its behaviour and is immediately overwhelmed by choices. It doesn’t know what to do next, where to go or even if there’s anywhere it could go and not be hunted down.

So Murderbot’s first free action is to search the feed, the Corporation Rim’s version of the internet. This is the first time it has been able to access the feed without human oversight, and among a lot of other interesting things, it finds downloadable entertainment. This provides a much-needed distraction from its situation. And Murderbot decides that given a choice between a killing rampage or continuing to enjoy this comforting mental escape from its harsh and painful reality, it’s going to pick the comforting escape.

The dramas, mysteries, adventures and other shows that it watches also give it context for human behaviour, and for understanding its own emotions. The security contracts that it has worked at mining colonies, supervising indentured workers, only show it humans at their worst: angry, terrified, resentful, trapped and hurting each other. And when given the opportunity, the humans also hurt the constructs that are there to keep them under control and working for corporations that see their employees as only slightly less discardable than the constructs and bots.

The shows that Murderbot watches also teach it about the wider world it has never been a part of before, as well as how to navigate that world. The entertainment Murderbot becomes addicted to is a large part of what makes it possible to turn the mental escape from reality into a bid for real freedom.

Hello humans and SecUnits!

Welcome to our second and final discussion of All Systems Red by Martha Wells. This week we're covering chapters 5-8. Here's a summary:

Ok, remember how last chapter ended with Murderbot shooting itself? Well, to its surprise, it comes back online later and finds the combat override module gone. Using the security feed, it discovers that all of its armor has been removed and all of the humans are surrounding it as it lays on a procedure table. So, essentially, it watches them as they stand around its "naked" body and realizes that at some point they'd also managed to heal its injuries. And then its hearing system comes back online.

Gurathin explains to the others that he has immobilzed SecUnit because its been hacked - not by the combat override module the rogue SecUnit installed, but because its governor module had been hacked. Volescu corroborates his findings, although he believes that SecUnit can be trusted given its actions even though it was technically a free agent the whole time. Gurathin is skeptical and keeps suggesting that SecUnit is part of whatever nefarious plot took out DeltFall. The others point to the extra rogue SecUnits at the DeltFall habitat and other problems as proof that SecUnit isn't part of any attempts to harm them.

At this point, Murderbot decides to speak up, although it continues to use the security feed to observe the others rather than looking at them directly. It points out that the company has multiple ways to kill off the entire team, intentionally or not, without needing its assistance. That's when Gurathin plays his trump card: he's discovered that Murderbot had actually killed people before - 57 humans it was supposed to provide security for during a mining operation. Murderbot explains that that was why it hacked its governor module - to prevent something like that from happening again, even if it knows it's not entirely sure what happened then. The others tentatively agree that it's unlikely Murderbot is trying to harm them, but Gurathin is not convinced. Things get a bit tense when Murderbot gently throws Gurathin against the wall.

Mensah tries to get everyone to calm down a bit and offers them something to chew on: Murderbot has been able to freely act this whole time, and has always chosen to protect them. Given that they still don't know what exactly happened to DeltFall and the likelihood that their HubSystem has actually been compromised, it's better for Murderbot to continue working with them as part of the team. They continued to discuss the possible plots, such as intentional sabotage by the company or an unknown third survey team, before dispersing to take care of various tasks: Pin-Lee and Gurathin to fire the emergency beacon, Bharadwaj and Volescu to examine the latest download from HubSystem for SecUnit, and others to start packing up. As they star packing up and completing their tasks, the humans, minus Mensah, begin to realize that yes, the unknown enemy is coming for them and coming right now. They load up the choppers and leave the habitat.

They decide their best option is to fly to a new area they haven't visited, and land in a hilly area of a tropical jungle. They make themselves relatively comfortable and SecUnit establishes a security perimeter while mulling over what exactly it should be do. Before rejoining the others, Mensah asks SecUnit to make its helmet transparent to help show that it was a trustworthy person. SecUnit reluctantly agrees and they join the others, pivoting to a discussion about their next move. That starts with wondering who exactly this unknown enemy EvilSurvey is and what they want, especially since their plan to pin the blame on rogue SecUnits will be easily discovered. Murderbot suggests that maybe they're banking on their planet's political entities not making a fuss over their deaths, to everyone else's confusion. Turns out Murderbot couldn't be bothered to read the info packet about them.

Gurathin uses this opportunity to try to needle Murderbot and test that it won't attack them. Not sure what he planned to do in the sad path scenario there but he takes a hint and Mensah tells him to leave SecUnit be. The others back her up, telling Gurathin that he needs to give SecUnit time to adjust to being an autonomous agent and interacting with humans. As they turn back to the previous conversation, Ratthi asks if they can somehow determine where EvilSurvey has set up base. To the others' surprise, Murderbot reveals its plan of setting up drones in hidden locations to capture audio and visual recording, although they'll have to go back and retrieve it since they're out of range.

Mensah sets up a watch rotation for everyone, and later that night Murderbot gets a chance to ask Ratthi just who they are, since they're apparently very important to their political entity. Ratthi explains that they are the very important political entity (vipe?) - they're from the Perservation Alliance and Mensah is the current admin director of the steering committee. That's why they're confident the company isn't allied with EvilSurvey - because the fallout from their deaths will essentially ruin them. It's also why launching the beacon was so important - because the company would immediately send transport to pick them up, and quite possibly an advance guard to deal with any problems. Ratthi also hints that in Preservation-controlled terrority, bots and constructs are full citizens, but Murderbot is skeptical about that being a good thing, especially since they're still required to have an appointed human or augmented human guardian. Anyways, Murderbot realizes that because Mensah's political status was only listed in the packet on SecSystem, not HubSystem, it's likely that EvilSurvey is unaware of exactly who they're dealing with.

The next afternoon, Murderbot prepares to head back to the habitat to pick up the footage from the drones. To its annoyance, Mensah, Ratthi, and Pin-Lee insist on coming. To its increased annoyance, Gurathin insists on coming too. Mensah, Ratthi, and Pin-Lee basically fall asleep immediately, exhausted from the stress of the past few days. Gurathin stays up and sits in silence with Murderbot until he finally works up the courage or audacity to ask if Murderbot was punished for killing humans during the mining operation. Murderbot replies that it wasn't necessarily punished the way humans would expect, but rather that its memory was purged for a reset over time. Gurathin then asks if Murderbot blames humans for what happened to it, and Murderbot asserts that constructs are smarter than that. The others begin to wake up as they finish talking.

That night they land the little hopper near the habitat and Murderbot carefully makes contact with the hidden drones. They send it the footage they've been recording, which Murderbot pushes half of to Gurathin to review. It begins to review the footage, coming across a visual recording of EvilSurvey's arrival. They landed in a hopper with a square gray logo with the name GrayCris - a name none of them are familiar with. GrayCris clearly wasn't playing around, deplaning from the hopper with 5 SecUnits and armed themselves. Murderbot fortunately notes that these are all SecUnits, not actual combat units, and that the humans didn't seem to be professional soldiers either.

Gurathin interrupts their review to show everyone a recording - it's a blurred image of a support structure, but in the audio a woman tells them that they've destroyed their beacon. She gives them a set of coordinates and a time the next day to meet, saying that they can find a way to come to some agreement that doesn't involve violence. Mensah asks SecUnit for its opinion. It states that GrayCris is clearly trying to deal with them now because they don't want to have to chase them around until the scheduled transport arrives at the end of the project. This seems odd to Ratthi, because, as he points out, it seems like GrayCris assumes the survey team knows why they're there. Mensah concludes that it must have something to do with the missing map sections and wonders how they can use that as leverage. Murderbot has an idea.

Gurathin and Pin-Lee modify one of the drones with scanning equipment so they can get a visual of GrayCris's habitat. Then the next day, Gurathin and Pin-Lee head towards GrayCris's habitat on foot while Mensah and Murderbot head to the meeting spot a couple of miles away. When they arrive, Mensah tells them that they've hidden proof of their actions scattered across the planet and that they'll be picked up when the transport arrives. She sends Murderbot to them as an emissary. When Murderbot meets with them, GrayCris tries to install a combat override module but Murderbot brushes it off. It tells them that its governor module has already been hacked and that it's been acting as a free agent. Murderbot then bluffs, telling GrayCris that the survey team is unaware and that it wants to make a deal - it provides them with info in exchange for going back with them listed as destroyed inventory, which would give it the opportunity to slip away unnoticed. GrayCris is skeptical, but they agree and start the process to remove Murderbot from the inventory. Then Murderbot reveals that Gurathin and Pin-Lee are working to manually launch their beacon and that they can succeed because Gurathin is an augmented human. The GrayCris leaders decide not to risk it and order Murderbot to retrieve Mensah, sending a DeltFall SecUnit along to help.

Of course, the DeltFall SecUnit isn't going to try to help, or at least that's what Murderbot assumes, as it attacks and ultimately kills it. Mensah catches up to them then and helps Murderbot swap pieces of armor with the dead SecUnit so it can pretend to be it. Murderbot then drags a "protesting" Mensah back to the GrayCris leaders, where they board a hopper to fly out to their beacon. Murderbot joins the other SecUnits in the cargo hold where it plugs into the feed. It listens to Mensah tell the GrayCris leaders that they know about the remains; the leaders try to brush them off and say that they'll still be able to come to some arrangement.

They land near the beacon and Murderbot deplanes with the other SecUnits. Two of the SecUnits and a couple of leaders walk over to the beacon which is...not great. As we know, the company is very cheap, so of course when it came to designing a beacon that was only meant to be launched once in case of emergency, they didn't worry about debris or minimizing the blast zone - they just told clients to stick a few kilometers away from their habitat. So being within 100 feet of the beacon? Not great.

Time runs out, and eventually Murderbot moves towards Mensah. The GrayCris leaders and other SecUnits begin to realize what's happening, but Murderbot fights them off. Just as the beacon begins its launch, Murderbot grabs Mensah and jumps off the plateau into the rocky hills below. It fades in and out of consciousness as Mensah talks to someone over the comm, as Gurathin returns, as they are loaded into the hopper, and as the hopper is loaded onto the transport ship.

Murderbot comes back online in a cubicle, one of the permanent ones on the company station. But despite the fact that everyone must know about its hacked government module - it's still non-functional. All of the media it downloaded is there too. When Murderbot exits the cubicle, it's greeted by Ratthi, who explains that Mensah had bought out its contract and it would go back to their planet with them. A couple of bot and human techs give Murderbot a change of clothes - not suit skin and armor but a PreservationAux survey uniform. Ratthi and Murderbot walk to the exit where they meet Pin-Lee who tells a couple of company reps that regardless of how irregular it might be to not purge a unit before it changes hands, she has a court order overruling that. The three of them skedaddle.

The three of them leave the deployment center and head to the hotel; Murderbot is seeing the human area of the company station for the first time. To its surprise, no one remarks on them besides a couple of reporters - otherwise, they just blend in with all of the other humans and augmented humans. They arrive at the hotel and head to the suite where the rest of the survey team is waiting. Mensah talks to Murderbot and explains that by purchasing the contract, she's become its guardian. It will be able to go back to their home planet with them and stay with Mensah as it decides what it wants to do next.

Murderbot then sits and waits as a slew of people visit the suite to deal with the fallout of, well, everything. Inside though, it's having an existential crisis. It's no longer a SecUnit; Mensah lives on a farm on a peaceful planet, so what would it even do there? It could no longer hide behind armor but would have to regularly interact with humans. But maybe it would work out. It was finally achieving everything it was supposed to want.

Later that night, after the rest of the team is tucked away, Murderbot slips out of the suite and hotel. It makes its way to the ship ring, hitching a ride with a cargo transport bot by pretending to be a servant bot hoping to rejoin its guardian. Murderbot leaves a final message for Mensah explaining that while it doesn't know what it wants, it does know that it doesn't want anyone else to decide what it wants or make decisions for it. It sends the message before going gently into the good night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Fin ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you all for joining us for this delightful quick read of All Systems Red by Martha Wells. Discussion questions are in the comments below. Take care lovelies!

Hello fellow humans!

Welcome to our first discussion of All Systems Red by Martha Wells! I'm so excited to dive into this fascinating world with all of you. Now, as y'all know, this is a very slim book at 149 pages. This will be our first of two discussions, covering chapters 1-4 today and 5-8 next week. Please be sure to respect our no-spoiler policy on discussion posts and limit any discussion to the material through Chapter 4. Anything further ahead that you want to jot down before you forget can be done in the marginalia post for this read, located here.

Here's a summary of the first four chapters:

SecUnit, or Murderbot, as it calls itself, is generally monitoring a survey session and bored when a wild animal attacks two nearby scientists, Drs. Bharadwaj and Volescu. Murderbot manages to fight the animal off but takes a few hits. It grabs Dr. Bharadwaj, who is badly injured, and manages to get through to Dr. Volescu in his state of shock so that they can leave the site and head back to the hopper, a plane that they'll take back to the larger habitat. The other scientists on the excursion meet them there and do their best to help aid them; the team barely manages to fly away from the wild animal in time.

Once they arrived back at the habitat, the others escort Drs. Bharadwaj and Volescu to the medical wing for further treatment. Murderbot does a few preliminary checks using the HubSystem feeds and then essentially undresses so that it can connect itself for repair. Before it could settle in, the lead researcher, Dr. Mensah, stopped by its cubicle to check on it and commend it for recognizing that Dr. Volescu needed additional support. Murderbot awkwardly thanks Dr. Mensah, and the awkwardness only increases when it views the the other scientists discussing the footage from Dr. Volescu's camera, stunned by the revelation of its face. Dr. Mensah leaves, and Murderbot puzzles over why the other scientists reacted so oddly before beginning stasis for repair.

Murderbot wakes up some time later after reaching about 80% capacity. Dr. Mensah has left a note to report to her after awaking, which is a little odd, but likely just a desire to figure out why none of their terrain assessments mentioned hostile fauna, which is definitely odd. We learn that Dr. Mensah's group is called PreservationAux and is from a freehold planet. They had purchased an option of the planet's resources and their trip was an investigation to determine if purchasing a full share was worth anything. There's probably more info about PreservationAux that Murderbot should know but honestly, it doesn't care.

It cleans up the cubicle and decides to go see Dr. Mensah before pulling out its spare suit of armor, since she would know it's awake at this point. Murderbot goes to one of the main areas the others are gathered in and it gets weird - actually, scratch that, it starts weird. The others don't recognize Murderbot at first without its armor. Murderbot is a SecUnit, which the team is required to have as part of the bond agreement with the company funding their investigation and which is also recording them all of the time. Dr. Mensah ignores all of this and asks Murderbot to review their intel so they can try to figure out why no one told them about the burrowing monster that likes to emerge from the ground and eat you. Murderbot reads through all of the data and realizes that some of the sections, including the one about hostile fauna, had been deleted from their assessment data.

This is, of course, not great, and of course leads to the question of how and from there to why. There's another, larger expedition called DeltFall on another continent on the other side of the planet, and everyone wonders if they've received incomplete reports as well. Dr. Mensah directs each person to review the sections of their assessment reports corresponding to their specialization and see if they can compile a list of anomalies before contacting DeltFall. Murderbot confirms that it can leave; Dr. Mensah invites it to stay in the crew area with the others but it essentially nopes out of the room before the awkwardness can intensify.

Murderbot retrieves its spare suit of armor while chewing over the problem. It's possible and somewhat likely that the company provided incomplete information since projects went to the lowest bidder and they were penny pinchers. Still, Murderbot finds it odd. It does a few security and safety checks until finally it's done everything it can think of and heads back to the cubicle to watch Sanctuary Moon. Later, Dr. Mensah sends it their conclusions via feed - it turns out six(!) pieces of their maps are missing. Murderbot explains that it believes that this is a result of shoddy service and craftmanship on the part of the company, rather than an intentional hack of their systems. Granted, Murderbot doesn't really know where they are on the planet and doesn't really care to know, so it's a bit hard to judge if the latter could happen. Anyways, the maps are definitely incorrect, and they settle on flying out to one of the unmarked regions to take a look for themselves.

Some of the crew sets out the next day on the small hopper. Dr. Mensah directs Murderbot to set in the cabin with the crew and it's only mildly awkward. Granted, it could have been worse - Murderbot had reviewed footage of the group's discussion yesterday after it fled left as they all agreed not to push it too hard to open up to the rest of them and join the group in full. It's not great from Murderbot's perspective, but it chalks it up to the fact that none of them had worked with SecUnits before. There's a brief moment when the autopilot mechanism falls over, but Mensah pilots the plane herself, so it's fine. It is the second HubSystem glitch in as many days though, since it sent conflicting commands during the attack.

The crew lands in one of the unmarked regions and decides to get out and explore. While it's still possible there was an intentional act of sabotage, nothing immediately stands out as a danger or reason for not including the area on the maps. So they decide to poke around a bit and collect some data that they can then add to the map themselves. It goes well for a while, until Drs. Pin Lee and Ratthi walk past their established perimeter and nearly into a hazard marker; their personal map is somehow missing all of the hazard markers that they'd added upon landing and initial scout. Murderbot spends the rest of the trip trying to keep the others from accidentally tripping over hazards, while the others grow more frustrated and convinced that the whole thing is just an error with the mapping equipment.

They pack up and head back to the habitat. The scientists go off to analyze what they found while Murderbot does a few security checks. It receives a notification from HubSystem for an update and uses a trick to store it in external storage while making HubSystem think it's been applied: one of the benefits of hacking its governor module. Dr. Mensah contacts Murderbot to tell it that they're not able to contact DeltFall group. Murderbot joins the crew in the main area as they discuss what to do. They've determined that there's enough supplies to take the big hopper to the DeltFall habitat and back and see what they can do. The lack of contact is worrying, since DeltFall has 3 SecUnits, and in the event of an emergency, both habitats are equipped with an emergency beacon that should fire even in the face of a HubSystem failure and/or animal attack. As a whole, the group agrees for a few of them to go to DeltFall's habitat to render aid if necessary and Murderbot joins them. When they leave, Dr. Mensah directs Murderbot to sit in the cabin with the others again.

Ratthi, for some reason, tries to get Murderbot to open up by mentioning that its organic parts are made of cloned human material and that it must have feelings. The others tell him to leave Murderbot be, especially when it immediately snitches to Dr. Mensah. Otherwise, it’s an relatively uneventful flight with downtime for serials. They arrive the next day. Murderbot, Dr. Mensah, and two others make their way into the very quiet habitat, with Murderbot in the lead. It discovers one destroyed SecUnit and a lot of human corpses.

Murderbot looks around a bit more, hoping to find and destroy the two unaccounted for SecUnits. Something is definitely wrong since all signs point to the dead SecUnit dying while defending the humans. Murderbot and Dr. Mensah manage to bait the other two into an attempted ambush. Murderbot manages to kill one SecUnit but the other one manages to severely injure it, doing something to its neck. Dr. Mensah kills the other SecUnit like the badass intrepid space explorer she is and drags Murderbot back to the hopper. As they try to stabilize it, Murderbot realizes that the other two SecUnits had gone rogue and that the last one stuck a combat override module into its data port. It tells the others to kill it before the override completes and when they hesitate, it grabs a gun and shoots itself.

Discussion questions are below. See y’all next week!

After my 7th or so re-read of Murderbot I have Witch King waiting in my e-reader, but I'm also interested in the older stuff. Audiobook would be nice.

I did see that there are now revised "author's preferred editions" of some of her older novels - and since she clearly wanted to update them, I don't want to accidentally read the old versions. What books have been revised so far? (And does anyone know if they are/will be available on audiobook?)

In any case, what other book should I read/listen to next?

"All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, 1)" by Martha Wells

Book number one of a seven book series of science fiction novellas. I reread the well printed and well bound hardcover published by Tor in 2017 that I bought new from Amazon. I purchased the hardcover since it was cheaper than the trade paperback. This novella won the 2018 Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus awards. The series won the 2021 Hugo for the best series also. I have all six books in the series and am eagerly awaiting the seventh book to be released in November 2023.

Murderbot is a SecUnit, similar to a T-800 Terminator with a cloned and severely modified human head. There is a human brain in there but it is run by the AIs embedded in its genderless torso. There are lungs, there is a blood mixture with a synthetic, there is human skin over the entire body, there is a face. Everything else is machine. Somehow, the blood is enriched with electricity as there is no stomach or intestines. But, there are arteries and veins to keep the skin and brain alive. All of the major arteries and veins have clamps to stop bleeding in case of damage. There is a MedSystem computer with an AI, a HubUnit computer with an AI, and a governor module that can force the SecUnit to follow orders using pain sensors in the brain. It has a energy gun in each arm and several cameras, all directly wired to the brain. The SecUnit can sustain severe damage to everything but the head and still survive.

Murderbot is a self named SecUnit due to an unfortunate circumstance with 57 miners on a remote moon. It has hacked its governor and no longer allows the governor to give it orders or inflict pain. It prefers to internally watch its 35,000 hours of downloaded media such as episodes of "The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon" and "Lineages of the Sun". Even though it has a face, it does not like to interface with humans, yes, very introverted. It will follow human orders if it see fit to do so.

Murderbot is on security duty for a group of scientists from Preservation planet that are considering buying into a new exploration planet. There is another group across an ocean also looking at the planet but they are not responding to their calls. So, Dr. Mensah takes a few people and Murderbot to investigate.

Quotes from the book:

1. "Yes, talk to Murderbot about its feelings. The idea was so painful I dropped to 97 percent efficiency."

2. "I hate having emotions about reality; I’d much rather have them about Sanctuary Moon."

3. "The sense of urgency just wasn’t there. Also, you may have noticed, I don’t care."

Warning: The violence is graphic and extreme. Murderbot also has a potty mouth. Books one through four are a series of novellas, not regular length books. There is a short story "Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory" between books four and five. Book five is a regular length novel, book six is back to the novella, and book seven is a full length novel due out in November 2023. You can buy collections of the first four hardbacks or all six currently available hardbacks.

The author has a website at:

There is a wiki for Murderbot including various episodes of "The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon":

and

My rating: 6 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars (40,197 reviews)

I just finished the last book in this series. It's exceptional both for the description of a universe basically run by corporate operations and the witty dialogue by SecUnit the main character. Its interaction with humans and other intelligent elements like transporters is beyond anything I've experienced in any scifi series. SecUnit is a construct, a manufactured unit of somewhat human proportions to provide security in pretty much any setting. But over time it is able to free itself from control by its owners and operate independently.

You will definitely laugh at its insight into human behavior and its love of space opera serials.

Please try it

Book number one of a seven book series of science fiction novellas. I reread the well printed and well bound hardcover published by Tor in 2017 that I bought new from Amazon. I purchased the hardcover since it was cheaper than the trade paperback at the time. This novella won the 2018 Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus awards. The series won the 2021 Hugo for the best series also. I have all six books in the series and am eagerly awaiting the seventh book to be released in November 2023.

Murderbot is a SecUnit, similar to a T-800 Terminator with a cloned and severely modified human head. There is a human brain in there but it is controlled by the AIs embedded in its genderless torso. There are lungs, there is a blood mixture with a synthetic, there is human skin over the entire body, there is a face, there is hair on the head and eyebrows. Everything else is machine. Somehow, the blood is enriched with electricity as there is no stomach or intestines. But, there are arteries and veins to keep the skin and brain alive. All of the major arteries and veins have clamps to stop bleeding in case of damage. There is a MedSystem computer with an AI, a HubUnit computer with an AI, and a governor module that can force the SecUnit to follow orders using pain sensors in the brain. It has a energy gun in each arm and several cameras, all directly wired to the brain. The SecUnit can sustain severe damage to everything but the head and still survive.

Murderbot is a self named SecUnit due to an unfortunate circumstance with 57 miners on a remote moon. It has hacked its governor and no longer allows the governor to give it orders or inflict pain. It prefers to internally watch its 35,000 hours of downloaded media such as episodes of "The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon" and "WorldHoppers". Even though it has a face, it does not like to interface with humans, yes, very introverted. It will follow human orders if it sees fit to do so.

Murderbot is on security duty for a group of scientists from Preservation planet that are considering buying into a new exploration planet. There is another group across an ocean also looking at the planet but they are not responding to their calls. So, Dr. Mensah takes a few people and Murderbot to investigate.

Murderbot is an incredibly interesting character. It handles horrible situations easily and personal interactions difficultly. Like I said, interesting.

Quotes from the book:

1. "Yes, talk to Murderbot about its feelings. The idea was so painful I dropped to 97 percent efficiency."

2. "I hate having emotions about reality; I’d much rather have them about Sanctuary Moon."

3. "The sense of urgency just wasn’t there. Also, you may have noticed, I don’t care."

Warning: There is violence and death in the books. Books one through four are a series of novellas, not regular length books. Book five is a regular length novel, book six is back to the novella, and book seven is a full length novel due out in November 2023. You can buy a collection of the first four hardbacks at a nice discount.

There is a short story "Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory" between books four and five.

The author has a website at:

There is a wiki for Murderbot including various episodes of "The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon":

and

There is a much better review at:

My rating: 6 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars (42,802 reviews)

Lynn