MURDERBOT SAVES ANOTHER HUMAN -ME
It Took a Murderbot to Save Me
An anxious, depressed, hypervigilant Murderbot saves stupid humans with exasperated devotion.
This series is a rollicking criticism of corporate capitalism and a tribute to the kindness in the best of humans. And funny as hell. The books will grab you and take you into Murderbot’s half-organic, half-constructed head from the beginning. The books are binge-y, my favorite type of find, an immersive, gripping set of tales, even if you are not traditionally into science fiction.
“I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on The Company satellites. … As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.” — All Systems Red, Book One in The Murderbot Diaries series.
The first book in this series came out in 2017. Apple TV is working on a TV series production, due this year. I found the audiobook series about three weeks ago. Just in time for Murderbot to save me. When I am seriously in the throes of writer’s block, I hunt for something inspiring to read.
Some people really know how to write a title, and stories that entertain, empower and provide insight. Martha Wells does it all in this series, which you can read, old-school style, with those bricks of stacked paper and ink. It might be worth it if only for the cover art. But I chose the audiobook series, for reasons I will explain in a minute.
In the audiobook series, Wells knocks it into outer space with a very human story of Murderbot, a Security Unit (SecUnit) that is rented to whoever has enough in hard currency cards to pay The Company. Its only purpose is to protect humans who have rented it, or die trying.
One day, because “The Company” is cheap and uses crappy, cheap materials, Murderbot (its private name) hacks the module The Company uses to control SecUnit. It uses that newfound freedom to construct a new life for itself. But it can’t seem to get out of the habit of protecting stupid humans, who are always trying to get themselves killed, or kill each other.
For three entire weeks I could not write. My normal process was not working.
It had been coming on for months. I tried forcing myself to get at least one piece up on Medium each week. I failed. That I couldn’t put together a solid piece, one up to my own standards, made me even more anxious, with added doses of guilt and self-recrimination. I have been writing about the US election, and the shitshow around the felonious tennis shoe hustler and all his crimes.
I accidentally overdosed on news.
I collapsed. I had overdosed. I became paralyzingly depressed and stomach-twistingly anxious.
Then a Murderbot came along to save me.
For three weeks I took notes, researched and tried to write one stinking article, only to give up literally mid-sentence and slam down my laptop lid, giving it filthy looks, then crawling back into bed. Fuck you, laptop! My “performance level” was somewhere under 10%.
Not good. Then I found The Murderbot Diaries, a series of science fiction books. I haven’t read sci-fi since I was a kid. Or rather, whatever new I read seemed like reworking of the same old classics, like Ray Bradbury or Frank Herbert of the Dune series.
I am now a big fan of audio books. Done well, they free you from the sofa. This series is funny and fast-paced — a perfect balance of storyline pace and razor-sharp dialogue, especially if you like snark and sarcasm (and if you do, hit that “follow” button.)
Wells brings you into worlds of abandoned terraforming planets, the people abandoned on them, research crews, and illegal alien artifact mining funneled to the blackest of black markets — and through hazardous space journeys on the way. But action happens right away with sudden, frequent threats that Murderbot must solve on the fly.
Wells does it without dragging you into paragraphs of dull world-building, which most fantasy and sci-fi writers do an absolute crap job of, bombing readers with long-winded, boring descriptions, and names of things and people that have no connection to actual human words. Wells’ writing is crisp and clean; snarky, witty and warm. She lets her readers visualize for themselves.
Another thing Wells does, that almost nobody in science fiction does, is make her characters not-binary — that is, most of the “bad guys” are both evil and somewhat sympathetic, themselves controlled by companies and bandits, and Murderbot does its best not to protect its humans by simply killing the bad guys -or bots.
Wells, in one interview, reveals that she made up her stories as she went along. The standard practice that every writer is taught — to build an outline, present conflicts, then solve them before they write the story — that is not for Wells -or Murderbot. It does its job “half-assed,” it laments, and must make up for it with instant response. But again, Murderbot hates to be bored. Wells freewheels — she brings in a crisis, and leaves SecUnit to solve it. What will SecUnit create on the fly to counter this fresh threat?
In the first-person, or in this case first-person/bot construct, Wells’ SecUnit’s sarcastic inner monologue, meshing with its remarks to its humans is a key feature that makes Wells’ series so funny — and so human. In Exit Strategy, Murderbot nearly deletes itself. As it comes back online, it begins to recognize the humans it had teamed up with.
…That was Gurathin. I don’t like him.
“I don’t like you.”
“I know.”
He sounded like he thought it was funny. “That is not funny.”
“I’m going to mark your cognition level at fifty-five percent.”
“Fuck you.”
“Let’s make that sixty percent.” — From Exit Strategy
Why did I identify with “SecUnit” — Murderbot so much?
SecUnit has the supercomputer power to monitor dozens of “feeds” at once — browsing through archives to get more data; threat assessment reports; security drone feeds; the bot-pilot feeds of the ships it befriends; “news bursts”; entertainment feeds; hacking into “system hubs.”
Yet, even in the middle of combat, SecUnit might pull in an “entertainment feed” to bolster its strength. Which is an absolutely brilliant author’s device, just saying. I had not been taking breaks.
SecUnit is built to monitor multiple threats and security issues at all times, with multiple, endless feeds of data. It is a perfect illustration of post-trauma hypervigilance and too much busyness in this new AI-driven world. Murderbot is built to do this.
I am not.
Kevin Freed’s narration is unhurried, perfectly timed and paced, using pauses in the same way painters use space to enhance an art piece. He shows his SAG/AFTRA acting chops, using hesitation and snark in the way Wells intended.
I needed mind candy.
And I needed to close my eyes so I would not see the nagging pop-ups of news and more news. I turned to YouTube to find a good audiobook.
Murderbot Diaries. Who could resist that title? I listened. Wow, cool, good, I’m in. When I grokked it was a series, I backtracked to Book One, All Systems Red, then listened to each book in the series.
Within minutes, I found a kindred spirit in SecUnit, self-named “Murderbot” — a hypervigilant, human-phobic, paranoid, half-organic, half-computer, armed and very human “construct” who is bitingly sarcastic, rolling its eyes at the stupid humans, who are always trying to get themselves killed, while being unable to shake the habit of protecting them.
SecUnit, I can relate. I was finally able to reboot.
