eBook, 156 pages
English language
Published May 2, 2017 by Tordotcom.
"As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."
In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.
But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.
On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid — a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.
But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.
A socially awkward, traumatized by PTSD, has executive dysfunction, and just wants to be free and watch entertainment streams ... Murderbot is very relatable.
*I received a review copy as part of the 2021 Hugo voters packet.
ALL SYSTEMS RED is about a loner in a crowd, a Murderbot who just wants to be left alone to watch its serials. Unfortunately, someone is trying to kill the scientists it's there to protect.
I love this book, I love Murderbot. The setting is great, the background is told as its relevant to the story and mostly consists of slowly reinforcing how much the company will do whatever it has to to protect its money, and that simple calculus drives a lot (but not quite all) of the difficulties that the group faces. The scientists come through as individuals even though Murderbot is doing its best to ignore them. The narration is a delightful mix of Murderbot saying what literally happened and adding its own asides with the info that informed its decisions or give context …
These books moved quickly and kept me hooked. Although aspects were annoying, I kept reading and enjoyed them on the whole. Above average but not excellent.
Well now, that hit a lot of ethical/becoming-aware sweet spots. Really liked how it was put together.
Good on the re-read, too.
I need all of this in my life
I don't read too many novellas because the format is really hard to do well. This book isn't an exception. It's good, sure; but I really want a novel length version of exactly the same story.
The characters are thrust into a situation that is mostly out of their control, and for most of the time they have no idea of the motivations behind the actors causing all the problems they are facing. We only get two sentences ourselves to explain the entire story - it's just not that satisfying in this format.
Perhaps the rest of the series will be able to explore parts of Murder-bots character in more depth. This novella is at least interesting enough to warrant reading the rest, so hopefully I can come back to this review and alter it once I've finished the other parts.
Fun twists on reticent sentience.
