Paperback, 152 pages
English language
Published May 2015 by Tor.
All Systems Red is a 2017 science fiction novella by American author Martha Wells. The first in a series called The Murderbot Diaries, it was published by Tor.com. The series is about an artificial construct designed as a Security Unit, which manages to override its governor unit, thus enabling it to develop independence. It calls itself Murderbot, and likes to watch unrealistic soap operas. As it spends more time with some caring humans, it starts developing feelings that it does not care for.
As I’m doing a reread of the Murderbot Diaries book 1-3 before starting on the rest, this was book 1. It’s fairly short, straightforward and fastpaced. Read it within the day. On to the next
Quick impressions: Overall, this was a fun and light short novel with a good mystery and conspiracy element. The protagonist is a relatable character (come on, I am sure there are days you want to be left alone to stay home watching television) with a bit of good humor.
(Full review available on my blog soon).
I absolutely love Murderbot. A well paced, well told story. Can't wait to read the rest of the series!
I LOVED All Systems Red. Murderbot might be my new favorite character in all of Sci-Fi. I had to read this for my first grad school class at Emerson, and it was an overall winner. Highly recommended if you like Sci-Fi, or if you like character-driven stories that are quick-paced, with decent action and good suspense. I will most definitely be adding the other Murderbot books to my TBR pile.
I liked this, but it was also weirdly hard to pay attention to? Could be that no matter how I try, I’ll never be much for sci-fi. I think I’ll check out the other books in the series eventually, probably when there aren’t 8 billion holds on everything. I liked the snark and the world building enough to keep going, but I wanna revert to some non-sci-fi for a bit.
Murderbot is an ADHD icon and I love it.
the murderbot is SNARKY. i don't have much else to say about this book other than go read it, it's good and only 150 pages long
i do have one intelligent thing to say about it which is it raises a lot of interesting ideas regarding robot ethics and i hope she goes into that more in the sequels
I read this a couple weeks ago and could tell you approximately nothing about the plot! I remember having a nice time reading it? It's short, which is to its credit. There is some stuff about untrustworthy corporations, and the main character is a robot whose robot-ness seems to be a metaphor for neurodivergence of some kind? I don't know. It never really came together but also, hey, it was short.
This was nice. Extremely pulp, but managed to get at some larger ideas.
Absolutely delightful novella that manages to touch on big themes about what it means to be accepted as a person, and to deal with people when you're not sure, while staying fun, light read.
