Hugo Award Winner—Best Novella.
Review by Michael Isenberg.
At some point in her adolescence, Martha Wells, future Hugo Award winner, decided that she was a robot. She couldn’t possibly belong to the same species as the uninteresting humans around her. It would be illogical to have any interactions with them beyond the minimum necessary to fulfill her programming. What she really wanted was to be left alone to read. Maybe watch TV. Streaming Anime would have been in the mix, but it was the 1970s and that wasn’t an option. In any case, the humans better not bother her because she has power that they won’t even see coming until it’s too late.
Okay, I confess. I made all that up. But it does explain how Ms. Wells was able to create such a compelling and believable protagonist to narrate her novella All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries. For all I know, it might even be true. Or maybe it wasn’t her who was a robot in her own mind. Maybe it was one of her children who I don’t actually know if she has. Or maybe she’s just that good and was able to create the character whole cloth from her imagination.
The humans call the robot hero SecUnit, as in Security Unit, but it calls itself Murderbot. If you were hoping for a thriller about an undercover robot assassin though, you’ll be disappointed. Its mission is more mundane: to provide security for a team of scientists sent by the Preservation Alliance to survey an uninhabited planet. But it wants to be sure we know it could murder if it wants to.
Murderbot has little interest in its human teammates or their mission and does everything it can to distance itself from them. On away missions, it prefers to ride in the vehicle's cargo hold, rather than the passenger compartment. Although it is not required to wear its armor in most situations, it does anyway, in part to hide its body—the mishmash of organic and inorganic components is a source of poor body image—but mainly to hide its face. The opaque mask is ideal for that. Murderbot is convinced that “Nobody ever listens to me,” and yet, when the humans try to start a meaningful conversation with it, it freezes up in terror. All it wants to do is put in as little effort as possible so it can get back to “watching the entertainment feed all through the day cycle with no one trying to make [me] talk about [my] feelings.” It likes the entertainment serials “because they were unrealistic and not depressing and sordid like reality.”
Thus Murderbot tries to live a controlled existence, but as in real life, one can never control events. There is a second survey party, from some other alliance, on the other side of the planet. When the Preservation team loses contact with it, the humans go to investigate, bringing Murderbot along. They find the other party brutally murdered. Apparently someone else is on the planet, a third group, one with a mysterious and lethal agenda of its own. And now it’s coming after the Preservation team. Murderbot must work with its humans more closely than ever, if they are ever to leave the planet alive.
Amid the discussions of how to proceed (the humans are always discussing everything, much to Murderbot's annoyance), and the preparations, and the battles, Murderbot does come to care for its humans, even if it struggles to admit that. And right on schedule, two-thirds of the way through, Murderbot has a breakthrough. The team leader, Mensah, wants to see its face.
“I know you’re more comfortable with keeping your helmet opaque, but the situation has changed. We need to see you.” I didn’t want to do it. Now more than ever. They knew too much about me. But I needed them to trust me so I could keep them alive and keep doing my job. The good version of my job, not the half-assed version of my job that I’d been doing before things started to kill my clients. I still didn’t want to do it. “It’s usually better if humans think of me as a robot,” I said.
“Maybe, under normal circumstances.” She was looking a little off to one side, not trying to make eye contact, which I appreciated. “But this situation is different. It would be better if they could think of you as a person who is trying to help. Because that’s how I think of you.”
My insides melted. That’s the only way I could describe it. After a minute, when I had my expression under control, I cleared the face plate and had it and the helmet fold back into my armor.
A touching moment. Murderbot literally comes out of its shell.
But beyond the Murderbot character, meh. The other elements of good fiction just aren't there. We know hardly anything about the rest of the team. Aside from Mensah, and the enhanced human Gurathin, who stood out because Murderbot didn’t particularly like him, we’re told so little about the members of the Preservation team that they are forgettable and interchangeable, like the dwarves in The Hobbit. We’re not even told what they look like. Murderbot only gives us the most bare-bones details of the settings. His style of narration is clear, but with nothing particularly interesting to distinguish it, not even a catch phrase, or the sort of techno-jargon one would expect from an artificial life form. And when the big reveal finally comes and we learn who the third party is and what they’re after, it goes by so quickly, and has so little relevance to anything, that it wasn’t worth the wait.
I suppose Ms. Wells would say that All Systems Red is a subjective, first person narrative, and these are things that aren’t important to the narrator, especially one as self-centered as Murderbot. And while she’d be right, they’re sure important for making that world come alive for the reader.
While Ms. Wells doesn't have time to flesh out the secondary characters, or tell us what the landscape looks like in any detail, she nevertheless finds time to check off all the political correctness boxes that I suppose have to be checked off to win a Hugo these days. Genderless protagonist. Check. Minority and/or female boss. Check. Same-sex relationships. Check. Non-traditional marriage. Check. Race/Class division. Check. Myopically profiteering corporation. Check. None of which has anything to do with the story, with the exception of the myopically profiteering corporation. In all fairness, that's a well-developed plot device for enhancing suspense: when things start going wrong, neither the characters nor the reader know whether they’re the result of shoddy equipment or sabotage. And at least we're spared the evil corporation cliché.
I'm sure All Systems Red appeals to the sort of self-obsessed adolescent (or permanent adolescent) who sees himself in the main character. And the Social Justice Warriors no doubt appreciate the virtue signalling. But I can't recommend it for hard core readers who want to get lost in a story. There's just not enough to get lost in.
It is clear from the last chapter that the adventures of Murderbot will continue, and indeed Ms. Wells has cranked out three more installments since All Systems Red launched The Murderbot Diaries sixteen months ago. A good character study can carry a short story. Carrying a novella is a stretch. I’m curious whether Ms. Wells will try to carry a whole series on its strength. Still, I’m in no hurry to find out. All Systems Red does not end on a cliffhanger, nor are there even any loose ends that my OCD absolutely needs to see tied up. And I don’t want to spend that much time with a surly teen anyway, no matter how artfully rendered. So it might be awhile. But despite their flaws, The Murderbot Diaries does have some popularity and they will no doubt be up for another award next year, in which case I’ll take a look. Stayed tuned.
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Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com
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