Murderbot: A Review of All Systems Red, Martha Wells

There is no better adjective for today but disgusting. The rain gods must surely love Toronto as they have showered down their love for 24 hrs. My kitchen view expands out onto a dreary, grey-soaked winter day, snow banks depressingly vanquished, debris sadly on display all the while the mercury plummets. We have been promised an ice palace by this evening, one that no one wishes to enter, least of all visit by car.  Standing outside my library branch, damp and windswept my thoughts jumbled from the morning argument with child regarding appropriate garments to Murderbots. 

The nominations for 2018's Philip K. Dick award for science fiction novels published in the United States for the previous year were released. A living breathing paradox, my very geeky science fiction proclivities extend not to the conventions, awards and publishing houses that make what I love available. Indeed, Arthur C. Clarke and the tantalizing lists that have come out of The Kitschies have only recently piqued my interests, giving momentum to my recent year's reading piles. Sorry for the dis Hugo, but this girl is just not into you. Yet, here I sit having read one of the nominees, debating whether to continue with my planned review, feeling slightly annoyed that an award has deemed it reading worthy. 

All Systems Red by Martha Wells is an adequately satisfying read for a novella, providing enough world building to enrich the reader's imagination but brief enough to encapsulate a mood fully. Truthfully, the time spent between waiting for the second book of a trilogy to arrive through the library hold system can be a bleak experience. The pull of the first novel is so complete that any book read in the interim can be lost, used mostly as filler. Not so is the case with All Systems Red, the confessions of government SecUnit gone rogue, who darkly refers to himself/herself as Murderbot. 

This is a future in which sentient constructs of synthetic and organic parts exist to fulfill specific societal roles. Not quite a robot, defiantly not human, our Murderbot is in security, owned and hired out to protect the corporation's contractual obligations for myriad of clientele. On an unexplored planet, Murderbot contentedly streams hours of hacked entertainment feeds, successfully convincing the small survey team it works for that it is a focused, professional SecUnit. Things begin to unravel as it becomes clear that someone wishes them all harm. 

The Murderbot Diaries have an Isaac Asimov, 'I, Robot' quality, interlaced with a twang of Philip K. Dick's 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep'. Because it is a novella, information that would normally develop is eluded to, giving All Systems Red a real-time perspective. We meet Murderbot, speculate on his/her existence, and surmise that Murderbot is more than the constructed parts he/she presents to the world. Martha Wells has created a powerfully humane sentient being, alarmingly alien yet complex enough that we want to be his/her friend. I look forward to the movie that hopefully will spawn from this little gem of a book. I have a deep desire to see a meaningfully deep science fiction film, sprinkled with murder and mayhem.