Lemonade Easy: A Review of Rogue Protocol, Martha Wells

It's early - the sun having risen hours before still looms lightly in the sky, casting a waning summer glow to the trees beyond my windowpane. The house sleeps around me while I quietly sip my coffee, glancing to the splayed edition of the next Murderbot chronicle. There is something about summer reading that catches my eye - the books need to be quick, something I can plunge in and out from without distraction. Summer is my mental cleansing months - reading becomes a purely pleasurable experience reliant on whodunits and easy sci-fi. Sure, there was that intense moment when I drank up the The Three Body Problem, flailing in the deep end of conjecture and wonder, but mostly my summer has been lemonade-accompanied easy-reading. 

Rogue Protocol, third in The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells has our favourite anti-social, soap-opera loving SecUnit in mid-transport trying to hitch the right ride to Milu system. Having successfully hacked its system, living beyond the confines of a SecUnit's strict protocols, Murderbot had, for a brief period been living the rogue life - performing security for Company contracts, all while being a willing sentient individual with a heart. Constructs, SecUnits live outside humanity acting as the boogieman, the scary enforcer who will keep you safe, killing when necessary. Owned and operated by large corporations, SecUnits are treated as property, controlled by software to ensure public safety but more accurately the corporate bottom line. 

 

In the first novella, All Systems Red, Murderbot inadvertently entangles itself with a group of scientists who are meant never to leave off-planet alive. To save the team and itself, Murderbot casts off it's mask of indenture, so beginning it's crusade for justice against GrayCris.

I am having a whoop of good time following this slightly depressed, socially awkward cyborg reluctantly embrace its humanity. Will Murderbot find closure by slowly peeling away its layers of discontent and sadness? Martha Wells has captured the unique dilemma of a creature not quite human but very much a part of humanity. Although Murderbot has enjoyed endless hours stuffed into cargo holds, watching hours of streamed entertainment it is becoming more obvious this is more a coping strategy rather than a life-choice. When he meets a Bot named Miki whose child-like innocence reveals a touching relationship of trust with it's human owner, Murderbot is overwhelmed with a complex mixture of anger and longing. 

The Murderbot Diaries unpack the psychological complexity of the reluctant hero. Remarkably it is the relationships with the operating systems of elevators, ships, drones, cameras and the varying models of Bots that bring life to these novellas. There is something quite delightful about a Ship so bored by its massive intellect that it force friendship's Murderbot into entertaining it as it successfully instructs Murderbot how to be less scary. 

While the future of The Murderbot Diaries is seemingly far from our present day there are elements that ring true. That smart fridge in your kitchen that pings you with milk expiration messages could very well be judging your dietary decisions. The future is much closer than we believe - be kind to our future robot overlords.

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.