Murderbot, she wrote
wired.com
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I'm struggling to not gush about this book and trying to avoid spoilers, but if you like a good sci-fi action/adventure book with a strong lean towards a journey of self discover it's really worth a read.
(1) https://www.goodreads.com/series/391892-the-battleship-chron...
The protagonist is basically a disconnected Borg drone, although in their universe the drones are left with a bit more autonomy than the Star Trek equivalents, but because the protagonist is disconnected it doesn't matter nearly as much as you would expect.
If you're interested in a big space opera about an empire falling apart I found the Collapsing Empire series by John Scalzi to be much more engaging.
But having recently read about all etiquette concerns of the Japanese admirals doing their life or death struggles during WWII, it hardly seems unrealistic.
For a lot of people, seeing people navigate multiple military/social/political spheres is part of the appeal of imperial fiction.
I have to admit this made me boggle.
I really enjoyed them _because_ the culture was strange and unfamiliar and it was just assumed you'd know what was going on -- which is exactly what mainstream fiction does, of course. (Aside: that's one of the things I enjoyed most about the Three Body Problem.)
Compare with most SF which is "20th century California, but it's in space". (Note: I have never been to California.) Or most fantasy, which is "noble square-jawed heroes in a Hollywood movie parody of the middle ages". It's dull. Leckie gave us something different without infodumps.
As for the empire collapse thing: well, in real life, if you're in the middle of world-changing events, the thing is you still need to wash your socks and get to work. This is realism. It's more involving than some mighty imperial Mary Sue deciding the fate of worlds, as per Asimov's Foundation or something.
I get why the author did it but and it was a good payoff on realizing and stressing inherent societal biases, like any good scifi should break your brain a bit and point out where you are being intellectually lazy. It just didn't need to be so long. And also the story just wasn't all that interesting if I recall. Kinda someone wandering in the wilderness iirc.
I actually liked the latter parts of the series once I got past that. Got more into a detective novel and some political intrigue. The gender bending/fluditity came into it's own at the end as you had many characters against current gender norms that you hear described through actions and then "meet" much later in the book, realizing all the assumptions you were implicitly making being wrong. along with all of the drones who wouldn't really have a gender anyway or might switch gender constantly, so why are we forcing our mental model of gender on them (fair enough).
If you like challenging your brain a bit power through the first book, but it's definitely not the traditional science only sci-fi. I see why a lot of people like the book and I see why a lot of people hate it because it's not a deathstalker novel. It's kinda like when my dad was really pissed when we watched the live version of Cats because "it wasn't what I expected". I was 8, and was like "what did you expect?" "I don't know, but not this" to which my 6 year old brother said "It's definitely about cats".
Maybe this is weird, but your quote here just piqued my interest in Anicllary Justice way more than the other good reviews have done.
I thought it was great. It hooked my interest immediately and then kept me engaged.
I didn't notice a slog at the start of Anathem either time I read it, TBH.
And I liked the initial Imperial Radch and I liked the idea of the fracturing empire and the gender bits but my feelings now about it are influenced by some of the characters’ overthinking. Then again, perhaps placing a troop transport sentient ship’s mind into a person gives them terrible social anxiety.
Still, I was recommending it soon after I read it. These are opinions that I have now a long while after.
Can you offer a comparison? I don't have a good understanding of your baseline.
It was so bad it caused me to re-read the original three, and I realized that only the first was one was any good.
I feel like once you decide you don't like something, it's very easy to get reductionist about it in a way that makes it sound stupid or trite even if the reductionist statement is true. This summary to me is a quintessential example.
I liked the book alright, but certainly not enough to get into a debate about it. If you liked Leckie's other work, you'll probably find something to like here too, no matter your feelings on hallways. But maybe not!
I'm not sure I would describe it as more autonomy. The central ship computer was absolutly dominant within the hive mind, and had control over the ancillaries at all time.
It's more like personalities of the ancillaries feed back into the hive mind at a somewhat subconscious level, and had quite a bit of impact on the overall personality.
> If you're interested in a big space opera about an empire falling apart I found the Collapsing Empire series by John Scalzi to be much more engaging.
Yeah, the Imperial Radch series is not about the empire falling apart. That's just something happening in the background, which sometimes drives the plot forwards. Its primary goal is to explore the question of "what does it mean to be human"
I really enjoyed John Scalzi's Collapsing Empire series, which is directly about the fall of a civilisation, and how to save the people.
The interesting thing is that Collapsing Empire bucks the usual trend of empires falling apart because they grew too big, internal political instability or external rivals. It was stable and only falls apart because the form of FTL they were using to connect their star systems fell apart, and none of the star systems were self sufficient.
Also in the genre of "space operas with collapsing empires", I do recommend Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire.
Redshirts however is a master class in satire of Trek, and Starter Villain made me laugh.
I also admit Wil Wheaton's narration of his books always feels spot on to me.
By the time the book gets going, it's already over.
Murderbot is on kindle unlimited (except for the newest), but yeah $15 for a novella starts adding up quickly.
Bobiverse is also on kindle unlimited, except for the newest book which is only on audible for now.
There are a lot of excellent authors who self publish, first on Reddit / royal road, and then some of them publish the same work as a book. The promotion channels, including review copies, etc - that a good publisher can facilitate - aren’t often accessible for this cohort. So that’s one big reason why - discovery becomes a challenge.
They are fun but not very well-written.
Still not every book is for every person, it didn't connect with me but it very obviously has its fans.
I've got enough past actually-greats—genre and otherwise—to catch up on, I don't need 100 "OMG it's so good!" comments from a dozen sites steering me toward a newer book that turns out to be pretty damn mediocre. That's been the outcome often enough that I just have to ignore those kinds of comments, no matter how frequently-encountered and how unanswered by credible-seeming naysayers they go—those aspects, maddeningly, don't seem to correlate with them being more likely to be good advice on what to read next.
IDK what the deal is, though I suspect it's actually multiple forms of difference in judgement of fiction and expectations for how one frames a recommendation, which have different causes but the same outcome.
Like, I basically need a top-ten in-genre books and a top-ten (dealer's choice) works outside that genre in any medium from someone recommending a book, to even begin to judge if what I'm going to find on the other side of the recommendation is probably going to at least be fairly good. A bare recommendation, no matter how glowing, carries no signal. Let me know what else you think is good, and I can start to get an idea of whether we're in alignment, because otherwise there's a decent chance we very much are not.
I adore world building so I gravitate to fantasy and scifi but I really don't care that much about characterisation. A story with a dull self insert character is genuinely fine for me so long as the world building is interesting. That is ultimately why I didn't care about Murderbot much, the world building is pretty standard and the character that fans of the story relate to is pretty much lost on me.
You have to figure out the specifics of what you enjoy from a book and then look for people with similar tastes in order to find recommendations.
But books? The level of investment to make these determinations is larger, and there's less people doing it. Or maybe I just haven't found the answer yet.
I also don't think it helps that people either like a book or immediately say "bad writing" or "too YA", which then make others that disagree look like simpletons just for disagreeing. Creates a hard place for dialogue.
In particular the "moods" feature caught my eye.
Even author recommendations are hit or miss.
I loved well's murderbot series. I tried her other books (Raksura) but it wasn't as fun.
I found American Gods to be highly praised, and though it was hard to get through. Gaiman's short story "How to talk to girls at parties" was fun though.
https://neilgaiman.com/Cool_Stuff/Short_Stories/How_To_Talk_...
I liked Neal Stephenson's early books like snowcrash or the diamond age, but the baroque cycle lost my trust.
The version that's sold today is the "author's preferred text" which is not the version that was praised and won awards etc.. I think that's pretty dishonest marketing, and wish they'd sell the original edition, which is like 200 pages shorter.
I’d rave about that.
I cannot stand Becky Chambers. I've tried to read her three times, and after about 20 pages I give up. Of the thousand or so novels I've read in the last 20 years, I've done that with about 5 books.
One of my friends asked my why I was so vituperative about Becky Chambers. I said it was just so bad.
They pointed out that I really, really sounded like I was channeling the "I am a man and I really want everyone's favorite things to be what men like in Sci Fi" trope.
I don't think this is accurate! I like all sorts of feminist sci-fi.
But I loath characters who sit around and don't do anything much while some low-stakes activity is happening and there's a bunch of angst that strikes me as unimportant whining not driving any plot.
So, fair enough, I have only encountered that style of writing from female authors. But I don't think it's a particularly damning individual preference.
I happened to love Murderbot (and A Memory Called Empire), though, per the original point of discussion for this post.
I want more stories about people just... living unremarkable lives in remarkable places. Like, I don't need to read about Batman, but reading about the guy who runs the bodega in Gotham City? Yum yum yum, that's absolutely food for me.
I describe Chambers to others as "cozy" sci-fi.
That said, I think her different works hit differently. The Monk and Robot series is a really poignant pair of novellas about what it means to be human in a solarpunk world.
The Wayfarer series (Long Way to a Small Angry Planet) is slice of life stories of people caught in awkward situations around space. It's like, "What are people on the fringes doing in Star Trek -- not Picard types, but like, construction crews or black market dealers or space communists or people who get stuck at a motel because the highway shuts down. What if Firefly was a little less high energy.
I disagree with your assessments a little, but not enough to make a fuss. I think it's absolutely fair to say, "This wasn't to my taste".
That said, I'm also queer, poly, and use neopronouns, so I think I may be primed for science fiction that takes the transhumanism language and explores those topics in ways that doesn't treat those topics are scandalous or shocking.
I really liked A Psalm for the Wild-Built but was hoping to learn more about the robots but then the second one came out and it was a lot of shallow philosophizing on the meaning of life that was more aimed at a level for YA books. There's nothing wrong with YA novels but that's not what I was looking for.
I'd put e.g. James A Corey in the same bucket (though I can't remember what proportion of them is actually male?) but I honestly can't think of any new male authors from Tor over that period. (They're Cixin Liu's US publisher so you might count him, but he's bad in so many different ways that I don't know I'd put him in the same category). And even beyond publishers, few of the authors being pushed by newspapers/Goodreads/etc. seem to be male.
I poke at this specifically because Hugo shortlist authors---with the lesser Novella Award serving as gateway---tend to generate exceptional sales figures relative to their peers, and Tor authors have had a statistically overwhelming shortlist presence over the past decade.
Filtering on non-female authors:
- Dexter Gabriel (P. Djeli Clark) wrote three unrelated novellas, all of which were shortlisted. The Haunting of Tram Car 015 was a warmup to his Nebula-winning novel A Master of Djinn. Arguably the most notable example, but doesn't quite fit the implicit business strategy I was alluding to...more like take random novella shots and further develop the thing that sticks, as opposed to committing two novellas to a strategic theme while reserving the option to follow up.
- Victor LaValle got a lot of attention across the board with his novella nomination, but jumped ship to a Penguin Random House imprint for his breakout novel The Changeling that was produced into a television series for Apple TV+.
- Kai Ashante Wilson wrote two related LGBT romantasy novellas; one was shortlisted. Sales clearly just wasn't there.
- Daniel Polansky...doesn't have a wiki page. Nomination was for a single standalone fantasy novella.
- Neon Yang and Nino Cipri identify as "they". Both were nominated for LGBT fantasy novellas; the former's Tensorate appears to have hit better sales metrics relative to the latter's LitenVerse.
- Adrian Tchaikovsky was already a reputable science fiction author riding on laurels, so doesn't fit the implicit business strategy; his nomination struck me as more "traditional".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novella#Wi...
However, it shouldn't be surprising that it's little known to the type of crowd that Murderbot Diaries is likely to appeal to...perhaps even more so when audiobook is the preferred consumption format for such short novellas as many commenters here have expressed.
For context, how many books have you read? (I don't intend to sound confrontational, I just want an idea of what level of reader you are so I know how much stock to place in your praise of the novel.)
Since graduating high school ~5 years ago I've probably read ~50 fiction books. I'm a big fan of Dune, Three-Body Problem, The Martian, and other similar sci-fi books.
I can relate. A lot of people, myself included, seem to be having this problem. The past 20 years of publishing has been weird.
Thanks for your response. I enjoy the same kind of sci-fi that you do, so I've got myself a copy of A Memory Called Empire. :-) Thanks again.
I loved the world-building and how the author weaved poetry into the narrative. I liked how the world felt unfamiliar at first and gradually the author helped make sense of how politics and individuals fit together.
A big part of it might be that I've only read a handful of good sci-fi books so I have less to compare to.
I'm a man, so I went in with my prejudices and automatically assumed Murderbot is a "he". When reading a review that considered it a "she", I re-read most of it and there's no single indication of its gender, if Murderbot even assumes one.
I found that interesting, kind of like that trick Ursula K. Le Guin pulled when she didn't tell her readers Ged from Earthsea was dark skinned.
There are parts of the story where Murderbot passes as either a man or a woman so I figure the body shape must be fairly neutral.
Wow, I've only read the first one, but definitely considered Murderbot a she (even though I'm male). Hmmmm....
I do think it's unquestionable that she was purposefully subverting and playing with the standard expectations of fantasy novels written by white and male authors.
I think Martha Wells does a bit of the same with her depiction of both Murderbot as well as -- in general -- the role of women in her series. In particular Dr. Mensah impressed me: she's fair, intelligent, and in charge. She's not an action hero nor does she know her way around extreme violence, yet she's not downplayed as incompetent or lost (arguably after overcoming some initial naivete); in fact she's possibly the most competent character (in things other than killing people, of course).
If you enjoyed Murderbot, take that as a recommendation, although it is less sci-fi and more historical fiction.
Murderbot is not that. What you see of them is as genuine as their perspective can be. Murderbot may be snarky, but it doesn't have the same braggadocious air, and I do think that changes the character and story significantly. And if you're a similar kind of neuro-atypical then it can be a refreshing bit of heroic representation.
I will give Sixteen Ways some credit though - at least it ended. I don't particularly like the ending, but it is one. Murderbot falls off hard by the time the series gets to full length novels.
You put that beautifully! That is what I enjoyed about it.
If someone tells you it is going to have big messages I could see how it would be disappointing.
i found it good, but definitely pretty pulpy and also clearly relying on the trope of 'minimal protag personality so the reader can slot themselves in'
The Murderbot series is specifically the kind of literature that's meant for serialized A/V adaptation in my opinion; but just as a novel of course it won't compete with the kinds of Gibson, Stephenson, Egan or even Weir.
This book had interesting character development, and I especially enjoyed the read-between-the-lines behavior of others viewed through an aspergers frame of mind. Sort of awkward but decent.
5 Ile Rien, 7 Cloud Roads, 2 Emilie, Witch King, plus rereading Murderbot
I like Murderbot ok, though it's beginning to feel a little like a shaggy dog joke at this point.
Also, I feel like if I am recommending something I have to recommend Dungeon Crawler Carl, which is my current obsession. I've read all the books multiple times in multiple formats, but it's not much like Murderbot.
100% this. I am not at all arachnophobic -- I like spiders, I find them cute and fascinating. They were the only interesting characters in the book. The humans were all vile and the human scenes dull dull dull.
I really stuggled to finish the book and do not plan to return to the sequels.
Casting a big name actor in the role, especially a male actor who tends to play tough guys, seems like a mistake. ~80% of the murderbot fans I've talked to, decided they weren't watching the series when they heard that casting decision. Generally the take was: "if that is who they cast, they don't understand why the books worked." I reserve my judgement until the series comes out, actors can act and should not be cast based on audiences expectations, but it does not auger well.
My expectation is that he's going to be able to play an ungendered character quite well.
It turned out not to be the one I was sure you meant, hahaha. "Iceman" from Generation Kill is rather a twist, but of course, as mentioned, actors are supposed to be able to act....
Kinda cool when your book-made vision shifts like that. It's one of the funnest parts of reading a book before the movie comes out... that sensation of /mental annexation/ that happens.
Excited to see the show!
Murderbot blends as a human. Can you remember a specific passage where it's a dude? It could be your brain playing tricks on you.
I'm a man and I'm guilty of assuming a male gender for characters where the text says "a guard", "a doctor", "a soldier", etc. When I was told some readers thought Murderbot was female, I re-read several passages and nowhere does Martha Wells state its gender either way (even by stating Murderbot passes for a man or woman).
Mainly I think we came up with that mindset immediately upon reading the first novella and never updated it.
I'm pretty sure it's never stated it looks like either a man or a woman. I mean, if it can pass for human it must like either or at least androgynous, but Martha Wells never tells us which.
What I do find interesting though is how many people chimed in here with a very strong sense of this detail but it was all a mix of responses! :)
Like "everyone here is a little wary of me, and I can't even really blame them for it, because I just categorically am a more threatening presence."
I don't have access to the books right now, but from what I remember, Rin is referred to as she/her, and random Reddit comments (https://www.reddit.com/r/murderbot/comments/118s7on/comment/...) back that up.
I wonder what Martha Wells thinks about this casting choice...
By the way, long scifi fan here, so I'm aware of the conventions of the genre.
- Murderbot is neither a "he" nor a "she". This isn't immediately obvious on a first read, and I initially assumed it was a "he", but there's absolutely zero indication of its gender. What I mean to say is that Murderbot is subtler than it seems at first... um, read.
- Women are in power as good characters and it's not something you're hit over the head. Pacifism/cooperativism is an actual option. The most intelligent character in the series is a woman, but again, this is not preachy nor does it seem like "it has an agenda". It's actually something you realize once you've read the first few novellas. It just happens.
- The action-oriented tech is pretty good actually, way above the low techno-babble bar set by Star Trek and similar. Martha Wells used to work in IT and it shows. While the tech is hand-wavy and not so detailed that it becomes boring (this is not a "nerd's paradise", which I actually approve of, because such things don't result in good literature), but communications, "the net", what's wired vs what's not wired, bandwidth, hacking, etc, all make sense in Murderbot. There's not a cringeworthy moment in sight.
- The action is good. It's not military porn [1] (I wouldn't classify this as military scifi) yet it's quite thrilling.
- The humor is excellent too. I loved the whole "I'd rather be streaming soap operas".
Is it the deepest scifi there is, exploring the most thought-provoking ideas? Well, no. But is it fun? Hell, YES. And that has to count for something -- smart, thrilling fiction that is not necessarily groundbreaking.
----
[1] I hate this term and I hesitated about writing it down, but in the end decided most people will understand what I mean.
Also, the fact that murderbot is genderless is so ambiguous that if you want to you can read the books as if he was male or she was female, or as if they were genderless, or really anything that floats your boat. Murderbot is a perfect blank slate. I think that’s really innovative; I can’t think of another book I have read that achieves that to the point that the gender is just fill-in-the-blank (pls give me examples if you know). It’s quite cool and didn’t feel like woke overload to me.
Another thing: there is a huge amount of exploration of what makes us human in how Murderbot is portrayed. I found some of it to be quite deep. The fact that it’s combined with super fun action strengthens the depth, I think.
Super cool series, glad Wells is seeing a lot of success from this. I’ll definitely watch the TV show and can’t wait for the next book in the series.
David Cui Cui is a fantastic narrator and shines in his performance as Murderbot.
But my biggest concern about the show is, all the internal dialogue by murderbot, how do you translate that to the screen? Voiceovers maybe, but im not sure. Although i haven't listened to the audio books to see how they portray the internal dialogue.
That and murderbots androgynous otherness, although the casting of Alexander Skarsgård for the role is probably a good one, he's definitely played similarly weird characters before.
> “I don’t think it’s particularly subtle.” It’s a slave narrative, she says. What’s annoying is when people don’t see that.
archive.is seems to be down.
Popcorn thrillers are books that are lighter in content, jam-packed with entertainment value, and not too dark, and meant to be read in one sitting.It's perhaps a different skill then character development or world building or prose polishing, but it's how you get these books people blaze through.
( Now sometimes I blaze thru something and hate it at the end, but thats a different problem ... )
re: Murderbot -- I read the first novella when it was on sale for $1.99 or something like it. I liked it, but the rest of the novellas were something like $4.99 each, and I'm not paying that much for novellas.
Holy crap, they're $12 each now!? Authors gotta eat, but c'mon!
How does Wired continue to thrive without a paywall? (please I hope I didn't just jinx it) (huh, maybe there is a paywall and I just haven't hit it yet? I just noticed an archive.is and archive.ph links in other comments)