Hacker News Reader

Comment by inanutshellus | Hacker News Reader

I haven't read the stories for many years now but for some reason both I and my wife assumed the bot would look female, and both of us were independently surprised to learn that the protagonist was cast as male in the upcoming series.

View on HN

I assumed MurderBot would not look male or female but look androgynous. Additionally the merging of machine and meat would result in thin limbs, likely they are going to have to do a lot of CGI work in post.

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.

Really? My partner and I and some of our friends thought the opposite. Skarsgård can be tough but in many of his roles he exhibits a fairly unconventional form of masculinity.

My expectation is that he's going to be able to play an ungendered character quite well.

Having never heard of this series until this HN thread, I assumed from context that you meant Bill Skarsgård, who of course is a natural for an out-of-place somewhat-alien a-touch-androgynous misfit, having played that kind of role well before.

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....

I think Murderbot doesn't have a gender, so it'll probably be a pretty androgynous look anyway. I listened to Kevin R Free's fantastic narration, so maybe I would have expected a male actor, except that I do the aphantasia thing and never visualize anything from books to begin with!

Yes, the robot is not described with a gender and it needn't have a gender -- or even the semblance of one -- but for whatever reason my wife and I both ignored that and assigned it as female, and were really really surprised many years later by the casting of a dude. We didn't even talk about it when reading the books. Just came up when we were both surprised by the casting.

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 frequently blends into the crowd as a dude though, that's a recurring theme in the series.

> Murderbot frequently blends into the crowd as a dude though, that's a recurring theme in the series.

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).

I'm with you, my recollection is that the author worked hard to not apply a gender, and I think I just visualized the bot as an actual android with no gender, but when the casting happened I realized at some point I assumed female in there. Best guess is that I applied the author's gender onto the first-person perspective of the character.

Yes, I was surprised by all the people here who had a female mental picture for this reason. While obviously it is genderless, my recollection was that there were plenty of times where the narrative had it passing as male.

I'll say I've only read the first ... uh... three? four? novellas, and it's been many moons. I don't recall any point where having a female form would've been noteworthy. Not like a /Stomship Troopers/ shared shower moment or anything.

Mainly I think we came up with that mindset immediately upon reading the first novella and never updated it.

It's entirely possible that there's never any point where "observed gender" is even implied and my mind just filled in some blanks when it talks about passing for human. To be honest I never gave it an ounce of thought before this whole conversation.

I think that's what happened. Your mind filled in the gaps and assumed Murderbot's gender.

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.

Quite possible. To loop back to my first post, my point was I could have sworn there were at least strong implications at times that it was male-coded, although without gender. But perhaps it is just my own personal mandela effect.

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! :)

where?

I'm willing to believe you are right, but not without someone finding the text to indicate as such. I do not recall this being the case, but I've only read the first two.

I checked and I don't think so. Artificial Condition includes "blending in" as someone of "indeterminate" gender named "Eden" with longer-than-short hair and longer-than-normal eyebrows, which seems to be a careful non-gendered description.

I remember Murderbot working to blend in and pass as human, but I don't remember it trying to pass as male or being perceived as male?

I found it effortless to go along with the idea of a gender-ambiguous construct antihero throughout All Systems Red, but trying to carry the consistency of that descriptive ambiguity after a certain point in Artificial Condition required way too much squinting by my mind's eye.

I've only read All Systems Red but definitely referred to the murderbot as "she" when describing the book to others. I just asked my son (who has read the entire series) and he said that he always uses the pronoun "he" for the murderbot.

That's interesting! My wife and I both pictured him as masculine. In my case, as a cis, bi man who's honestly evaluated how I play my gender, it was because a lot of the way Murderbot feels about being amidst humans is IMO just dead-on how a lot of men feel being amidst women?

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."

For what it's worth, Murderbot's "Security Consultant Rin" human disguise is apparently female.

No it's not.

Why do you say that?

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.

Have you read the later entries in the series?

Yes. I don't remember Murderbot using the Rin disguise / persona later on.

It's an android, not a gyndroid!

Murderbot doesn't have a gender. It certainly is not male.

I wonder what Martha Wells thinks about this casting choice...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com