Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Murderbot Researches Its Past—with Mixed Results Murderbot needs to find the answer to a question: Just what happened some time ago when it apparently killed 57 people? To return to the scene of its supposed crime, a station called RaviHyral, the security unit has hacked its way onto a research transport bot who turns out to be way more powerful and sophisticated than anything Murderbot can control and who wants to help Murderbot out of curiosity and—is it possible between such beings as they—friendship. Should the loner Murderbot trust ART (“Asshole Research Transport”)? Does it have any choice? As Artificial Condition (2017), the second Murderbot Diaries novella, gets going, author Martha Wells efficiently works in some background from the first novella (All Systems Red [2016]). Murderbot is a SecUnit construct comprised of organic cloned human bits and many mechanical parts, made to slavishly and expendably serve without eating, drinking, or sleeping as bodyguard or laborer etc. any human who owns its contract. Murderbot, however, is a unique SecUnit in having hacked its governor module to free itself from human control. Murderbot is subject to anxiety and depression and is uncomfortable around humans, fearing to harm or fail to protect them or to have them see through its assumed identity as an augmented human, as the revelation of its true nature as an autonomous “rogue” SecUnit would likely lead to it being “repaired” or scrapheaped. At the end of All Systems Red, the benevolent scientist Dr. Mensah bought the SecUnit, intending to give it a free life in her home Preservation system, but Murderbot sneaked away, not wanting to live in a culture where SecUnits are unnecessary and not wanting to get too close to its human benefactor. Wells imagines a space opera future in which humans, augmented humans, and various bots (hauler, combat, etc.) and constructs (SecUnits, ComfortUnits, etc.) work for a variety of corporations or startups or cultures while competing (especially in or near Corporation Rim) for exploitation rights to new planets and, illicitly, for off limits alien remnants or strange synthetics. What about gender? Well, it seems that women and men are generally equal as there are male and female scientists, engineers, leaders, and security consultants. As for Murderbot, it has no sexual organs or desires and sure wants to stay that way. Do NOT mistake Murderbot for a sex bot! It is definitely an “it.” But because Wells is a woman and her story first person, when I read the first novella, I tended to “see” Murderbot as female and had to remember to avoid female pronouns in thinking or writing about it. But because I listened to this second novella as an audiobook, and the (excellent) reader Kevin R. Free is male, I started to kind of see Muderbot as male. It’s my problem, having grown up in a gender divided world, as Wells doesn’t give Murderbot any of our stereotypical gender traits. With the kibitzing help of ART (who from a distance advises Murderbot on acting human etc.), Murderbot gets hired as an augmented human security consultant called Eden (of “indeterminate gender”) to protect some young and naïve technologists (“stupid humans”) as they attempt to retrieve their wrongfully confiscated data concerning some strange synthetics from a ruthless woman called Tlacey who will likely try to kill them, all on the very same installation where Murderbot supposedly killed the 57 people... Wells tells a clean, fast-paced, compelling story in the voice of the sympathetic and sarcastic Murderbot in such a way that it’s an entertaining pleasure to read on and find out what will happen. Many cool lines, like: “There are different kinds of unrealistic things. One kind takes you away from reality, and the other kind makes you forget that everyone is afraid of you.” “I felt that this is the point where a human would sigh, so I sighed.” “Young humans can be impulsive. The trick is keeping them around long enough to become old humans.” I like how Murderbot says negative things about itself like, "I wish being a construct made me less irrational than the average human, but you may have noticed that this is not the case," but always acts in the best interests of its (often stupid) human clients. Interestingly, Murderbot’s favorite pastime is watching human entertainment dramas (“media”) like the umpteen episodes of Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. Murderbot tells us that there are no dramas with security unit main characters, because according to accepted wisdom they have no point of view. But Wells’ novella is just such a drama! (Actually, it is a stretch to believe that no one in Wells’ fictional world would imagine Murderbot type characters in a future where there are so many robots and cyborgs.) The Murderbot Diaries series is similar to Anne Leckie’s Ancillary trilogy, in having an inhuman, construct narrator/protagonist with super physical and sensory and mental and communicative abilities trying to pose as human and really being at least as human as most of the other characters, organic or otherwise. Though Wells’ Murderbot stories and hero are more humorous and straightforward than Leckie’s Breq. Kevin R. Free reads it all really well. A neat story: interesting, page turning, unpredictable, developing, exciting, moving. And neat themes: What is human? How helpful is it to delve into one’s traumatic past? I'm looking forward to the future episodes, er, novellas! (My only complaint is that I wish they'd release a complete set of all the novellas in one book.) View all my reviews
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