Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Murderbot Befriends a Pet Robot Murderbot wants to sneak down onto an abandoned terraforming facility orbiting the planet Milu to get data proving that the awful GrayCris company (motto “profit by killing everybody and taking their stuff”) was doing something like illegally mining alien “strange” synthetics. Such data should help Murderbot’s benefactor Dr. Mensah in her legal fight with GrayCris. To further its plan, Murderbot (a security unit construct comprised of cloned human tissue, mechanical parts like guns that shoot out of its arms, and a self-hacked governor module that makes it autonomous) has to “befriend” a cute and loyal “pet” human-form robot called Miki, who’s “friends” with some researchers whose company has bought the former GrayCris terraforming facility and who are going to investigate the place with a couple augmented human security consultants. Without revealing itself visually, Murderbot approaches Miki (via feed) as wanting to help the robot’s human friends stay safe, so as to invisibly hitch a ride with them down to the terraforming installation. What could go wrong? Well, nasty corporations and stupid humans being involved and Martha Wells exceling at writing clean, suspenseful, unpredictable stories, in her third Murderbot novella, Rogue Protocol (2018), the free agent SecUnit soon enough finds itself in the middle of a “clusterfuck shitstorm” complete with fearsome three-meter-tall, four-armed combat bots and hostage researchers and has to (instantly) decide whether or not to intervene to save the lives of people who aren’t even ITS humans, when doing so will reveal itself, and it doesn’t want anyone to know it’s a rogue SecUnit. Parts of the novella read a bit like the first Alien movie or two minus, you know, the aliens. As in the other Murderbot novellas, neat lines abound: “I hate caring about stuff, but apparently once you start, you can’t just stop.” “Humans are so fucking unreliable when it comes to maintaining data.” “I was tired of trying to be human. I needed a break.” “Somewhere there has to be a happy medium between a terrifying murder machine and being infantilized.” “There was something about this place that made my human skin prickle.” Murderbot is a great character, given to ironic, negative, self-deprecating comments like, “Who knew that being a heartless killing machine would present so many dilemmas?” Of course, Murderbot is anything but a heartless killing machine! It wants to protect stupid humans from themselves, only kills bad humans as a last resort, and its favorite hobby is watching human dramas, with potentially problematic results: “When most of your training and tactical thinking comes from adventure stories…” I like the times when it uses audio clips from the dramas in its database to trick hostile humans, or when it rewatches an episode of its favorite drama, The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, to chill. Kevin R. Free does a great innocent, cheerful, sweet Miki (“Okaaay!”), and a suitably indeterminate gender Murderbot, and I am really getting into the SecUnit not being male or female but it. Back to my Murderbot Binge and the next novella! View all my reviews
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Jefferson Peters
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