Late last year when I decided to query my novel, I faced a serious problem: comps. It was a problem because I’d spent most of my life reading the classics of science fiction: Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert. And while that might make me well-read by some measures, comp titles in a query letter must be recent. I can’t go comping my novel to Rendezvous with Rama. So I really needed to brush up on my recent sci-fi. I mentioned this to a fellow writer, and her recommendations began with All Systems Red by Martha Wells.

I’d never even heard of it, and when I began reading and discovered it was first-person POV, I almost put it down. But I’m glad I didn’t. Ms. Wells’s delightful first book of the Murderbot Diaries became my introduction to modern sci-fi.

The Plot

All Systems Red introduces readers to Murderbot. A rogue security unit, Murderbot is a cyborg soldier contracted out to provide security for extrasolar missions. Most such units are fitted with a governor: a device that dampens their free will, allowing them to be controlled by their fully-human masters. But unbeknownst to its masters, this SecUnit has found a way to disable its governor. Having secretly dubbed itself “Murderbot”, the unit continues to play its role to avoid being discovered.

After a botched assignment that saw it malfunction and murder fifty-seven people, Murderbot is assigned to protect one of two survey teams on a distant alien planet. The scientists, all blissfully idealistic, struggle with their feelings toward Murderbot, unwilling to deny its agency and unable to treat it as simply a thing when it appears mostly human. When they discover the other team has been murdered by their own hacked SecUnits, Murderbot is injured protecting them. In the aftermath, they discover a third team has been dispatched to the planet. And that Murderbot is self-aware.

Ultimately, Murderbot succeeds in reversing a trap laid for the scientists by the third survey team, but is again gravely injured in the process. After being repaired, it discovers that the leader of the survey team has bought out its contract, and arranged for it to accompany them back to their home planet where it can live free. But by this point Murderbot is done letting others make decisions for it, and stows away on a cargo ship bound for a different planet.

My Take

For starters, this was the first first-person POV novel I’d read since high school, and I was surprised by how much I liked it. That said, at first blush I agree with many of the reviews of the book: the overall storyline and characters are painfully tropey in sci-fi. But the thing is, that’s clearly an intentional decision on Wells’s part, and I can see why: the real star of the show is Murderbot itself.

It may sound ridiculous to praise a novel by saying the protagonist stole the show; after all, at least in theory that’s supposed to happen. But in all my years of reading, I have never seen a protagonist that so completely owned its own story more than Murderbot. The survey team’s scientists are endlessly kind and idealistic, to the point that they’d feel right at home in an episode of Star Trek. But the thrill of discovery and the “enlightened future humanity” tropes become both beguiling and intentionally comical through Murderbot’s cynical commentary.

Murderbot views humanity on the whole not with contempt, but with disinterest. Though not homicidal by any stretch, and seeming at times to possess what might almost pass for a conscience, it seems comfortable in its role as a corporate-owned killing machine. Initially it views the well-meaning and optimistic scientists with what could almost be described as pity. But over time their compassion wins it over.

In the end, All Systems Red manages to mock some long-standing sci-fi tropes while turning one, the whole killer robot thing, on its head. And the result was exciting, amusing, and thoroughly entertaining. – MK