I didn’t think I was going to like any Murderbot novellas any more than the first one (as I said before, science fiction is not exactly my jam), but somehow Martha Wells did it. I am so happy with this series, and Goodreads just informed me today that book 6 is being published in a month or so and I just want to read all of it. Now. Immediately. I want to not go to work and spend my entire day in Murderbot’s head watching media and consuming amusing commentary on the human experience through the eyes of artificial intelligence.
So we’re following Murderbot through their quest to find out why it allegedly murdered a bunch of humans in a previous life. And I don’t want to say much because it is a novella, and a short one, and you don’t want spoilers.
But guys! Murderbot makes a friend and it’s so so so cool.
I don’t know, there is something about non-evil AI banter books that I find extremely uplifting. The previous short story I read involving AI just ended all doomsday-like, and I really hated that ending. Ruined the entire experience for me. I just want to see happy, sarcastic little bots being bewildered at the lack of logic in human decisions and going on with their lives regardless. If you have any recommendations on books like that, please let me know, I want to change my opinion of science fiction.
I know AI with some level of emotional intelligence is still a theoretical concept, but all those evil machine trope books to me just reek of the way some older books were casually racist and xenophobic and homophobic. It feels sometimes that some authors are just replacing Conan Doyle’s “monstrous islander who could climb walls and squeeze through tiny windows while leaving deformed footprints” with “evil machines who are deceitful and want to exterminate humanity and take over the world” and I really dislike it. People fear what they don’t know and make it into the big bad. I don’t know – it might be me overreacting, and maybe the authors are just trying to write cautionary tales, but I will take a morally gray/ fundamentally flawed villain over a downright evil character who is “other” any day.
Sorry about the tangent. I am just really glad that this series goes on a completely different direction and I am here for it.
And finally, I want to take a minute to throw some confetti over Martha Wells with how seamlessly she just created a new gender (te) in this novel and made it so easy to read through it, with a complete grammar structure to back it up and so clearly understandable I was flabbergasted. It just felt natural and I loved it.
God, I love Murderbot!