Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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A new kind of bot in the Murderbot world

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

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So far we’ve seen Murderbot and humans, Murderbot and other sort of sentient machines, and now it’s time to start putting those things together. Rogue Protocol picks up where book two left off as Murderbot is trying to get away from the areas where it’s dangerous to be potentially identified, and in so doing, Murderbot falls into another adventure when the transport its on turns out to have two human passengers on their way to some kind of security detail job which involves guarding some […]

Relay-Reading Murderbot

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

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As far as I know, my dad doesn’t read a lot of fiction; the one exception to this is science fiction, at least of the what you might now call classic or vintage variety, as in William Gibson and Isaac Asimov. I was home visiting recently and Dad made a comment about not being sure what to read next after he finished whatever he currently had in his hands; I had Artificial Condition (Murderbot Diaries 2) in mine, so I let him have a look […]

If HAL was good and tells its own story

All Systems Red THe Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

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Since there’s a lot of travel involved for me over the winter holidays, I like to take along a variety of reading so I can adjust to time and genre/style I feel like at a given time. All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries was an unexpectedly good choice. This is volume 1 of a series of novellas, and I was not totally sure I’d like it because I haven’t had awesome luck with that type of story before. Usually I end up dissatisfied with lack […]

Can I adopt a Murderbot please?

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

Exit Strategy by Martha Wells

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The Murderbot Diaries is a sequence of 4 novella length works with an overarching storyline consisting of a voyage of discovery for, well, a Murderbot. They are a cyborg security unit who at some point in their past was involved in an incident resulting in 57 deaths. As a consequence of this event they’ve overridden their programming and disabled external control so that they are now autonomous and cannot be reprogrammed or have their memory wiped. Of course, that’s not known to the company who […]

“No. There aren’t that many shows with SecUnits, and they’re either villains or the villain’s minions.”

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

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When Artificial intelligence is brought up in fiction, the focus is often on the negative aspects, milking them for dystopian drama. The worst scenario of all involves an AI rebellion, where humanity’s own creations gain awareness and decide to turn against us. You know the one – everything is fine one moment, and then suddenly, Skynet is shiv-ving you. A more unconventional direction though is having an AI killing machine gain awareness and instead of rebelling, decides it wants to be alone for a bit. […]

Wrapping Up the Murderbot Novellas

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

Exit Strategy by Martha Wells

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I read Artificial Condition earlier in the year, but finally read the final two novellas in the last month.  Given that, I figured it might be easiest to combine my reviews of the three novellas. Spoilers, naturally. When All Systems Red ended, Murderbot had decided to strike on its own, and find answers.  Artifical Condition follows Murderbot as it goes back to the system and planet where it became the titular Murderbot.  Murderbot has wondered for a long time what happened and what made it […]



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