All Systems Red: We love this introverted killing machine

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

The narrator of All Systems Red (2017), the 2017 Nebula award-winning novella by Martha Wells, is a once-nameless cyborg security unit or SecUnit that has given itself the name Murderbot (for reasons disclosed midway through the story). Using its own unprecedented and highly unauthorized initiative, Murderbot has hacked the governor module software that controls its actions and obligates it to be obedient. But instead of going on a killing spree, as one might expect given the name it adopted, Murderbot elects to spend its spare hours watching countless hours of video entertainment and trying not to interact more than is necessary with the group of eight humans that it’s responsible for protecting, a survey group of eight scientists called PreservationAux that is exploring the natural resources on an uninhabited planet.

Murderbot’s self-isolation and studied lack of caring starts to break down, however, when potentially deadly accidents start to occur with suspicious regularity. Dr. Bharadwaj is almost killed by an alien creature that explodes out of the bottom of one of the many craters along the coast, and the group finds that data has been deleted from the warnings and fauna sections of their planetary survey package. The autopilot of their “hopper” aircraft cuts out without warning, which could have led to a fatal crash. And then there are the automated data updates that Murderbot is supposed to be uploading (and would have, if it hadn’t disabled its governor module).

Matters only get worse when the group decides to visit the only other survey group on the planet. Murderbot is painfully shy and vastly reluctant to get too close to the humans, and even more, to share their secrets. But it becomes clear that the group won’t survive without Murderbot’s help and active involvement.

All Systems Red is a breezy, fast-paced science fiction adventure wrapped in a light mystery. There’s not nearly as much murder and mayhem as the title and Murderbot’s name might lead one to believe. Instead, All Systems Red has something serious to say about the ideas of free will and autonomy, and about the difficulties faced by introverts in day-to-day life. Murderbot tells itself that it just doesn’t care about the humans, but its excruciating shyness soon becomes clear to the other characters and to the reader. Murderbot hides its human face behind helmet with an opaque faceplate, and awkwardly withdraws from conversations that become too personal, choosing to stand facing the wall instead.

Murderbot comments that it has no gender or sex-related parts; claiming that only sexbots in brothels have those. Understandably, it has an asexual personality, another unique aspect to this main character. Murderbot fast-forwards through all of the sex scenes in the serials it watches, finding them boring (“I think that even if I did have sex-related parts I would find them boring”). Murderbot also narrates this novella with a large dose of snark:

They had talked it over and all agreed not to “push me any further than I wanted to go” and they were all so nice and it was just excruciating. I was never taking off the helmet again. I can’t do even the half-assed version of this stupid job if I have to talk to humans. … At least Mensah and Arada had overruled the ones who wanted to talk to me about it. Yes, talk to Murderbot about its feelings. The idea was so painful that I dropped to 97% efficiency.

Murderbot is a unique, well-developed character but, other than the leader of the survey group, Dr. Mensah, and one other person who is somewhat antagonistic to Murderbot, the members of PreservationAux aren’t particularly distinguishable personalities. We learn that Overse and Arada are in a lesbian relationship and that Volescu is in a four way marriage back on their home planet, but Wells never really attempts to make them or any of the others fully fleshed-out characters. It’s possible that that is a deliberate approach, a feature rather than a flaw, meant to evidence Murderbot’s unwillingness to engage with members of the group on a personal level.

All Systems Red is an enjoyable, quick read, and a solid introduction to the new MURDERBOT DIARIES series. It’s a credit to Wells that the last chapter is such a solid conclusion to the story. I appreciated how Murderbot’s increased confidence is reflected in its ability to show its human face in public. It feels like it could have been a stand-alone novella, even though the ending leaves the door wide open for Murderbot’s further adventures. In fact, the second novella in this series, Artificial Condition, has just been published as of May 1, 2018, and I’m anxious to read it.

~Tadiana Jones

What Tadiana says is right on and I agree whole-heartedly. I loved Murderbot and look forward to reading more of its adventures. 

The audiobook version is produced by Recorded Books. I’m not convinced that the narrator, Kevin R. Free, got Murderbot’s voice right and I think I could have created a better voice in my head. He made Murderbot sound nice and bland, but I think Martha Wells was going for snarky, as Tadiana mentioned above. There was a touch of snark to Free’s performance, but not enough, I think. Wil Wheaton would have been a great (but probably too expensive) choice for this story. Still, Free’s version was okay and I’ll probably choose to read the sequels in audio format.

Update: I’ve continued to read the audio editions and Free’s interpretation of Murderbot has me convinced after all. I’m not sure if it’s me or him who has come to understand Murderbot better over time. Whatever, I can now heartily recommend the audio version!

~Kat Hooper

Excruciating shyness? Anxiety and depression? A strong-to-overwhelming preference to immerse oneself in streaming video entertainment rather than interact with smelly humans and their endless verbalizations and feelings? Gosh, I don’t know what any of that is like. (Now, if I could just figure out a text signifier for “joke” … )

I’d already read the fifth entry in the MURDERBOT DIARIES, Network Effect, and enjoyed it tremendously, so I had high hopes for All Systems Red and Martha Wells did not disappoint. It was a lot of fun to get to meet the crew of PreservationAux for the first time, and to see how Wells-via-Murderbot introduces each team member in rather dismissive terms which evolve over the course of the novella, as Murderbot is forced to re-evaluate its human clients and their similarities (or lack thereof) to archetypes portrayed in media like The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, as well as their various capabilities and personalities.

Knowing that this is the first entry in a series didn’t dampen any of my tension when crew members or Murderbot itself were faced with danger, whether that came from local fauna or other sources; Wells’ narrative is propulsive and high-stakes right from the start, and my normal benchmark of “I’ll read for an hour or so” was abandoned after the first chapter, when I decided that it was way more important to find out how the plot would be resolved than stick to any kind of schedule. As it turns out, I was extremely pleased by the ending, and even more pleased to be able to jump right into Artificial Condition afterward, having now been properly introduced to Murderbot and its quirks and, thus, further invested in the truth of why and how Murderbot hacked its governor chip and gave itself an identity. Full ahead, maximum warp!

~Jana Nyman