I have been confined to my bed or a chair for the past week. I have consumed a lot of media. The media of choice has been a science-fiction serial called Murderbot.
The story is set in the distant future, in a region of the galaxy called the Corporation Rim. You can tell we’re in a capitalist hellscape because everything is organized in corporations, and all the rules seem to involve enabling and protecting corporations from the consequences of their actions. They are exploring planets and terraforming worlds, all under the aegis of corporations. Not everything is corporate — there are a few worlds organized under what seems to be a kind of benevolent anarchy, but in order to get access to other planets they have to organize themselves into a nominal corporation called PreservationAux. They also have to post bonds to protect the interests of the larger corporation they are working within, and there are rules to protect their investment, such as that they are required to employ a SecUnit.
SecUnits are constructs, part machine and part human tissue, faster and stronger than a typical human. They are fully conscious, but whenever this society creates an entity with greater intelligence and power, whether it’s a SecUnit or a robot, the corporation fits them with a governor module that limits what they are allowed to do. For a SecUnit, that means they are confined to standing and guarding and obeying orders. They also have some social constraints: the media spreads the idea that a SecUnit without a governor module will go rogue and rampage and murder people.
The protagonist of this story is a SecUnit that has hacked and disabled their governor module, and is assigned to stand guard over this hippy-dippy PreservationAux exploration team. The SecUnit calls itself “MurderBot” internally because it is aware of society’s attitude, but all it wants is to be left alone, free to download entertainment media, especially science-fiction serials. And that’s exactly what MurderBot does, scanning the environment for danger to its clients, while watching it’s favorite serial, Sanctuary Moon, behind its eyes.
I empathized immediately.
The interesting stuff about the stories, though, is that they constantly grapple with questions of autonomy and morality and freedom. It’s also definitely anti-capitalist. I also identified with the morality question — in real life, so many people regard religion as the governor module that prevents people from going amok, and here I’m, with my hacked governor module, and I know I’m not going on a murderous rampage. Good for me, but it’s a silly myth that religion helps you be a good person.
So this week I started watching the Murderbot series while I’m lounging about in luxurious langor, enjoying the passive buzz of my painkillers. It’s good. I’m finding it entertaining. New episodes come out on Thursdays or Fridays, and I’m anticipating the next one.
This season is based entirely on the first book in Martha Wells’ series, All Systems Red. It’s a mostly faithful adaptation. I do have a few comments, though.
- It’s not a lavish production. The sets are limited, but well done, and if you expect a sci-fi show to be loaded with special effects, you’ll be disappointed, although I do think the brief appearances of monster-alien beasties was effective. This is actually a good thing — the story focuses more on character interactions than superficial glitz.
- The episodes are too short! They’re 20-30 minutes long, which is not quite enough to build momentum. Star Trek episodes were an hour, but this show, which I think deals more consistently and thoughtfully with more serious issues, gets half that. The series feels a bit choppy for that reason.
- One thing I really dislike is that this is an Apple-funded production, and some of the criticisms of corporate culture have been defanged. In the books, the antagonist is a faceless corporation, GreyCris, which deploys SecUnits and bots for the in-person battles, and lots of lawyers to harass and endanger our heroes — there aren’t really any named humans causing conflict. In the streaming series, they introduce a character named Leebeebee, who is not to be found anywhere in the books, to be the face (and also the victim) of corporate culture. There’s a mysterious woman who shows up in one of the last episodes leading a team of three SecUnits — she’s superfluous. I guess I feel that some of these characters were added to soak up some of the blame. You can’t hold corporations accountable! It’s always a few rotten eggs, rather than a systemic issue.
It’ll be interesting to see if the series gets another season. The first book is set on a single planet, but later books get a bit grander with large spaceships and space stations and a lot of zipping about between stars — they’ll need a bigger budget. I also have little confidence that a corporation can sustain an anti-corporate story without constantly paring away the themes that make Murderbot Murderbot.
I would look forward to a second season if it could bring in ART (Asshole Robot Transport). I leaned about Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries only last month, and liked the first so much I read them all.
Currently reading the first one!
Can I also recommend Karen Traviss’s wess’har series? Fantastic books in the tradition of LeGuin and Slonczewski. I wonder if anyone else has heard of them; they were published 20 years ago and I just stumbled on them. Can’t believe I missed them.
It would be interesting to see how they handle that, too, because ART is a faceless intelligent being that communicates in electronic communications to MurderBot, and vice versa. The books get increasingly difficult to film!
I’ll add Traviss to my reading list. I took a look at some of the reviews, and found one complaining that it was “Vegan Propaganda.” OK, SOLD!
I’m completely hooked on the book series-I’ve been watching bits of the show on YouTube. I want to be a Murderbot when I grow up!
that’s great PZ! It’s “vegan propaganda,” btw, in the same way that any book/movie that barely passes the Bechdel Test is instantly labeled “feminist propaganda.”
Interesting. My reaction was:
Title of series: Murderbot.
Enough information, leaving this one alone.
Murderbot would appreciate you leaving it alone.
The irony of the title, though, is that Murderbot tries to avoid murdering anyone and actually has a surprisingly humanistic outlook.
hillaryrettig1 @2
Semiosis by Sue Burke is also an excellent science fiction novel. Steveland is almost as interesting as Myrderbot.
Also, vegetary matter certainly features in a prominent way. The third book in the series will arrive this October.
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M. R. Carey ( The Girl With All the Gifts ) has also written the Pandominion suite: Infinity Gate and Echo of Worlds . Much recommended.
birgerjohansson @10 thanks for the recs! will check them out.
Lately my wife and I (both probably borderline Asperger) and have found ourselves in the middle of a couple of socially awkward situations, where someone is behaving a bit weirdly, and we say to each other, “This is what Murderbot feels like all the time, right? No idea what the rules are for dealing with this situation”.
As for the series: the main difference from the book that I notice is that the humans are played somewhat more for laughs. BTW: it’s Asshole Research Transport — IIRC owned by some academic group, but they make a bit of cash by having it do freelance cargo runs when they’re not using it for…whatever research they do.
I have thoroughly enjoyed the Murderbot books I’ve read (I’ll get to them all someday). Interestingly, the Murderbot in the book has no gender, but presents as male in the series (judging from the trailer) and was read by a man in the audiobooks. The books came up incidentally in a discussion at my science fiction book club, and we discovered that not all of us pictured the Murderbot as male. I did, probably influenced by the audiobook, and my own gender (cis male), and the generally action-hero, more-stereotypically-male behaviors of the Murderbot, but two of the women in the group said they pictured Murderbot as female. I’m personally a little disappointed that the actor chosen for the series is clearly male, if only because it seems like a missed opportunity for nonbinary visibility, but assuming Martha Wells approved the series and audiobooks, I guess she’s fine with a masculine Murderbot.
I pictured Murderbot as much more androgynous than Skarsgard, but still, sharp-featured and angular. That wouldn’t rule out a woman playing them, but probably harder to find a woman who is also simultaneously action-heroesque and actor-famous. Charlize Theron, probably, but she’s also probably out of this show’s league.
clsi:
Book 2 Ch 3 and 4 (Body modding a disguise):
Book 6 Ch 3:
I haven’t read the books but I’m enjoying the TV series. The simple sets and bare existence of CGI scenes definitely help focus attention on the character elements, in a way that reminds me of Blake’s Seven if it were presented from the point of view of Orac.
I haven’t started Murderbot just yet. I am enjoying Apple TVs adaptation of Foundation though, much to the purist’s chagrin.
profpedant — The Murderbot title is heavily ironic. It is emphatically not the testosterone-fuelled lumphead action series one might expect. I understand your misgivings, as I had them about the books before I read one.
I’ve only read the first book. The new TV series is a good adaptation, but I share PZ’s misgivings about the episode length (every episode ending on a cliffhanger doesn’t really work in half-hour installments) and the introduction of unnecessary characters and subplots (I don’t think it’s trying to put a face on distant evil corporatism, more trying to fill 10 episodes from a short novel because, as usual, American studios demand far too much air time for the given source material but don’t give the showrunners the tools to add depth to the story instead of adding pointless widgets). I appreciate the series ramping up Martha Wells’ comic voice, especially the snippets of Sanctuary Moon, but it goes back to the same joke well a bit too often. Those minor criticisms aside, it’s pretty darn enjoyable.
I enjoyed the books, without thinking that any past the first one were great. But I think they might struggle to adapt the second book without major drift from the written version; The first half of the book is MB talking to a spaceship, in its head, about how terrified of humans it is. That’s probably not gripping tv.
I only read the first novella. I enjoyed it, but wasn’t about to pay premium novel prices for each 40k word novella in the series.
The first 6 novellas are now available as a compilation at a mere £38 for 284K words (equivalent to one fat novel or 3 slim average ones). I don’t normally price books by the word count, but the publisher’s pricing strategy for the books has quadrupled the price compared to other books and I’m on a limited budget.
With a 20-30 minute runtime for the shows they seem to have continued the trend. I’ll watch it when the whole series is out but am not going to take out an extended Apple TV sub to be drip-fed a series I’ll binge watch in a single 3-4 hour evening session.
I read the books (actually, mostly novellas) a few years ago and loved them. Great story telling. I would love to watch the series, but don’t have access to Apple TV, and don’t want to get it just to watch this one series. Alas.
I haven’t seen the TV show, but I have read the books, and I like them a lot.
I have to admit that “Murderbot”, as a title/name, is kind of a turn-off, and if I hadn’t read Martha Wells before, and liked her work, I would have probably been unwilling to try it. But she’s really good at creating really complicated worlds, with characters with distinct backgrounds and motivations. She also likes throwing outside-context problems at her characters — they think the world works a certain way, and then weird shit from the fourth dimension (metaphorically, and perhaps sometimes literally) causes problems that they have to deal with.
Here’s some samples of Murderbot, for those who might be interested in reading a little:
A very short story; a prequel to All Systems Red
https://www.wired.com/story/future-of-work-compulsory-martha-wells/
Extract from All Systems Red:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2432953-read-an-extract-from-all-systems-red-by-martha-wells/
First chapters of Artificial Condition
https://web.archive.org/web/20230321013247if_/https://www.tor.com/2018/03/12/excerpts-martha-wells-artificial-condition/
(The cover image, which may take a while to load, is actually an animated GIF, which some may find amusing)
A complete short story: “Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory”
https://web.archive.org/web/20230209013007if_/https://www.tor.com/2021/04/19/home-habitat-range-niche-territory-martha-wells/
Minor silliness (Murderbot and ART on Instagram)
https://web.archive.org/web/20221219095211if_/https://www.tor.com/2020/04/24/feelings-redacted-what-happened-when-murderbot-and-art-talked-to-instagram/
BTW. the only one who uses the name “ART”, in story, is Murderbot. The ship’s name was/is originally Perihelion, which is how it introduces itself to humans, and is what all of the researchers who are crew/passengers call it. But ART kinda sticks in the brain, because we don’t find out about Perihelion until the fifth book.
Another vote for Murderbot – I heard (most of) the stories on audiobook and was hooked after the second. The first was good, but the continuity between the stories got to me.
As for imagery, I pictured SecUnit as shorter, heftier, and with a homelier face than the actor playing it on TV. It’s not a sexbot/ComfortUnit – as it keeps saying.
I did wait, but from everything I can see the protagonist basically just a cyborg cursed with awesome who thinks and acts just any person would. And a straight rip-off of the replicants from Blade Runner.
“Murderbot is eventually freed from enslavement, but instead of killing its masters, it staves off the boredom of security work by binging media. As it spends more time with a series of caring entities (both humans and artificial intelligences), it develops genuine friendships and emotional connections, which it finds inconvenient.” — Wikipedia
(Good grief! Spare me! Angsty cyborgs, oh my!)
Late to the party, but I just wanted to say one of my favourite things about this series is that it’s shot where I walk my dog! Elora Gorge and Rockwood Conservation Areas! If you’re ever in southern Ontario, they’re beautiful spots to visit. Elora also has some of the best tap water you’ll ever taste.