The Murderbot Diaries

If you’re reading my website there’s a good chance you’ve heard of the immensely popular, award-winning series The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, about an organic/machine hybrid security cyborg which hacks its governor module to gain its freedom; with which it just wants to be left alone to figure out who it is, often by watch soap operas. If you haven’t, well, I’ve fixed that, and if you haven’t read it yet, I recommend you do. Or at the very least, watch the TV adaptation when it comes out in a few weeks.

The series consists of five novellas followed (chronologically, at least) by two full-length novels told from the first-person perspective of the aforementioned cyborg security unit (or “SecUnit” in the parlance) uses it/its pronouns and calls itself Murderbot after a massacre incident in which itself and other SecUnits had malfunctioned. It’s world (galaxy?) features a spacefaring human race has scattered to the stars, with the locus of power belonging to the Corporation Rim, a brutal system of corporate fedualism-in-space where terms like “hostile takeover” should be taken literally, and the outskirts of that civilization including corporate colonies, universities, and more egalitarian societies.

Murderbot as the first-person protagonist feels very in the vein of an outsider just trying to get by, while contemplating its own otherness while also pretending to be something you’re not and in some ways reminds me of that aspect the first two seasons of Dexter that I found very compelling. Murderbot has a lot of characteristics of the neurodivergent: it find social interactions awkward, especially eye contact. This aspect of the series is much-discussed, and in basing Murderbot’s emotional processing on herself, Martha Wells even found out about her own autism while writing the first novella (the segment starts at about 5:00). There is some exploration of gender, or perhaps Murderbot’s lack thereof, both physiologically and mentally.

The stories are told in a very manner-of-fact descriptive style, including a lot of Murderbot’s internal dialog, which includes a dark, bitter, and sarcastic sense of humor. SecUnit (what it asks other humans to call itself) is an unreliable narrator and its perspective from interfacing with a variety of other computer systems are a lot of fun, and the stories are well-paced between periods of action, intrigue, and personal struggles. I suspect this will carry over to the forthcoming TV adaptation very well.

Since the TV adaptation isn’t out yet, I obviously can’t comment on how well it works, but the preview is promising, and Apple TV+ (or whatever it’s called) seems to get how to adapt science fiction. It seems like they’re keeping the internal monologue, and the scene where Murderbot removes its helmet and says “Stay calm.. It’ll be okay…” absolutely nails the social awkwardness factor, and from his performance as vampire Eric Northman in True Blood, I think actor Alexander Skarsgård will do well. Reportedly, the first season of the show is based solely on the first novella, which sounds both surprising and promising as far as pacing goes.

I can also recommend the full-cast audiobooks with sound effects, even as someone with audio processing issues who usually has trouble with those. The variety of voice actors helped me keep track of the various characters, and Kevin R Free provides a great voice for Murderbot.

I love this series, and if any of what I’ve said here interests you, I highly recommend checking it out.