The Murderbot Diaries just keep getting better. Murderbot is as SecUnit, part bio part bot, built to protect humans so insurance companies can sleep nights while people explore planets and other stuff. It’s a character SF readers can relate to. Uncomfortable engaging with people, all it really wants to do is find a dark place and watch its favorite serial, Sanctuary Moon. It’s got baggage it went off to deal with in the last novella, Artificial Condition, and now it’s out to get the goods on the evil corp that’s breathing down the neck of the only human to ever help it out. This time its really going to keep its head down and not get involved in saving (or caring) about any humans it runs into on the way.
Like that’s going to happen.
It’s pretty much impossible not to love Murderbot regardless of what your stance on cybernetic/human composite android killer security robots is. This is the third Murderbot novella, and so far we’ve followed our bot with blood on its hands on a journey of self-discovery where it’s come to grips with its past, which included murdering the humans it had been assigned to protect. Thanks to a memory wipe, Murderbot didn’t remember either what caused it to go berserker or the act itself, but in the previous novella, Artificial Condition, it found the answers it needed.
Unfortunately, Dr. Mensah, the human that offered it sanctuary on her homeworld is now being looked at in connection with the disappearance of a rogue SecUnit now rumored to be roaming the spaceways on its own. Murderbot would really like to a) quash those rumors so it can be left alone, b) get the good doctor out of a jam, and c) bring down GrayCris Corporation, the evil corporation that almost killed Dr. Mensah’s team in the first novella, All Systems Red, which it had been assigned to protect. Of course, what it really wants is to find a safe nook where it won’t have to deal with any humans and watch episodes of its favorite serial, Sanctuary Moon.
Murderbot decides that the best way to accomplish any of those things is to put c) bring down GrayCris Corporation first on the theory that heat applied to them is heat not applied to either him or the doctor. It’s not surprised to find that there are signs GrayCris has been doing nefarious stuff on a planet where it had a “failed” terraforming project that another company is now going to make a go of. Murderbot is pretty sure that it’s not so much a failure as a way to hide evidence of illegal activity, and decides to investigate on its own to see if it can turn up anything useful.
Like Anna Lee Newitz’s Paladin (Autonomous), Murderbot is part organic and part bot. Unlike Paladin, Murderbot is easy for readers to relate to and able to pass as an “enhanced” human security specialist. At least until it runs into any other SecUnit or annoyingly perceptive bot in general. So the novella opens with our favorite killer robot acting as a security consultant stuck in hell – keeping the peace on a ship carrying a load of humans to a 20-year term of voluntary servitude in the salt mines of Kessel. OK, not Kessel, but you get the idea.
From there Murederbot sneaks onto the station where a team is assembling to assess the terraforming station that was falling into the planet’s atmosphere until they put up a tractor array to stabilize it. Since that sounds like a foiled plan to get rid of evidence, he tags along, keeping out of sight Fortunately, that’s pretty easy for a bot that can hack anything short of a combat-bot, and if the humans get themselves in trouble, it’s no skin of its frame. They’re not its humans after all. Unfortunately, as it notes to itself, once you start caring it’s hard to stop.
And there’s plenty of trouble waiting for these humans, as well as the complication of a bot named Miki, who is both too darn perceptive and too concerned with its human’s well-being to make things simple.
If you haven’t read the first two novellas, you’re in for a treat. Go back to the beginning and start there. They’re not especially long (boo) but they’re engaging as all-get-out (yea!) and you’ll be back here in short order. I’d hoped that this would wrap the story, but it’s not to be just yet.
Actually, that’s a good thing, as a new novella has been coming out every few months and one more is scheduled for this October with the hopeful title of “Exit Strategy.”
Not that anyone wants Murderbot to go away. The thought of that is enough to make me want to crawl in a storage box and cue up the entire Sanctuary Moon series from episode one.