There are times when one starts raving about a great book and then realises everyone else has already read and talked about it for years. The last time it happened was when this reviewer wrote about Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel Klara and the Sun in 2023, having discovered the book is so famous that even politicians are quoting from it.
It happened again when this reviewer learned about The Murderbot Diaries, a science fiction series by American author Martha Wells that first published in 2017. Perhaps it’s because a major streaming platform recently started adapting the series for television, but the passionate buzz among Murderbot fans certainly piqued this reviewer’s curiosity.
And it makes sense that Ishiguro’s Klara and even Data from Star Trek came to mind during the reading of All Systems Red, the first novella-length book of the series. The story’s first-person narrator is a cyborg designed as a security agent. It calls itself “Murderbot” because it once malfunctioned and caused the deaths of multiple humans.
Murderbot does its best to protect humans even when it proclaims “I don’t care much about who my clients are or what they’re trying to accomplish”. Although it has gained full autonomy by hacking its “governor module”, the cyborg has a vested interest in keeping humans safe because, in that way, they’ll have little need to bother it.
“I’m awkward with actual humans. It’s not paranoia…and it’s not them; it’s me. I know I’m a horrifying murderbot, and they know it, and it makes both of us nervous, which makes me even more nervous… Keeping the armour on all the time cuts down on unnecessary interaction”
So, instead of mingling with humans, Murderbot watches soap operas and has downloaded “a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music” from its entertainment feed. Its favourite show is The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, which, as Wells explains, is “kind of based on How to Get Away with Murder, but in space, on a colony, with all different characters and hundreds more episodes”.
Ultimately, as the cyborg spends time with caring humans, it starts developing emotions, which make it feel uncomfortable. As a matter of fact, the most famous of Murderbot’s utterings is “Ugh, emotions”, which has appeared on a great variety of merchandise such as t-shirts, hoodies, coffee mugs, notebooks, and cadet caps.
Maybe it’s this eccentricity, this rich yet vigorously denied humanity of a cyborg, that makes Murderbot an endearing character. As it mumbles and stumbles, gallantly dashing around while carrying on like a pork chop, we see the human and fun side of its personality that perhaps reminds us of a grumpy old man.
Maybe it’s fair to say that, like the T-800 in Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Murderbot gives us a sense of hope in this day and age when all the talk about the advancement of AI only serves to illustrate how dangerous it can be when it falls into the wrong hands.
Highly recommended.
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 