I probably don’t love these as much as a lot of people do, but I do like them. And I think the treatment of AI and non-human emotions, non-human relationships are very interesting.
I think that my biggest complaint is simply that the world in which we inhabit is not spelled out enough for me to really connect with the story. I like the character of SecUnit, Rin, Murderbot or whatever you want to call our narrator. I think the voice here is really funny at times, touching at times, and it’s hard not to really connect with and enjoy the ways in which they spend all their time watching episodes of a tv show they love and become obsessed with.
The best part of the whole series, then, is a scene in which SecUnit and ART (Asshole Research Transport — as SecUnit names it), who team up in the second book are sitting around wasting time by watching episodes of Sanctuary Moon, and there’s a moment in which ART’s favorite character dies and the transport unit goes quiet for a few moments, processing it, but pretending otherwise, and then they’re happy when the character comes back to life later.
I think a secondary complaint I have is that the plot doesn’t feel particularly important to me, noteworthy, or maybe even all that important. I am left with the question of given that no one seems to be all that concerned about chasing down SecUnit and nobody is really coming after them, then why are they doing anything other than looking to team back up with Dr Mensah, which they ultimately end up doing.
So I think this story is mainly one of narration and voice, which is good because they voice and narration are quite compelling.
I realize also that this was published in mainly digital forms and so the costs of those formats is defrayed. But man, I really don’t like 150 page (and very small pages ultimately) books costing me (well, my library) 18 dollars each. All told these four books add up to 600 pages, and a slim 600 pages at that…probably more so like 400-450 pages of story (and I understand a fifth one is coming up) so let’s call it 550 pages of narrative and cost 90 dollars. That feels wrong to me. I blame Tor, obviously, which is owned by MacMillan, but woe to be one of the saps who feels the need to buy all five hardback editions.
Anyway, here’s a list of other similar titles this reminds me of.
Firstly, there’s some clear connections to Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot — not so much in story, but a little, in which the rules and regulations of narrative robots must follow. I think there’s also some Douglas Adams in this one a little with the humor. There’s also some Futurama here too. I think there’s some connection to Maureen McHugh’s China Mountain Zhang as well, not so much in the robot side of things, but in the narration. To that effect, I see some connections to Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and The Diamond Age as well. There’s also some CJ Cherryh’s Cyteen and Downbelow Station.
Mostly I see the humor, the alternate perspectives, and the military/corporate military storytelling sharing some obvious connections to Tanya Huff’s Confederation series (Valor’s Choice, The Better Part of Valor, The Heart of Valor, The Truth of Valor) — in which artificial intelligence, military fiction, corporate intrigue all play significant roles. I also see some strong connections to Lois McMaster Bujold novels from the Miles Vorkosigan books — especially Brothers in arms, Mirror Dance, Ethan of Athos, Falling Free, and some of the novellas dealing with Jacksons’ Whole and the corporate/pirate stuff.
My point of all the connection points being that this book series doesn’t entirely stand up on its own and needs the work of a lot of other writers who have explored and built the tropes that this book rests upon. I think this book is interesting in that its narration and narration scope are necessarily limited by a robot who only wants to survive and watch tv would be interested in. It plays around with worlds like that, but without a bigger exploration of the world itself, it’s limited in these ways.
Now the obvious next step beyond this is to think about the tv show. Who’s making it? The obvious choice for me would be the Wachovskis. This book explores connections between robots and artificial intelligences and humans and cyborgs in an almost queer way and they seem like they would be perfectly suited to this.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Condition-Murderbot-Martha-Wells/dp/1250186927/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=martha+wells&qid=1557076279&s=gateway&sr=8-1)