System Collapse is the latest in the Murderbot Diaries. I plan to reread all of these this year, so I’ll be brief in this one. Suffice it to say, this is the best sci-fi you can read right now. It is wildly human, using the speculative nature of a robotic brain learning how to be a real boy to explore living with neuro-divergence. On top of that, Murderbot would do anything for his humans (it’s baked into his nature), would rather be watching media than anything else, and the action is tense and exciting. What’s not to love?
In System Collapse, Murderbot is traveling with ART (Asshole Research Transport, his overwhelmingly powerful AI friend) and both of their humans to try and save isolated colonists from forced indenture by the Berish-Estranza Corporation. Indenture is slavery, tends to last forever, and the labor is insane and brutal. In addition to the intensity of the stakes, Murderbot keeps making uncomfortable references to [redacted], something we don’t get to hear about for a while, but which eventually turns out to be PTSD, a strange experience for the bot and something he treats as failure (as it could prevent his saving his humans in a critical moment) and must learn to cope with.
This is really just more of what we love with Murderbot, and that’s frankly all we need. If you haven’t read these, pick up Network Effect right now and get on the bandwagon before the Apple TV series comes out for that sweet, sweet hipster cred. 11/10 no notes.