Systems Processing

On our vacation last month to Steamboat Springs, the drive to and from was filled with a few podcasts and a science fiction audiobook: All Systems Red, a novella by Martha Wells.

All Systems Red is told from the perspective of a security cyborg that thinks of himself as a "Murderbot." He's been assigned to guard the members of a planetary expedition, but it turns out to be a tall order. First, a monstrous creature attacks one of the members. Then the group finds missing data in their information about this planet... and sabotage appears likely. The Murderbot must help the explorers uncover the truth while protecting a secret of his own: he's hacked his own systems, and isn't required to obey commands as they all think.

I had basically no expectations on this story, and I think that worked to its advantage. Later on, I found out that this novella was first of a series of four (though it is itself essentially stand-alone). I also learned that it won both the Nebula and Hugo Awards for Best Novella, two of the most prestigious prizes for science fiction. Had I known any of this ahead of time, I think I would have brought expectations to this simple little tale that would not have been satisfied.

There are some things to like here. The protagonist, this "Murderbot," has a dry and sarcastic wit that lends a lot of humor to the tale. It's also just a nice flip of convention; so often, cyborgs (or robots or androids) are used in science fiction as "others" -- menacing villains we're not meant to understand, or figures of infant-like innocence we're meant to empathize with. Having such a character tell you his own tale is certainly not revolutionary, but it is surprisingly uncommon.

But so much of this tale is surprisingly common that I don't quite understand the award love. Wells is a skilled enough storyteller, but her story is full of tropes: an evil corporation pulling strings in a hyper-capitalist future, a machine wrestling with questions of humanity and freewill, and others more specific (which would spoil too much of this short tale if revealed). Yes, there are marks to be earned for how a tale is told -- and Wells does often earn them. But the tale itself is a fairly straightforward science fiction Mad Lib.

Even learning about the praise after the fact is probably making me judge All Systems Red harsher than it deserves. It's a breezy and fun little story -- and at novella length rather than doorstep epic, it doesn't overstay its welcome. Still, I'm not sure that I'll ever make time for the other stories in the series. I give All Systems Red a B.