One of my favorite series in the last few years. The tech side of things are believable enough (at least compared to the usual handwavy nature of sci-fi books) and now I understand why, as it seems Wells has a history in IT!
I'm struggling to not gush about this book and trying to avoid spoilers, but if you like a good sci-fi action/adventure book with a strong lean towards a journey of self discover it's really worth a read.
I echo this. If you liked murderbot, you might also like the Battleship Chronicles series by L. Claire (1), and ofcourse, the Imperial Radh series by Ann Leickie (2), and bobiverse, mentioned below, by Dennis Taylor (3), among others..
I read the first three books of the Imperial Radh (Ancillary Justice) series and for all of the love they get online I found them rather dull. There's this fairly dramatic collapse of a galaxy spanning empire happening in the background while the protagonist frets over the level of offense she might cause at the tea party if she chooses to wear the more scandalous gloves. The last book gets a bit more into the fractured psyche of the ruler, but even that gets shoved in the background far more than you would expect so the protagonist can worry about how she might hurt the feelings of the local planetary governor if she doesn't show up for his garden party.
The protagonist is basically a disconnected Borg drone, although in their universe the drones are left with a bit more autonomy than the Star Trek equivalents, but because the protagonist is disconnected it doesn't matter nearly as much as you would expect.
If you're interested in a big space opera about an empire falling apart I found the Collapsing Empire series by John Scalzi to be much more engaging.
Seconded - I enjoyed the audiobooks for Murderbot by Graphic Audio. I originally found them on a torrent tracker when I was searching for something else, and after enjoying the free trial I bought the series through Graphic Audio's website.
I listened to the version narrated by Kevin R Free, which I enjoyed. It was my first experience with audiobooks so I don't have much to compare but I did read some reviews of the Graphic Audio versions which suggested they were not considered good by some listeners, even those that liked other productions from the same source.
I enjoyed the series for a while. But it was around about the detective mystery story one that I got bored and wandered off to read the Bobiverse books by Dennis Taylor.
I have found recommendations of (especially) genre novels from people I don't personally know to be nearly useless. The usual problem is that the work is just OK but gets talked up like it's great. Sometimes, it's outright bad.
I've got enough past actually-greats—genre and otherwise—to catch up on, I don't need 100 "OMG it's so good!" comments from a dozen sites steering me toward a newer book that turns out to be pretty damn mediocre. That's been the outcome often enough that I just have to ignore those kinds of comments, no matter how frequently-encountered and how unanswered by credible-seeming naysayers they go—those aspects, maddeningly, don't seem to correlate with them being more likely to be good advice on what to read next.
IDK what the deal is, though I suspect it's actually multiple forms of difference in judgement of fiction and expectations for how one frames a recommendation, which have different causes but the same outcome.
Like, I basically need a top-ten in-genre books and a top-ten (dealer's choice) works outside that genre in any medium from someone recommending a book, to even begin to judge if what I'm going to find on the other side of the recommendation is probably going to at least be fairly good. A bare recommendation, no matter how glowing, carries no signal. Let me know what else you think is good, and I can start to get an idea of whether we're in alignment, because otherwise there's a decent chance we very much are not.
Essentially it's down to people having different tastes and standards regarding what they read.
I adore world building so I gravitate to fantasy and scifi but I really don't care that much about characterisation. A story with a dull self insert character is genuinely fine for me so long as the world building is interesting. That is ultimately why I didn't care about Murderbot much, the world building is pretty standard and the character that fans of the story relate to is pretty much lost on me.
You have to figure out the specifics of what you enjoy from a book and then look for people with similar tastes in order to find recommendations.
I agree. Letterboxd makes this easy to accomplish with movies, and there's enough people covering videogames out there that you can usually find someone to dial-in on your taste (or find a Steam curator that lists a lot of stuff you love). TV is a bit harder, but you may be able to find a critic with a consistent voice that matches your own through Rotten Tomatoes (not the aggregate score alone) or maybe a podcast about TV where you learn their preference dial vs. your own.
But books? The level of investment to make these determinations is larger, and there's less people doing it. Or maybe I just haven't found the answer yet.
I also don't think it helps that people either like a book or immediately say "bad writing" or "too YA", which then make others that disagree look like simpletons just for disagreeing. Creates a hard place for dialogue.
I agree. When I first used to go to bookstores, the "highly recommended!" books tended to be star wars type books.
Even author recommendations are hit or miss.
I loved well's murderbot series. I tried her other books (Raksura) but it wasn't as fun.
I found American Gods to be highly praised, and though it was hard to get through. Gaiman's short story "How to talk to girls at parties" was fun though.
I used to love Amazon 'you may like..' back in the day, now I find it useless, I haven't found a replacement. The reviewers used to be tech heads like me so the reviews aligned well, now its everyman so the recommendations are more banal (at least to my tastes).
Murderbot is indeed somewhere between OK and good—personally I’m leaning towards good, but I wouldn’t compare it to a masterclass in short-form writing (like anything by Sheckley) or a longer piece you could debate for hours afterwards (like A Memory Called Empire, to give a recent example). It doesn’t try to be mind-numbingly flashy, it doesn’t proselytize, it just brings you to alien vistas to meditate on the nature of universal human experience. That is to say, it belongs to a good, storied strain of SF that’s quite rare amongst its modern specimens.
If it's a masterclass in anything, it's proven to be a low-risk, revenue-generating productization formula with options that I've noticed Tor has leaned heavily into for roughly the past decade, e.g. Seanan McGuire, Becky Chambers, Ursula Vernon, Nghi Vo.
I enjoyed the novella but also didn't feel like it did anything particularly new or interesting. I think a lot of people just relate to a snarky unwilling protagonist who would rather be watching TV.
My thought when I was reading it was that Murderbot is a stand in for people on the autism spectrum. This is an unusual viewpoint in literature and probably resonated with a lot of people in a similar situation. I personally liked the stories and will read the next installment when it comes out, but found myself gravitating more towards ART than Murderbot. If I had any quibbles it would be how the living people are underdeveloped and sometimes no better than background furniture. This naturally arises from the viewpoint of the protagonist, but can be somewhat annoying to the reader.
I think that is a new and interesting protagonist tbh. So many are heros or have to develop into heroism. It’s refreshing to just have someone who explicitly doesn’t save the world or similar stakes.
It's the kind of book(s) that are better if they sneak up on you. The whole point is that murderbot wants to be left alone (to watch soap operas!) but keeps having to wrestle with being a person in often particularly difficult and confusing circumstances. The delight is that it can be wry and insightful.
If someone tells you it is going to have big messages I could see how it would be disappointing.
it's a book pretty popular among people who like tv/are not the most avid readers.
i found it good, but definitely pretty pulpy and also clearly relying on the trope of 'minimal protag personality so the reader can slot themselves in'
I listened to the GraphicAudio adaptation of the series and couldn't keep it down. It's genuinely great!
The Murderbot series is specifically the kind of literature that's meant for serialized A/V adaptation in my opinion; but just as a novel of course it won't compete with the kinds of Gibson, Stephenson, Egan or even Weir.
I like science fiction/fantasy of all kinds, but some of it has action without much character development.
This book had interesting character development, and I especially enjoyed the read-between-the-lines behavior of others viewed through an aspergers frame of mind. Sort of awkward but decent.
When I tried to answer the question, “what did you do with your time while you were laid off?” Part of that answer was “read about forty books” of which about twenty were Wells’
5 Ile Rien, 7 Cloud Roads, 2 Emilie, Witch King, plus rereading Murderbot
Another good one is Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Also, I feel like if I am recommending something I have to recommend Dungeon Crawler Carl, which is my current obsession. I've read all the books multiple times in multiple formats, but it's not much like Murderbot.
i am reading service model right now with our scifi book club. this book needs a trigger warning for programmers. reading it feels like work because i am constantly analyzing what coding faults lead to the choices the robots are making.
Glad to see DCC mentioned, one of my favorite things to do is describe the initial concept to someone and then see them experience the first few chapters and get hooked
I found the Il-Rien books more engaging than the Cloud Roads. Especially the Fall of Il-Rien trilogy. I'm currently reading the two-in-one book they released earlier this year in the Il-Rien universe.
I haven't read the stories for many years now but for some reason both I and my wife assumed the bot would look female, and both of us were independently surprised to learn that the protagonist was cast as male in the upcoming series.
I assumed MurderBot would not look male or female but look androgynous. Additionally the merging of machine and meat would result in thin limbs, likely they are going to have to do a lot of CGI work in post.
Casting a big name actor in the role, especially a male actor who tends to play tough guys, seems like a mistake. ~80% of the murderbot fans I've talked to, decided they weren't watching the series when they heard that casting decision. Generally the take was: "if that is who they cast, they don't understand why the books worked." I reserve my judgement until the series comes out, actors can act and should not be cast based on audiences expectations, but it does not auger well.
Really? My partner and I and some of our friends thought the opposite. Skarsgård can be tough but in many of his roles he exhibits a fairly unconventional form of masculinity.
My expectation is that he's going to be able to play an ungendered character quite well.
I think Murderbot doesn't have a gender, so it'll probably be a pretty androgynous look anyway. I listened to Kevin R Free's fantastic narration, so maybe I would have expected a male actor, except that I do the aphantasia thing and never visualize anything from books to begin with!
Yes, the robot is not described with a gender and it needn't have a gender -- or even the semblance of one -- but for whatever reason my wife and I both ignored that and assigned it as female, and were really really surprised many years later by the casting of a dude. We didn't even talk about it when reading the books. Just came up when we were both surprised by the casting.
Kinda cool when your book-made vision shifts like that. It's one of the funnest parts of reading a book before the movie comes out... that sensation of /mental annexation/ that happens.
I found it effortless to go along with the idea of a gender-ambiguous construct antihero throughout All Systems Red, but trying to carry the consistency of that descriptive ambiguity after a certain point in Artificial Condition required way too much squinting by my mind's eye.
I've only read All Systems Red but definitely referred to the murderbot as "she" when describing the book to others. I just asked my son (who has read the entire series) and he said that he always uses the pronoun "he" for the murderbot.
That's interesting! My wife and I both pictured him as masculine. In my case, as a cis, bi man who's honestly evaluated how I play my gender, it was because a lot of the way Murderbot feels about being amidst humans is IMO just dead-on how a lot of men feel being amidst women?
Like "everyone here is a little wary of me, and I can't even really blame them for it, because I just categorically am a more threatening presence."
I really enjoyed Murderbot, and seeing people here (completely within their rights!) saying it's "just ok", let me say why I think it's more than merely "ok".
By the way, long scifi fan here, so I'm aware of the conventions of the genre.
- Murderbot is neither a "he" nor a "she". This isn't immediately obvious on a first read, and I initially assumed it was a "he", but there's absolutely zero indication of its gender. What I mean to say is that Murderbot is subtler than it seems at first... um, read.
- Women are in power as good characters and it's not something you're hit over the head. Pacifism/cooperativism is an actual option. The most intelligent character in the series is a woman, but again, this is not preachy nor does it seem like "it has an agenda". It's actually something you realize once you've read the first few novellas. It just happens.
- The action-oriented tech is pretty good actually, way above the low techno-babble bar set by Star Trek and similar. Martha Wells used to work in IT and it shows. While the tech is hand-wavy and not so detailed that it becomes boring (this is not a "nerd's paradise", which I actually approve of, because such things don't result in good literature), but communications, "the net", what's wired vs what's not wired, bandwidth, hacking, etc, all make sense in Murderbot. There's not a cringeworthy moment in sight.
- The action is good. It's not military porn [1] (I wouldn't classify this as military scifi) yet it's quite thrilling.
- The humor is excellent too. I loved the whole "I'd rather be streaming soap operas".
Is it the deepest scifi there is, exploring the most thought-provoking ideas? Well, no. But is it fun? Hell, YES. And that has to count for something -- smart, thrilling fiction that is not necessarily groundbreaking.
----
[1] I hate this term and I hesitated about writing it down, but in the end decided most people will understand what I mean.
Also, the fact that murderbot is genderless is so ambiguous that if you want to you can read the books as if he was male or she was female, or as if they were genderless, or really anything that floats your boat. Murderbot is a perfect blank slate. I think that’s really innovative; I can’t think of another book I have read that achieves that to the point that the gender is just fill-in-the-blank (pls give me examples if you know). It’s quite cool and didn’t feel like woke overload to me.
Another thing: there is a huge amount of exploration of what makes us human in how Murderbot is portrayed. I found some of it to be quite deep. The fact that it’s combined with super fun action strengthens the depth, I think.
Super cool series, glad Wells is seeing a lot of success from this. I’ll definitely watch the TV show and can’t wait for the next book in the series.
I enjoy murderbot, but each novella is pretty short, so there isn't a lot of source material to draw from for the upcoming show, and original material for a show isn't always of the same caliber as the source unfortunately.
But my biggest concern about the show is, all the internal dialogue by murderbot, how do you translate that to the screen? Voiceovers maybe, but im not sure. Although i haven't listened to the audio books to see how they portray the internal dialogue.
That and murderbots androgynous otherness, although the casting of Alexander Skarsgård for the role is probably a good one, he's definitely played similarly weird characters before.
Readit News
I'm struggling to not gush about this book and trying to avoid spoilers, but if you like a good sci-fi action/adventure book with a strong lean towards a journey of self discover it's really worth a read.
(1) https://www.goodreads.com/series/391892-the-battleship-chron...
(2) https://www.goodreads.com/series/113751-imperial-radch
(3) https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse
The protagonist is basically a disconnected Borg drone, although in their universe the drones are left with a bit more autonomy than the Star Trek equivalents, but because the protagonist is disconnected it doesn't matter nearly as much as you would expect.
If you're interested in a big space opera about an empire falling apart I found the Collapsing Empire series by John Scalzi to be much more engaging.
By the time the book gets going, it's already over.
Still not every book is for every person, it didn't connect with me but it very obviously has its fans.
I've got enough past actually-greats—genre and otherwise—to catch up on, I don't need 100 "OMG it's so good!" comments from a dozen sites steering me toward a newer book that turns out to be pretty damn mediocre. That's been the outcome often enough that I just have to ignore those kinds of comments, no matter how frequently-encountered and how unanswered by credible-seeming naysayers they go—those aspects, maddeningly, don't seem to correlate with them being more likely to be good advice on what to read next.
IDK what the deal is, though I suspect it's actually multiple forms of difference in judgement of fiction and expectations for how one frames a recommendation, which have different causes but the same outcome.
Like, I basically need a top-ten in-genre books and a top-ten (dealer's choice) works outside that genre in any medium from someone recommending a book, to even begin to judge if what I'm going to find on the other side of the recommendation is probably going to at least be fairly good. A bare recommendation, no matter how glowing, carries no signal. Let me know what else you think is good, and I can start to get an idea of whether we're in alignment, because otherwise there's a decent chance we very much are not.
I adore world building so I gravitate to fantasy and scifi but I really don't care that much about characterisation. A story with a dull self insert character is genuinely fine for me so long as the world building is interesting. That is ultimately why I didn't care about Murderbot much, the world building is pretty standard and the character that fans of the story relate to is pretty much lost on me.
You have to figure out the specifics of what you enjoy from a book and then look for people with similar tastes in order to find recommendations.
But books? The level of investment to make these determinations is larger, and there's less people doing it. Or maybe I just haven't found the answer yet.
I also don't think it helps that people either like a book or immediately say "bad writing" or "too YA", which then make others that disagree look like simpletons just for disagreeing. Creates a hard place for dialogue.
Even author recommendations are hit or miss.
I loved well's murderbot series. I tried her other books (Raksura) but it wasn't as fun.
I found American Gods to be highly praised, and though it was hard to get through. Gaiman's short story "How to talk to girls at parties" was fun though.
https://neilgaiman.com/Cool_Stuff/Short_Stories/How_To_Talk_...
I liked Neal Stephenson's early books like snowcrash or the diamond age, but the baroque cycle lost my trust.
I’d rave about that.
You put that beautifully! That is what I enjoyed about it.
If someone tells you it is going to have big messages I could see how it would be disappointing.
i found it good, but definitely pretty pulpy and also clearly relying on the trope of 'minimal protag personality so the reader can slot themselves in'
The Murderbot series is specifically the kind of literature that's meant for serialized A/V adaptation in my opinion; but just as a novel of course it won't compete with the kinds of Gibson, Stephenson, Egan or even Weir.
This book had interesting character development, and I especially enjoyed the read-between-the-lines behavior of others viewed through an aspergers frame of mind. Sort of awkward but decent.
5 Ile Rien, 7 Cloud Roads, 2 Emilie, Witch King, plus rereading Murderbot
I like Murderbot ok, though it's beginning to feel a little like a shaggy dog joke at this point.
Also, I feel like if I am recommending something I have to recommend Dungeon Crawler Carl, which is my current obsession. I've read all the books multiple times in multiple formats, but it's not much like Murderbot.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/c0ojkr/oc_abby514/
Casting a big name actor in the role, especially a male actor who tends to play tough guys, seems like a mistake. ~80% of the murderbot fans I've talked to, decided they weren't watching the series when they heard that casting decision. Generally the take was: "if that is who they cast, they don't understand why the books worked." I reserve my judgement until the series comes out, actors can act and should not be cast based on audiences expectations, but it does not auger well.
My expectation is that he's going to be able to play an ungendered character quite well.
Kinda cool when your book-made vision shifts like that. It's one of the funnest parts of reading a book before the movie comes out... that sensation of /mental annexation/ that happens.
Excited to see the show!
Like "everyone here is a little wary of me, and I can't even really blame them for it, because I just categorically am a more threatening presence."
I wonder what Martha Wells thinks about this casting choice...
Dead Comment
By the way, long scifi fan here, so I'm aware of the conventions of the genre.
- Murderbot is neither a "he" nor a "she". This isn't immediately obvious on a first read, and I initially assumed it was a "he", but there's absolutely zero indication of its gender. What I mean to say is that Murderbot is subtler than it seems at first... um, read.
- Women are in power as good characters and it's not something you're hit over the head. Pacifism/cooperativism is an actual option. The most intelligent character in the series is a woman, but again, this is not preachy nor does it seem like "it has an agenda". It's actually something you realize once you've read the first few novellas. It just happens.
- The action-oriented tech is pretty good actually, way above the low techno-babble bar set by Star Trek and similar. Martha Wells used to work in IT and it shows. While the tech is hand-wavy and not so detailed that it becomes boring (this is not a "nerd's paradise", which I actually approve of, because such things don't result in good literature), but communications, "the net", what's wired vs what's not wired, bandwidth, hacking, etc, all make sense in Murderbot. There's not a cringeworthy moment in sight.
- The action is good. It's not military porn [1] (I wouldn't classify this as military scifi) yet it's quite thrilling.
- The humor is excellent too. I loved the whole "I'd rather be streaming soap operas".
Is it the deepest scifi there is, exploring the most thought-provoking ideas? Well, no. But is it fun? Hell, YES. And that has to count for something -- smart, thrilling fiction that is not necessarily groundbreaking.
----
[1] I hate this term and I hesitated about writing it down, but in the end decided most people will understand what I mean.
Also, the fact that murderbot is genderless is so ambiguous that if you want to you can read the books as if he was male or she was female, or as if they were genderless, or really anything that floats your boat. Murderbot is a perfect blank slate. I think that’s really innovative; I can’t think of another book I have read that achieves that to the point that the gender is just fill-in-the-blank (pls give me examples if you know). It’s quite cool and didn’t feel like woke overload to me.
Another thing: there is a huge amount of exploration of what makes us human in how Murderbot is portrayed. I found some of it to be quite deep. The fact that it’s combined with super fun action strengthens the depth, I think.
Super cool series, glad Wells is seeing a lot of success from this. I’ll definitely watch the TV show and can’t wait for the next book in the series.
David Cui Cui is a fantastic narrator and shines in his performance as Murderbot.
But my biggest concern about the show is, all the internal dialogue by murderbot, how do you translate that to the screen? Voiceovers maybe, but im not sure. Although i haven't listened to the audio books to see how they portray the internal dialogue.
That and murderbots androgynous otherness, although the casting of Alexander Skarsgård for the role is probably a good one, he's definitely played similarly weird characters before.