Network Effect - Martha Wells

 So. Murderbot. What’s Murderbot? Well, Murderbot is a lot of things. The most obvious is that it’s a sci-fi series by Martha Wells, mostly of linked novella length stories, and now, with Network Effect, a full length novel. Murderbot is also the story of the eponymous individual, a one-time corporate enforcer bot, whose ability to break its governor programming after a seeming eternity of servitude to a variety of worthless corporate dingbats has essentially left it with the desire to do as little as possible. Exhausted floor workers will no doubt empathise strongly. Murderbot is a story about difference, and how we can be Ok with difference, and celebrate it. About how we can be excellent to each other, and ourselves, and don’t, you know, have to be worthless corporate dingbats. It’s a story about one person finding that other people can appreciate it for who it is, and that not everyone is terrible, but also a story which gives room to the difference and the feelings of everyone involved. Murderbot has no desire to be human. It doesn’t really like humans, a lot of the time - squishy, messy, annoying creatures that they are. But Murderbot will enter a fire for those it wishes to protect, and is constantly surprised when others do the same. So yeah, Murderbot. It’s not a robot becoming human, or a cyborg finding its heart, but a person reaching out for connection, and also being comfortable, or finding themselves trying to be comfortable in who they are.

Also that person can shoot lasers from their wrists and take down an infantry platoon without breaking a sweat. Because the series is  titled Murderbot, what did you expect.

Murderbot is our window into the world it inhabits, and given that, it’s an absolute joy to hear it still have such a strong voice. Murderbot is wry, occasionally bleak, and makes comments with a degree of incisive sarcasm that is at once revelatory and hilarious. The same could be said of the world, which is one largely settled by enormous corporate interests, for whom people are a distant second to profit. Oppression is structural and embedded. Around the edges of the corporate-sphere, where life is cheap and ex[ectations minimal are other polities, with rather more prgoressive ideals - but their influence inside the domain of corporate interests is limited. 

Murderbot, however, is free of its old corporate masters. Now it has its own agency, its own personality, its own individuality, something it protects fiercely.But it does so with the world weary exhaustion of a life long retail worker, whose retail experience just happens to involve blowing up assassins, hostile drones, and occasional live malware.  I think Murderbot would be insulted if I said that it felt like it was human, in its quirks and needs, its grumps and its simmering affections - but perhaps less offended if I said it seems like a person. In any event, Murderbot has a voice you can feel resonating through your heart, through your bones. It is tired, and utterly unwilling to take any more crap. In 2021, Murderbots brand of tired, world weary, cynical and selfish altruism mixed with high explosives, well, that’s a beacon to us all. 

Murderbot is the heart of this story, in its affections for the friends it has chosen to make, both literally and figuratively. In its refusal to lay down, in its determination to be counted, and also in its pressing need to just go and binge a TV series uninterrupted for a while, if people would just stop getting into trouble. 

And wow, in Network Effect, the first standalone Murderbot novel, do people manage to get in trouble. Yes. The answer is yes. There’s all sorts going on here. Kidnapping. Potential alien incursions. Archaeology, Corporate defenestration. Missile strikes. Combat malware. The space battles are a fast paced, lethal ballet, and the moments when Murderbot lets itself go against targets are kinetic and brutal, with a rhythm and energy that lends itself to impacts that you can feel coming off the page and right into your sternum. 

Network Effect is an adventure story, a story of someone who is unwilling to take any crap, and is willing to do a lot to protect their own agency and the lives of the people they may occasionally admit to themselves that they care about. It’s a high concept sci-fi story, in a well realised, innovative universe, filled with humanity at its best and worst - and other, non-human people, who exemplify the same.

It’s a great book. You should read it.