Synopsis

Novella by Martha Wells about a surveying team that is exploring an alien planet. They’re accompanied by the main character, a security robot, who privately calls himself “Murderbot” and who has hacked his governor chip so he has free will. During one outing, the team gets attacked by a monster because they’re on terrain they’re not supposed to be over, but they don’t know that because of a data issue on their mapping software. Luckily Murderbot is around and saves the day.

After that, they go check on an independent survey team somewhere else on the planet that has gone offline. They turn out to have been all killed by security bots, like Murderbot, made to look like the security bots went rogue. After further investigation, they discover that there’s actually a third group in the plant responsible for that massacre and who also wants to kill them. Why? Because the planet holds valuable archeological resources that they want for themselves. The good guys come up with a plan that ends up with the bad guys blowing into pieces thanks to a cheaply made rescue beacon rocket. Murderbot almost dies in the process but in the end, all the good guys survive.

After leaving the planet, the good guys buy Murderbot from the surveying company that they rented him from and tell him they’re bringing him to their conservationist polygamic planet. From Murderbot’s point of view, that’s a change of ownership, not freedom, and he escapes as the book ends.

Observations

The book is really about Murderbot. At some point in his past, before he hacked his freedom away, he killed 300 people, but he’s also very shy and he’s horrified by talking face-to-face with humans. He has free will but is only interested in watching TV series (couch potatoes criticism?). He’s also interested in keeping his survey team alive, especially as the book progresses and his bond with them increases.

He’s half metal, half organic parts, but he can become almost destroyed and still look like new after a few hours because of a recovery capsule.

The planet they’re visiting didn’t give me a big sci-fi feel because it read like a mix of tropical jungle and volcanic land. For some reason, I imagined it as a colorful Studio Ghibli world.

I found the book through fivebooks.com where one of the larger volumes in the series was recommended. I enjoyed this one, so I plan to read the next one.

Quotes

I’m not sure if that all happened in that order; I’d have to replay my own field camera feed.

I didn’t want to put Bharadwaj down because something in my abdomen was severely damaged and I wasn’t sure I could pick her up again.

With my cracked governor [module] there was nothing to stop me, but not letting anybody, especially the people who held my contract, know that I was a free agent was kind of important. Like, not having my organic components destroyed and the rest of me cut up for parts important.

I’m always supposed to speak respectfully to the clients, even when they’re about to accidentally commit suicide.

I know I’m a horrifying murderbot, and they know it, and it makes both of us nervous, which makes me even more nervous. Also, if I’m not in the armor then it’s because I’m wounded and one of my organic parts may fall off and plop on the floor at any moment and no one wants to see that.

Keeping the armor on all the time cuts down on unnecessary interaction.

That can’t happen. I have too much to hide, and letting one piece go means the rest isn’t as protected.

I have a trick where I make HubSystem think I received it and then just put it in external storage. I don’t do automated package updates anymore, now that I don’t have to.

You’re the only one here who won’t panic. The longer this situation goes on, the others… We have to stay together, use our heads.

I wanted to go alone, but since nobody ever listens to me, Mensah, Pin-Lee, and Ratthi were going to.

Connections

• The 3 Rules of Robotics: don’t harm humans.
• Pratyahara, vipassana: Murderbot can remain indifferent to physical sensations like getting shot or mawed by a subterranean monster, but he’s unable to endure emotions.
• Craftsmanship vs profit maximization: the book constantly reminds you that the company that owns Murderbot and is coordinating the survey trip is a soulless entity interested in maximizing profits and, because of that, the equipment they have is crappy. Nature likes to conserve energy and stop at the point of diminishing returns, but mastery of a skill involves going beyond that point. Why do we value mastery and craftsmanship? Is it because mastery = control? Is it because it defies nature? Is it because it makes us feel closer to divinity? Is there any genetic incentive or is it completely learned behavior?
• Contracts, bonds: the book frequently uses the word “contract” to refer to the relationship between Murderbot, the survey team(s), and the company that provides them with the material to do the exploration. I found that interesting
• Introversion.
• Red pill / blue pill and The Matrix: it’s more about seeing reality as it is, but it feels like a way of escaping something that is constraining your freedom.
• The ship of Theseus: murder bot explains at one point that he doesn’t have separate “organic” (right) brain and robot (left) brain. Instead, he’s a messy and confused whole. I share that struggle.
• LLMs: Murderbot is the narrator and that perspective makes you feel like he has awareness and initiative. When I interact with LLMs these days it’s a chat interface like claude.ai or chat.openai.com. The experience doesn’t make me feel there’s any awareness behind it, mainly because I’m always the one initiating conversations and there’s no long-term memory.
• Freedom: Murderbot gains the ability to do what he wants after hacking his governor chip, but he still “belongs” to the company. Later his ownership is transferred to the surveying team so he remains a slave. He also has essentially infinite lives with his repair capsule, but that’s only as long as he’s with the company. Even if you get rid of that contract, or your need for others, food, air, dna aging, ultimately you need space for your particles. Freedom for me means freedom from the mind or ignorance (yoga).
• The mind: the mind is an information processing system. It’s evolved to take information from our internal and external sensors as its input and output reactions. Murderbot is modeled by the author as being happy consuming information in the form of TV series, which I guess it’s essentially doomscrolling.