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Book Report: All Systems Red by Martha Wells
Synopsis
The future is as corporate as it is space-faring. All missions to other planets are under the careful scrutiny of the Company, who is responsible for paying out life insurance bonds should things go wrong. To avoid having to pay up, the Company requires that exploratory teams are equipped with a Security Unit— supplied by the Company, of course.
Enter Murderbot, a human-bot construct Security Unit sent off with a small survey team. Murderbot is different from the other SecUnits— it has hacked its own governor module, the program that forces it to obey orders. Of course, Murderbot still follows orders, even if it doesn't have to. It can't let on that it's a rogue SecUnit, because then the Company will destroy it, and even worse, Murderbot won't be able to watch its shows anymore.
A mystery arises when Murderbot is assigned to a small survey team on a remote planet, and they lose contact with the only other group on the planet. When they find the whole group dead, they realize that they aren't alone out here, and something shady is going on.
Plot Summary - Spoilers!
Murderbot is on a rather boring assignment with a small survey team called PreservationAux. It's none too dangerous, and the team wouldn't have even rented a SecUnit if it wasn't required by the Company. But the mission gets unexpectedly dangerous when a large, hostile creature erupts from a crater that the team is working in, attacking one of the humans, Bharadwaj. Murderbot rescues Bharadwaj, but another human, Volescu, is frozen in shock. Murderbot turns its face-plate transparent so Volescu can see its face, and talks him into coming with it back to the habitat. The three of them— one carried by Murderbot —race back to the ship to get out of danger and get medical help for Bharadwaj. Murderbot can't let go of the injured human without her bleeding out, so Murderbot is told to enter the crew cabin, which SecUnits are usually not allowed to do. When Murderbot is no longer needed, it retreats to its cubicle in the cargo bay to repair itself. Dr Mensah, the leader of the expedition, comes down to check on Murderbot, which is also unusual. Murderbot has an awkward conversation with Dr Mensah, and wonders what it did that the humans are so impressed by. It looks back on its recordings and sees that it talked to Volescu all the way out of the crater, keeping him calm in a very human way. Murderbot shuts down to repair itself.
When Murderbot wakes up again, it is to report to the crew cabin. Its armour is covered in blood and fluids, and its spare armour is in storage, so it reluctantly wears a uniform to report for duty. Its human appearance startles the crew. Murderbot goes through the report on the planet given to them by the Company and discovers something had been deleted from it, probably about the dangerous fauna they were entirely unaware of. Murderbot is dismissed, but the humans invite Murderbot to hang out in the crew cabin with them. Used to being behind an opaque face-plate, Murderbot fails to hide its horrified expression. Now the crew knows it doesn't want to be around them any more than they want to be around it. Murderbot can't give too much away about itself like this. As a rogue SecUnit, it has too much to lose. Mensah sends it a message later. Some of the team found that their map has missing sections, and Mensah wants Murderbot to look at it and see if it was just an error, or sabotage. Murderbot's opinion is that the map is just cheap crap. The team wants to go out and see what is in the missing sections, so of course, Murderbot goes too.
When they take the hopper to go flying and scanning, the humans want Murderbot to ride with them in the crew cabin. After Murderbot's reaction to them before, they are careful not to speak to it or look at it. Looking at recordings, Murderbot finds out that the humans had agreed not to push it— Murderbot —any further than it wanted to go. Murderbot can't stand how nice they are. They go to check out one of the missing map sections and land, and Murderbot sets markers around a danger zone so the humans know where not to go. When the humans keep wandering into the zone, they all realize that there is a glitch that wiped out all the markers on the humans' maps. The day goes by with no major problems, until Mensah calls Murderbot to tell it that they can't get into contact with DeltFall, the other group working on the planet. Worried that something happened to them, they get set to fly to the DeltFall habitat halfway across the planet and investigate. Once again, Murderbot is made to fly in the crew cabin.
On route, Ratthi, one of the friendlier members of the crew, tries to have a conversation with Murderbot. When Murderbot sends the conversation to Mensah, she yells at Ratthi to leave it alone. Murderbot notices that the satellite dropped out, and they are too far away from their habitat to make contact without it. But they don't turn back because the DeltFall group might need help. When they reach the DeltFall habitat, there is no sign that anything happened, aside from not being able to get into contact with them. All of the vehicles are present, so they hadn't left. They set out to investigate. Murderbot is worried about DeltFall's three SecUnits that it suspects might be responsible. Murderbot enters the habitat alone, the humans watching through its cameras. Murderbot finds one of the SecUnits dead. Then it starts finding dead humans. Murderbot finds the other two SecUnits and gets into a fire fight with them. Murderbot disables them, and thinks that's all when its knocked out. It wakes up to discover another SecUnit moving it, and placing it on a table. When Murderbot's systems come back online it takes out the SecUnit, only to be confronted with another one. But suddenly, the new and heavily armed SecUnit falls to the ground, revealing Mensah standing behind it with a sonic mining drill from the hopper. Mensah drags Murderbot out of the habitat and into the hopper. Murderbot notices something was stuck into the data port in its neck. It realizes the DeltFall SecUnits weren't rogue, they had combat override modules plugged into them, turning them into killing machines. And a combat override module was plugged into Murderbot, downloading the killer programming to its systems. Murderbot tells Mensah that they have to kill it, or it will kill them. But the humans don't want to, so Murderbot shoots itself in an attempt to save them.
Murderbot wakes up to discover that it has been patched up, and the combat override module was removed before it finished downloading. But the humans have discovered that Murderbot was already rogue. And they know that Murderbot killed fifty-seven members of a mining operation. Murderbot explains it didn't hack its governor module to kill its clients, its governor module malfunctioned and it lost control and killed them. It hacked it so it wouldn't happen again. At least this is what Murderbot thinks happened. The humans decide to trust Murderbot based on how Murderbot has protected them so far, and they discuss the sabotages. Clearly, someone else is on the planet. The speculate that this third survey group showed up at DeltFall saying that they were PreservationAux to get access to their habitat. They decide to abandon the habitat so they aren't there when whoever took out DeltFall comes calling, launching a beacon to call for early pick-up.
They fly off in the hoppers to hide while they wait for the pick-up to arrive. They know that what the mystery group wants isn't their data or their samples, they want them, so they do their best to stay dark and not be detected. Murderbot finds out that Dr Mensah is Preservation's political entity. Murderbot is also told that in Preservation-controlled territory, bots are considered full citizens (with human guardianship, of course). Eventually, they venture close enough to their habitat to check on things, and see hoppers parked out front. They discover that the third group is called GrayCris, which has five SecUnits. A voice speaks to them, knowing that they are watching them. The voice reveals that they destroyed their beacon. They give coordinates and a time to meet so they can negotiate. They have no choice but to meet with GrayCris.
Mensah and Murderbot head out in one of the hoppers to meet with GrayCris near GrayCris' habitat. Murderbot and Mensah are to provide a distraction while the others sneak over to GrayCris' habitat, hack it, and launch their beacon. Mensah stays back at the hopper as Murderbot goes to meet with GrayCris in person on her behalf. But as soon as it gets there, a signal bundle is sent to it to take over its governor module, meant to immobilize it so GrayCris can insert a combat override module. Luckily, Murderbot's governor module doesn't work, so it fails. GrayCris is surprised to be dealing with a rogue bot. Murderbot cuts its comm to Mensah and tells GrayCris it'll give them information they need if they'll take it on the pickup ship with them and list it as destroyed inventory so the Company won't expect it back. This is part of the distraction. GrayCris agrees, but is skeptical. They want to talk to Mensah. Murderbot goes to get her, and they send one of their SecUnits with it. When out of range, Murderbot takes out their SecUnit, and puts on its armour. It tells Mensah she has to pretend to be its prisoner. While Mensah and GrayCris are negotiating, one of them catches on that Murderbot isn't one of theirs, and Murderbot and Mensah run as their SecUnits fire on them. When they hear the nearby beacon readying to launch, Murderbot tackles Mensah to protect her from the wave of fire that washes over them. Murderbot goes offline. When it wakes up its in a ravine with Mensah, who is injured but alive. It goes offline again. When some of the team comes to their aid, Murderbot automatically suggests that they discard it because it is at minimal functionality. Mensah tells it to shut up, they aren't leaving it. It's on the edge of a systems failure, but it senses being on a hopper lifting up onto a pickup transport. It knows that its humans are safe, and lets go.
Murderbot wakes up at the Company station. Ratthi is there and tells it that Mensah permanently bought its contract, and that they were bringing it back to Preservation with them. They discuss what that would mean. Mensah would be Murderbot's guardian. Mensah explains that Murderbot would be able to do whatever it wanted. Murderbot feels weird about this, since guardianship is just a nicer word for ownership. It doesn't want anyone to make decisions for it or tell it what it wants, so it sneaks out and runs off on a bot-driven cargo transport, leaving Corporation Rim and its humans behind.
Thoughts - Spoilers!
I love Murderbot. Everyone loves Murderbot. For a robot, Murderbot is incredibly human and incredibly relatable. I, too, just want to watch my shows and not interact with humans.
This novella is a great introduction to the Murderbot character and the world it lives in. There isn't a lot of explanation for how the world works other than what is absolutely necessary, which keeps the story flowing nicely. Reading this, you very quickly learn the basics of the world without having to wade through great big exposition dumps. We also learn— in passing —Murderbot's backstory, which is explored in the second book of the series. While the story of the book is a mystery story, it also a perfect beginning to Murderbot's character arc. This book really sets up the rest of the series well.
Even though the Murderbot Diaries aren't exactly light sci-fi, I think that the series is a great introduction to science fiction. So I'd recommend this book, and this series, to literally everyone. Murderbot is a very relatable and likeable character, and I think anyone would enjoy its story.