Book Review: All Systems Red by Martha Wells

All Systems Red
by Martha Wells

All Systems Red is one of the most smartly-written, most entertaining, science fiction stories I’ve read in the past few years. This story won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Alex Award and the Locus Award for Best Novella (slightly shorter than a novel, at under 50,000 words) released in 2017.

This futuristic sci-fi story is narrated by an unnamed security android, a SecUnit, assigned to accompany a scientific expedition to a planet being considered for material exploitation. When bad things start to happen, both to the survey expedition this SecUnit is assigned to, and another elsewhere on the planet, the SecUnit has to work with its human team members to try to survive against a canny adversary.

All this sounds like a nifty but simplistic sci-fi action adventure story on the surface. W

hat makes this particular story truly fascinating is the voice of the narrator — this SecUnit is a fully self-aware artificial intelligence (AI), which has hacked its own computerized programming and eliminated the controls placed over it by its overseers. Having unwittingly killed a number of humans on a previous assignment, it has nicknamed itself Murderbot — in fact, this series is “The Murderbot Diaries”. Murderbot is a unique character, which is trying to determine who and what it is — its self-awareness is “new” and its not quite sure what to do with itself. It doesn’t really feel like it belongs with the humans, although it is addicted to the future equivalent of soap operas, but it still feels extremely protective of the team of scientists. There are strong shades of being an ostracized outsider — bordering on LGBTQ or autism spectrum — to this quirky narrator.

The action is fast-paced, the world-building is believable, and the voice of Murderbot is unforgettable. I strongly recommend this title, and there are three more novellas to follow, which wrap up the storyline that begins in All Systems Red. The author has indicated she also has a full-length novel featuring Murderbot on the horizon.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, and Exit Strategy, all by Martha Wells, the rest of the current “Murderbot Diaries” series.]

[ official The Murderbot Diaries page on the official Martha Wells web site ] 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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