Murderbot Diaries 2-5 by Martha Wells

Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy, Network Effect

4/5. Finally sat down and read these straight through. Confession time: I hadn't read beyond the first novella mostly because I find some of the ways people talk about Murderbot (so relatable! So cute!) deeply weird and off-putting. And maybe now I know why.

Shotgunning these let me pinpoint what I like about them, which is Murderbot's increasingly complex relationships with other artificial beings – a robot, a ship AI, another security unit. And here's the thing. These are books in a long tradition of science fiction about personhood and how to attain it. That's the arc of these stories, Murderbot the construct is constructing a new concept of self. And it's specifically a concept that rejects being a mirror of, or sometimes even a response to, human personhood. Murderbot doesn't want to look too much like a human, to have sex organs like humans, or often to process emotion like humans. And I don't think it's an accident that Murderbot's personhood seems to come into focus most for it in relation to other artificial beings, particularly ART. That's what I like. Speaking as someone who is periodically depersonalized by operation of ableism – yeah, when you are an adolescent constructing a self that the world does not want to admit exists, it's pretty harmful to do it under the guidance of some of the same kinds of people who depersonalize you. It just doesn't work.

(Relatedly, Murderbot is all, "Ah, ART loves teenagers, I don't get it," and also, "I guess ART kinda digs me too," and just . . . does not . . . connect those dots . . . at all.)

Anyway, all that is great. But to get there I have to put up with the ways I find these books . . . insipid maybe. Troubling? IDK. Specifically when they set up Murderbot to essentially be a woobie – generally when it depersonalizes itself the most by treating itself as an object meant for killing -- you can just feel the multiple layers of human characters, author, and readers collectively going aw, I just want to give you a hug, and it's . . . not actually cool? Like stop that? It's kind of *gestures* a weird imposition of a kind of personhood that Murderbot doesn't understand, and to the extent it does, it actively rejects? And the books are really inconsistent about getting that versus exploiting the woobie for feelz.

Kids books roundup

Welcome to what will probably be a new, recurring feature. Casterbrook decided he loved books around seven months and, at nine months, can knock over a stack of books, sort through them, retrieve the specific one he wants, and very pointedly bring it to the nearest mom. So we are getting a pretty good idea of his preferences.

ABC Disgusting by Greg Pak and Takeshi Miyazawa

A current Casterbrook favorite, we theorize because there are many many drawings of kids pulling faces, and he's currently way into that. An ABC book of gross things (year-old yogurt, anyone?), as siblings try to outgross each other, with a sweet twist of supportiveness at the end.

Octopus Escapes by Nathaniel Lachenmeyer and Frank Dormer

I'm pretty sure this was a gift from gnomad. The story of an octopus who escapes his tank at night and rampages through the aquarium, generally making mischief. It's occurring to me that we might want to give this one a rest once Casterbrook is trying to climb out of his crib in earnest, LOL. But for now, he likes the art and the simple, one or two word sentences on each page. I regularly make up rhyming phrases to this one as Casterbrook turns pages, and its rhythms have infused our jokes – "guard closes gates, octopus waits" adapts itself well to a baby letting you know what he thinks of a babygate.

A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo

A gift from my sister. So, background – Marlon Bundo is the pet bunny of the vice presiden'ts family. He starred in an earlier kids book written by the Pences, and also this one – about his gay romance with another boy bunny – with proceeds going to the Trevor Project. That's kind of a lot going on for a kid's book. Casterbrook is not that into this one right now – no human faces and no rhymes – but we don't hate reading it. And points for Dill Prickle the Hedgehog. It is a bit . . . love is love, if you know what I mean.

McElligot's Pool by Dr. Seuss

A classic. Our copy is, in fact, my wife's from childhood. A consistent favorite of Casterbrook's, and there's no mystery about why. Because my god, the quality of verse in this thing is so far beyond any other baby book we have, it's not even funny. This verse rollicks. It breezes. It delights. And Casterbrook loves listening to it. And it is refreshingly hefty. I regularly tune in and out to the sound of it, and I swore for weeks on end that every time I tuned back in, my wife was reading a section I'd never heard before.

What's Wrong, Little Pookie? by Sandra Boynton

I have this with clear Braille labels over each page. Casterbrook enjoys that textural element, but otherwise it's a total non-starter right now, as any position I put this book in to let me physically read it means it's flat enough that he can't see enough of it to stay interested. It's a cute story, though, about a little kid who is super upset but who, it turns out after increasingly fantastical guesses as to why, can't actually remember. Probably valuable to read a thousand times to a more emotionally volatile toddler.