All Systems Red by Martha Wells

[lightreads]

All Systems Red

3/5. That novella everyone is so in love with about the security robot who hacked its control module and calls itself “Murderbot.”

I am not in love with it. I suspected that going in, since the theme in everyone’s adoration has been “Murderbot! So relatable!” And I was always like, “okay, I believe you, but doesn’t that miss the entire point of AI?” And I was right. Contrasting the robot POV in this novella with that in Newitz’s Autonomous is revealing: the Newitz book is uncomfy and thorny and weird as hell, and the Wells is . . . comfy isn’t quite the right word, but let’s put it this way. The reason everyone finds Murderbot so identifiable? Yeah, that would be because the book spends roughly a third of its volume working really hard to manipulate the reader into feeling that way. I mean, making Murderbot an introverted media fanatic? That’s right up there with making Harry Dresden a DND playing pulp fantasy fan.

So, it was trying too hard, which got on my nerves, but more interestingly, I don’t want to identify with robots like that? I want to struggle across a great void of cognitive distance to grasp after robot POV. I want it to alienate and confuse. Newitz’s book is all about that, and how to messily, imperfectly bridge it. Wells’s book is sort of trying to be about bridging it, but there’s no mess there. Just feel-good manipulations.

IDK, I’ll read the next one, because I did enjoy this and I do think it’s doing a thing. It’s just not a robot thing I care about.

Comments

[runpunkrun]

I hear you. I enjoyed the book, but I'm not entirely convinced Murderbot is a bot because it is so human. I feel like vat-grown cyborg or something is more in keeping with its style.

[lightreads]

Yeah. I would buy some later retcon about how murderbots in general are made. The book strongly suggests that all murderbots have consciousness and personality without agency, which I'm not 100% sure I believe. Murderbot could easily be unreliable on that point. But if they do, that rasies all sorts of awful questions that Murderbot and by extension the book seemed pretty uninterested in. One reason the Newitz book is such a great comparison is that the first half is bot POV with an equivalent of a governor module, and the second half is the same POV without the governor. And it is fascinating how this bot has to basically rebuild itself -- herself, she eventually decides -- from nearly the ground up.

[runpunkrun]

I wasn't satisfied with the explanation of where or how the security units were made, so if the book does go into it (I can't remember), it doesn't spend much time on it. Maybe Murderbot will learn more about it later on. Right now it still only knows what the company--and mass media--has told it, so it could easily be wrong or not have all the information.

And I've added the Newitz book to my to-be-read list. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!

[kate_nepveu]

I read it as doing a different thing: Murderbot is relatable because Murderbot is a person, and Murderbot's personhood is the point, or more precisely, the way that people get designated persons or not persons is the point. Which does not have to be a thing you're interested in, either, mind!

Now I'm trying to think of alienating robot POV and not coming up with any -- the servitors in _Ninefox Gambit_, which I FINALLY just finished, aren't particulary -- which makes me wonder if I should squeeze in _Autonomous_ before Arisia when I am going to be on a panel about artifically-created persons . . . in a week . . . Hmm.

[okrablossom]

This is a great perspective. Thanks for sharing. I think I'm probably the only person who read this for the "mystery on an explored planet" plot but I like those a lot :)

[lightreads]

Yeah, I have a complicated relationship with 'who gets to be a person' books. It usually goes like this:

Book: But does x get to be a person? Me: Yes. Moving on. Book: But do they? Me: ...We just did this. It's not hard. Book: But do they? Me: Okay, the fact you have to think this hard about it is pretty gross....

One of the things I actually liked about this book is that Murderbot seemed pretty uninterested in the question. Other people were, but Murderbot didn't really want to engage about that. I appreciated that.

[kate_nepveu]

Right, and to my reading, I don't think the book was asking the question either, it just wanted to point out how other people reacted to the question.

(In other news I have bought _Autonomous_ and then occupied today's reading time by bouncing like a rubber ball off _All the Birds in the Sky_. Oops?)

Thanks for this review, it explains why

[jesse_the_k]

I enjoyed both Murderbot and Autonomous: the first was a donut and the second dark rye bread.

Re: Thanks for this review, it explains why

[lightreads]

Ha, yes.