✍️ Written by: Martha Wells
🏷️ Genre: Sci-fi
🗓️ Published: 02 May 2017
📄 Pages: 156
🧐 My rating: ★★★★☆ (4 stars)
In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.
But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.
On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid—a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.
But when a neighbouring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.
I bought All Systems Red back in November 2023 but never got around to reading it, as there was always something else I fancied more.
At around 150 pages, it's a quick read, and I finished it over a couple of evenings before bed. Because of the brevity, the story wastes no time getting started and needs to hook you right away. It did.
My only frustration is that I wish it had been a little longer, with more space to explore certain details. I am not sure why Martha Wells keeps these novellas so short, but I'll take “too short” over endless padding.
There are eight books in The Murderbot Diaries, and buying them all adds up. Together, they are about the length of a single Brandon Sanderson epic, yet each novella is priced roughly the same as one of his full-length novels.
That said, I love a good yarn, and I am happy to support authors I enjoy. Especially when the eBook ends with a note like this:
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
I will definitely be picking up the next one.
MKJ and Xinit, over on that there Fediverse just let me know about the entire series (and some other Wells books) available on Humble Bundle, so I've just snagged them all.