18 ms·
Murderbot, she wrote
- ajford 2y agoOne of my favorite series in the last few years. The tech side of things are believable enough (at least compared to the usual handwavy nature of sci-fi books) and now I understand why, as it seems Wells has a history in IT! I'm struggling to not gush about this book and trying to avoid spoilers, but if you like a good sci-fi action/adventure book with a strong lean towards a journey of self discover it's really worth a read.
- CBLT 2y agoSeconded - I enjoyed the audiobooks for Murderbot by Graphic Audio. I originally found them on a torrent tracker when I was searching for something else, and after enjoying the free trial I bought the series through Graphic Audio's website.
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoI listened to the version narrated by Kevin R Free, which I enjoyed. It was my first experience with audiobooks so I don't have much to compare but I did read some reviews of the Graphic Audio versions which suggested they were not considered good by some listeners, even those that liked other productions from the same source.
- technothrasher 2y agoI enjoyed the series for a while. But it was around about the detective mystery story one that I got bored and wandered off to read the Bobiverse books by Dennis Taylor.
- imzadi 2y agoBobiverse is great but the latest book is too much like the Expeditionary Force books without Skippy.
- lproven 2y agoI really enjoyed the Bobiverse books while getting over surgery following a bad bike crash last year, but they are mental chewing gum a bit: they're great fun but other writers could fit entire novels into the plot holes in the Bobiverse. They are fun but not very well-written.
- mmaunder 2y agoThanks will do. A colleague also loves the series.
- helf 2y agoIt is easily in my top 5 series of all time. I adore it.
- moh_maya 2y agoI echo this. If you liked murderbot, you might also like the Battleship Chronicles series by L. Claire (1), and ofcourse, the Imperial Radh series by Ann Leickie (2), and bobiverse, mentioned below, by Dennis Taylor (3), among others.. (1) https://www.goodreads.com/series/391892-the-battleship-chronicles https://www.goodreads.com/series/391892-the-battleship-chron... (2) https://www.goodreads.com/series/113751-imperial-radch https://www.goodreads.com/series/113751-imperial-radch (3) https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse
- VyseofArcadia 2y agoSeconding the Imperial Radch series, which has a similar "not exactly human" perspective.
- jandrese 2y agoI read the first three books of the Imperial Radh (Ancillary Justice) series and for all of the love they get online I found them rather dull. There's this fairly dramatic collapse of a galaxy spanning empire happening in the background while the protagonist frets over the level of offense she might cause at the tea party if she chooses to wear the more scandalous gloves. The last book gets a bit more into the fractured psyche of the ruler, but even that gets shoved in the background far more than you would expect so the protagonist can worry about how she might hurt the feelings of the local planetary governor if she doesn't show up for his garden party. The protagonist is basically a disconnected Borg drone, although in their universe the drones are left with a bit more autonomy than the Star Trek equivalents, but because the protagonist is disconnected it doesn't matter nearly as much as you would expect. If you're interested in a big space opera about an empire falling apart I found the Collapsing Empire series by John Scalzi to be much more engaging.
- jemmyw 2y agoI quite liked the focus on minutiae while the bigger events were happening in the background. The third book even discussed it - we live or die today after this battle, but if we live then we still need to do the staff rota. It gave a little sense of realism that made the larger events more relatable.
- Blackthorn 2y agoIf you like Murderbot, you owe yourself to check out her other series, The Cloud Roads. Absolutely fantastic.
- wccrawford 2y agoThanks for the recommendation!
- imzadi 2y agoAnother good one is Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky Also, I feel like if I am recommending something I have to recommend Dungeon Crawler Carl, which is my current obsession. I've read all the books multiple times in multiple formats, but it's not much like Murderbot.
- bnj 2y agoGlad to see DCC mentioned, one of my favorite things to do is describe the initial concept to someone and then see them experience the first few chapters and get hooked
- em-bee 2y agoi am reading service model right now with our scifi book club. this book needs a trigger warning for programmers. reading it feels like work because i am constantly analyzing what coding faults lead to the choices the robots are making.
- georgeecollins 2y agoChildren of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky is also very good imo.
- adamgordonbell 2y agoSuper fun popcorn sci-fi books. I enjoyed them all. Popcorn thrillers are books that are lighter in content, jam-packed with entertainment value, and not too dark, and meant to be read in one sitting.
- noirbot 2y agoThey reminded me a lot of a sci-fi version of the classic action hero airport novel stuff like Jack Reacher or the Bourne books. Just a super competent hero who generally succeeds despite things being messy and chaotic.
- adamgordonbell 2y agoYeah, I think it's actually hard to write something that quick moving and action packed. It's perhaps a different skill then character development or world building or prose polishing, but it's how you get these books people blaze through. ( Now sometimes I blaze thru something and hate it at the end, but thats a different problem ... )
- noirbot 2y agoYea! I don't mean it to be dismissive at all. It's part of what I love about them. There's good character and world building, but a lot of the book is just well-crafted puzzle boxes of "how do you get out of this", where at the end, it's just that the characters are competent and skilled, but the exact _how_ is fun.
- whimsicalism 2y agoif you like that style, i think you would also like Lois McMaster Bujold and John Scalzi's books
- adamgordonbell 2y agoScalzi I love as well. Clearly so good at that quick moving style.
- btown 2y agohttps://archive.is/2024.12.02-165105/https://www.wired.com/story/murderbot-she-wrote-martha-wells/ https://archive.is/2024.12.02-165105/https://www.wired.com/s...
- BryanLegend 2y agohttps://archive.ph/gAC9R https://archive.ph/gAC9R archive.is seems to be down.
- inanutshellus 2y agoI haven't read the stories for many years now but for some reason both I and my wife assumed the bot would look female, and both of us were independently surprised to learn that the protagonist was cast as male in the upcoming series.
- romanows 2y agoI think Murderbot doesn't have a gender, so it'll probably be a pretty androgynous look anyway. I listened to Kevin R Free's fantastic narration, so maybe I would have expected a male actor, except that I do the aphantasia thing and never visualize anything from books to begin with!
- inanutshellus 2y agoYes, the robot is not described with a gender and it needn't have a gender -- or even the semblance of one -- but for whatever reason my wife and I both ignored that and assigned it as female, and were really really surprised many years later by the casting of a dude. We didn't even talk about it when reading the books. Just came up when we were both surprised by the casting. Kinda cool when your book-made vision shifts like that. It's one of the funnest parts of reading a book before the movie comes out... that sensation of /mental annexation/ that happens. Excited to see the show!
- dartharva 2y agoMurderbot frequently blends into the crowd as a dude though, that's a recurring theme in the series.
- jghn 2y agoYes, I was surprised by all the people here who had a female mental picture for this reason. While obviously it is genderless, my recollection was that there were plenty of times where the narrative had it passing as male.
- inanutshellus 2y ago
- dageshi 2y agoI'm a bit mystified by the hype for murderbot. I read it and thought it was OK but a lot of people rave about it. Still not every book is for every person, it didn't connect with me but it very obviously has its fans.
- ghaff 2y agoI felt similarly. Read what I think was the first book. Enjoyed it well enough. But also didn't feel a burning need to snag further books.
- VyseofArcadia 2y agoI enjoyed the novella but also didn't feel like it did anything particularly new or interesting. I think a lot of people just relate to a snarky unwilling protagonist who would rather be watching TV.
- georgeecollins 2y ago>> a lot of people just relate to a snarky unwilling protagonist who would rather be watching TV. You put that beautifully! That is what I enjoyed about it.
- SamoyedFurFluff 2y agoI think that is a new and interesting protagonist tbh. So many are heros or have to develop into heroism. It’s refreshing to just have someone who explicitly doesn’t save the world or similar stakes.
- VyseofArcadia 2y agoMaybe the pop culture obsession is new, but the snarky, reluctant protagonist is something I have seen enough to be kind of tired of. Off the top of my head, Murderbot also reminds me of the protagonist of Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City which I recently read. If you enjoyed Murderbot, take that as a recommendation, although it is less sci-fi and more historical fiction.
- 0x457 2y agoLove that series.
- malshe 2y agoI loved Murderbot series and I have HN to thank for it. So many wonderful book recommendations come from HN comments!
- baldeagle 2y agoThe Texas A&M sci-fi convention mentioned in the article is coming up in early February. You can bounce over to Cushing library to check out the collection, including a copy of Fahrenheit 451 in an asbestos zipper case (obviously, you can't check that one out of it's special container). https://www.aggiecon.net/ https://www.aggiecon.net/
- dartharva 2y agoFor anyone interested in the Murderbot series I will wholeheartedly recommend the GraphicAudio adaptation: https://www.graphicaudiointernational.net/our-productions/series/k-r/the-murderbot-diaries.html https://www.graphicaudiointernational.net/our-productions/se... David Cui Cui is a fantastic narrator and shines in his performance as Murderbot.
- meonkeys 2y agoLovely series! Wells is awesome. How does Wired continue to thrive without a paywall? (please I hope I didn't just jinx it) (huh, maybe there is a paywall and I just haven't hit it yet? I just noticed an archive.is and archive.ph links in other comments)
- hersko 2y agoThis series reminded me about my favorite HFY short story of all time: ABBY514 https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/c0ojkr/oc_abby514/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/c0ojkr/oc_abby514/
- bithead 2y ago"To shreds, you say"
- the_af 2y agoI really enjoyed Murderbot, and seeing people here (completely within their rights!) saying it's "just ok", let me say why I think it's more than merely "ok". By the way, long scifi fan here, so I'm aware of the conventions of the genre. - Murderbot is neither a "he" nor a "she". This isn't immediately obvious on a first read, and I initially assumed it was a "he", but there's absolutely zero indication of its gender. What I mean to say is that Murderbot is subtler than it seems at first... um, read. - Women are in power as good characters and it's not something you're hit over the head. Pacifism/cooperativism is an actual option. The most intelligent character in the series is a woman, but again, this is not preachy nor does it seem like "it has an agenda". It's actually something you realize once you've read the first few novellas. It just happens. - The action-oriented tech is pretty good actually, way above the low techno-babble bar set by Star Trek and similar. Martha Wells used to work in IT and it shows. While the tech is hand-wavy and not so detailed that it becomes boring (this is not a "nerd's paradise", which I actually approve of, because such things don't result in good literature), but communications, "the net", what's wired vs what's not wired, bandwidth, hacking, etc, all make sense in Murderbot. There's not a cringeworthy moment in sight. - The action is good. It's not military porn [1] (I wouldn't classify this as military scifi) yet it's quite thrilling. - The humor is excellent too. I loved the whole "I'd rather be streaming soap operas". Is it the deepest scifi there is, exploring the most thought-provoking ideas? Well, no. But is it fun? Hell, YES. And that has to count for something -- smart, thrilling fiction that is not necessarily groundbreaking. ---- [1] I hate this term and I hesitated about writing it down, but in the end decided most people will understand what I mean.
- pizlonator 2y agoYeah. Also, the fact that murderbot is genderless is so ambiguous that if you want to you can read the books as if he was male or she was female, or as if they were genderless, or really anything that floats your boat. Murderbot is a perfect blank slate. I think that’s really innovative; I can’t think of another book I have read that achieves that to the point that the gender is just fill-in-the-blank (pls give me examples if you know). It’s quite cool and didn’t feel like woke overload to me. Another thing: there is a huge amount of exploration of what makes us human in how Murderbot is portrayed. I found some of it to be quite deep. The fact that it’s combined with super fun action strengthens the depth, I think. Super cool series, glad Wells is seeing a lot of success from this. I’ll definitely watch the TV show and can’t wait for the next book in the series.
- renewiltord 2y agoI found this series a pulp read. Found it because one either won or was nominated for a Hugo. It’s no match for the old Hugos. It’s light fiction in a future universe rather than the kind of novel sci-fi I most enjoy.
- whimsicalism 2y agoexactly agreed, although i did end up enjoying it - it's pretty pulpy. I've been disappointed in recent trends in the Hugo
- whimsicalism 2y agoFor people who like more pulpy/popcorn-y scifi like this, I highly recommend Lois McMaster Bujold's Barrayar series.
- loeg 2y agoDefinitely -- and there are a million of them, so it can keep you occupied for a while. Her non-Vorkosigan fantasy books are also pretty great (Wold of the Five Gods series / Curse of Chalion, etc).
- gcanyon 2y agoMy wife and I happened to be in Iceland when Alexander Skarsgård was filming something. We saw him standing idly by while something was being set up, so my wife walked up and asked if she could get a photo with him. So I have a picture of my wife hugging Alexander Skarsgård, and I get to tell people my wife left Alexander Skarsgård to be with me :-) re: Murderbot -- I read the first novella when it was on sale for $1.99 or something like it. I liked it, but the rest of the novellas were something like $4.99 each, and I'm not paying that much for novellas. Holy crap, they're $12 each now!? Authors gotta eat, but c'mon!
- jillesvangurp 2y agoTurned me off as well. I bought part one. And then I realized it was very short. And then I saw the prices for the rest of the series. I might read it if it was bundled up and heavily discounted (like 70-80%). But this is just too much for way too little.
- kristianp 2y agoI've read all the murderbots. I definitely recommend reading the 1st one at least. One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that they are funny! There's a wry sense of humor in them.
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoA bit of the article that stuck out to me after reading the comments here: > “I don’t think it’s particularly subtle.” It’s a slave narrative, she says. What’s annoying is when people don’t see that.
- ryzvonusef 2y agoHey look, Wired finally managed to find a writer who doesn't insult the author's family!
- fud101 2y agowhich book is this?
- TheAdamist 2y agoI enjoy murderbot, but each novella is pretty short, so there isn't a lot of source material to draw from for the upcoming show, and original material for a show isn't always of the same caliber as the source unfortunately. But my biggest concern about the show is, all the internal dialogue by murderbot, how do you translate that to the screen? Voiceovers maybe, but im not sure. Although i haven't listened to the audio books to see how they portray the internal dialogue. That and murderbots androgynous otherness, although the casting of Alexander Skarsgård for the role is probably a good one, he's definitely played similarly weird characters before.
- NoZZz 2y agoThe rules of robotics vav a bolshivist robot... interesting.