More Murderbot! Yesterday I made my way through Artificial Condition, the second novella in Martha Wells’ Murderbot series, in which our favorite paranoid android has snuck off from its new human “guardian” and gone to investigate its own mysterious past. In order to get to the remote outpost known as RaviHyral, where the murdering incident took place, Murderbot needs a work permit, which is how it ends up hiring itself out as an augmented human “security consultant” to some nice young techies whose research has been stolen by their former employer. Murderbot also needs a lift out to RaviHyral, which is how it ends up teaming up with an annoyingly intelligent bot pilot for a research vessel, whom Murderbot christens ART. With two jobs to do now–retrieve its clients’ research, and investigate the Ganaka Pit incident–ART proves a valuable ally (among other things, it helps Murderbot identify that the incident it’s trying to investigate happened at Ganaka Pit, which is sort of important).
What Murderbot finds at Ganaka Pit is certainly important, but solving the mystery is somewhat secondary to what Murderbot learns about other people–whether those other people are bots, humans, or other constructs–and, despite its best efforts not to have or talk about its feelings, what it learns about itself. Despite all the murder attempts and spying it’s all very wholesome, saved from being saccharine mostly by the fact that Murderbot hates wholesome and finds it very discombobulating, which is reliably funny.
What Murderbot finds at Ganaka Pit is certainly important, but solving the mystery is somewhat secondary to what Murderbot learns about other people–whether those other people are bots, humans, or other constructs–and, despite its best efforts not to have or talk about its feelings, what it learns about itself. Despite all the murder attempts and spying it’s all very wholesome, saved from being saccharine mostly by the fact that Murderbot hates wholesome and finds it very discombobulating, which is reliably funny.