Library Read // All Systems Red by Martha Wells

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 neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.

Another book I picked off my GoodReads TBR as I perused the library stacks, I'd heard good things about Martha Wells' The Murderbot Diaries series. When I saw how short this first entry, All System Red, was I was quite amped for the read. A quick bolus of what is anticipated to be great storytelling can't be anything but appealing. My vague recollection of what I'd heard, my impression as I went into the read was that the central Murderbot was a synthetic creature gaining personality and furthering its determination of self. That the titular Murderbot was maybe going to go on a killing rampage in that quest. No, that was not the case, not entirely. 

Murderbot is, as presented at least in this story, thus far, some mix between cyborg and android, a blending of organic and inorganic material, achieved at minimum through just a skosh of cloning. Maybe more than a skosh. Murderbot has already broken out of its blind programming following an unintended murder rampage, existing indifferently save for its love of entertainment programming. The story is set in a corporate, space-exploratory landscape, where security bots like Murderbot are hired to accompanying surveying teams. A conspiracy of corporate sabotage and competing interests turns into a survival game and by the end of the novella (and seriously, I can't stress enough how appealing the size of this book was) Murderbot only cements its desire for autonomy and self-determination. 

I can't imagine entirely how this ended up on my TBR, though I'm happy it did, because I tend to avoid stories of artificial lifeforms gaining sentience. But that's not really what this story is. Besides which the storytelling was so layered, the implications of the peripheral world-build so compelling, and the narrative voice so intriguing that I'm now invested in reading the series through. Rather, catching up with it as it an ongoing one. I can't really find a negative and it was a quick and enjoyable read, so it's no surprise that this gets 5 stars from me.