Murderbots Diaries
It was a review of a current version of one of the stories, about a future sentient robot with a snarky sense of humor. Might be sarcastic. Or caustic? I’m unsure, but lately science fiction hasn’t moved me, and I do have several shelves filled with the stuff. Used to love it.
In the Apple TV version of Mythic Quest, end of the second season, I’m guessing, there was a nod, an homage to Golden Age science fiction or rather, at its decline, the tail-end of the greater masters.
cf., Astounding Tales.
Library recommendation, stumbled into Martha Wells Murderbot Diaries series.
Murderbots Diaries
From the first novel I sank into, I realized that the prose, action, plot, and story closely followed a similar cadence that I used to love. It struck me, tangentially, as an updated version of the old stories I used to gobble up.
There is a clean, crisp nature to the prose. Short. Abrupt. Snarky and sarcastic narrator, a very human-like machine. Last properly angst-ridden computer I currently recall? Hitchhiker’s Guide, &c.
Wasn’t until I plugged the author’s name into a search — Martha Wells — did I find out she’s Virgo, from my old hood. But on top of that, the library books I was reading, her thoroughly delightful Murderbots Diaries? It’s a series of novellas, not all really novels. I’ll wager, a different publisher would’ve pushed for those to be novel-length, but what she does with the slightly shortened form just leaps forward. Does more with less. Abbreviated prose is sharper.
The first clue was a digital library version, still weighed in just at a hundred pages. I was thinking, “That’s too short for a novel.”
However, it wasn’t “fast reading” as the plot, the story-line, it is complicated, and punctuated with a paranoid android narrator. Nice to see machines do have feelings of inadequacy like the rest of us. A machine that gets cranky when humans take too long to make a decision, even bad decisions.
In order, for me?
Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy, Network Effect, Fugitive Telemetry. Missed Code Red, or something.
Murderbots Diaries
Soon to be on Apple TV. Sigh. Like The Peripehral? Hitchhiker’s Guide meets “Blade Runner?”
