The blurb:
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.
This is a re-read; I had read it once before, but wanted to refresh myself before diving into the rest of the series. Fortunately it's a pretty brisk read, being only 150-odd pages.
Murderbot is an android—machine consciousness in a hybrid body, with both artificial and organic components. For some reason, the company that designed it gave it a human face which Murderbot prefers to keep hidden behind the visor of its helmet—because Murderbot definitely does not like dealing with people. It has hacked its governor module, the bit that is supposed to keep it under company control; all it wants is to do the minimum to get by in its job as a SecUnit (basically an android bodyguard sent out with exploration teams), and watch Sanctuary Moon, a long-running soap opera.
Sound familiar?
For an android, Murderbot is incredibly relateable in a lot of ways; it just wants to be left alone to do its thing. But the current job is protecting a small team of scientists as they explore a new planet and it turns out there's a lot more hostile life forms out there than they expected, plus a lot more glitches than should be happening. Then a neighbouring expedition suddenly goes quiet—when they go to check it out, they find that rogue SecUnits have killed all the team members.
The storyline is a pretty straightforward corporate murder mystery, essentially, and it's pretty quickly resolved; there are no twists and turns, but that's okay, because the real attraction is Murderbot's internal narration. It doesn't want friends or interaction, but the team members will insist on being nice to it.
There's a lot of commentary about Murderbot being 'socially awkward' and that's true, but there's a lot of other commentary that it's nice to see an autistic-coded character and get a pretty good internal narration from that character. I can't speak to whether or not the coding is accurate but it's generally thought to be pretty good representation by people who are neuro-atypical so I'll take their word for it—also ace/aro people.
The thing I appreciate most, I think, is the depth of world- and character-building in a pretty short work. It's sharp and funny storytelling that uses the plot as a framework to advance its exploration of being different and having to interact with the typical world. As much as team members want to be friendly with Murderbot, that makes Murderbot uncomfortable—only the team leader, Dr Mensah, is emphatic about the team treating the android as it wants to be treated, i.e. keeping human interaction to a minimum, just do the job etc—she doesn't try and impose her expectations on it, for the most part.
Except at the end—the expedition is put into a position where they can buy Murderbot from the company and take it back to their area of space where cyborgs are viewed more as people, less as property. However, as Murderbot observes, they still need a guardian; they're still not fully trusted on their own. So Murderbot makes a decision of its own, choosing independence, even with all the difficulties that's likely to bring down the track.
There is a little mystery hinted at in Murderbot's background; I expect we'll get into that in later novellas.
Started: 6 January 2026
Finished: 8 January 2026
Back home.
More books.