The ending is abrupt! It could have been flushed out a lot more, but just kind of cut off. And I just really love how Martha Wells crafts the environment kind of secondarily, you don't even notice that she is describing and explaining details about the world because it all takes a back seat to Murderbot's sardonic, sarcastic observations. I'm assuming he's a man because of the narrator's voice, but I think he's just an asexual SEC Unit that is supposed to be a killing machine but just wants to watch movies. The world-building is immaculate, the plot is solid and well-paced, but most importantly MURDERBOT. I had been pouring through longer literary fiction type stuff that was really heady and then I started this on a whim and it was a sheer delight. This book was just what I needed to get my out of a recent listening rut. But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth. Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is. 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.' Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.īut in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn't a primary concern. In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. The main character is a deadly security droid that has bucked its restrictive programming and is balanced between contemplative self-discovery and an idle instinct to kill all humans. Banks' Culture novels.Īll Systems Red tackles questions of the ethics of sentient robotics.

For fans of Westworld, Ex Machina, Ann Leckie's Imperial Raadch series, or Iain M. All Systems Red is the tense first science fiction adventure novella in Martha Wells' series The Murderbot Diaries.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells