Murderbot

I need to go out of order here because my pursuit of comps struggled for a while. There were quite a few books I read where I was left with the general feeling of “well that’s not gonna work,” and then realizing I had to go find another book to read because you can’t tell agents you only want to compare yourself to Gideon the Ninth.

So I’m gonna skip to Murderbot. Because I love me some Murderbot.

Okay, I’m going to get some of the obvious out of the way first. The thing I like the least about Murderbot is the novella format, as previously mentioned. But then that’s only the bookset. I feel like those first five stories could have easily been one, and I dunno if Martha Wells had planned for that in the first place, or what, but, I give it a pass. It also gets better as the books get longer.

I’ll be honest I dragged my heels on Murderbot because I was aware that it wasn’t about a lesbian character. Look, I’m not so uneducated that I don’t read anything else, it was just the fact that up until this point, I had only read anything else. So I figured while it had glowing reviews, it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. But man was I wrong. This here is the point where I realized the story telling I was thirsting for even more than lesbian content was that of snarky, sarcastic, and take-no-shit but be mad about it main characters. You know, the kind that are just a little bit hard to like at first? Add some good comedic timing that plays off the extremely introverted character’s ability to be truly scandalized by the idea that someone might enjoy their company, and I’m all in (as a fellow scandalized introvert). Also, since this series has had a lot of success, it also told me that other readers are kinda into it as well, so maybe it’s not so bad that my character is one step above grumpy cryptid.

I can’t quite get into the absolute depression pit that is the forecasted runaway capitalism of Murderbot. It honestly was something I struggled with the most when writing: what is the world-building beyond this unfortunate little scenario? I didn’t want evil corporations, or manipulative governments, because I didn’t want my story to just fall into that narrative. I feel like maybe I’m lacking because of it, but in reading Murderbot (and Shieldrunner Pirates) it gave me a glimpse into what having your story include such visions of the future leads to: a story about evil corporations and manipulative governments. It’s not bad, it just wasn’t something I wanted to write about. I’m glad there’s books like Murderbot that do write about them. That way I can just write about people stranded on an interstellar bus station who don’t really care who signs their paychecks. They are stuck with each other, and that’s plenty to focus on in a nice little microcosm.

I enjoyed, and continue to enjoy, how Murderbot slowly gathers its core group of insiders, how it slowly grows its own trust, and all the while stays true to its inner grumblings about wanting to be left alone. I guess I just really like the feeling of “I am a truly horrible and unforgivable [not person], while I inadvertently do the single best thing anyone or anything can possibly do in this precise moment.”

Now, I did read the entirety of the Imperial Radch, way before all this adventure in authorship started for me. So I had already made a nice soft place in my heart for Breq, Sphene, and Athoek Station. It meant that Murderbot and ART were welcome additions to the surly artificial intelligence conclave I am harboring. But their surly nature is probably the extent of it. I’m not, generally, a robot fan.

My sibling beta-read my story and made the major suggestion of adding automation and robots to it and I’ll be honest, I literally thought of that picture of a Roomba with a steak knife duct taped to it. I love Wall-E like the rest of them, but I went into a different kind of engineering. When something breaks I can crack it open, save all the bolts, generally re-crank the gears and mostly get it working again, but if the little computer things go haywire, its witchcraft, and no I don’t know how to fix it. Rockets go room, that’s my repertoire.

So, Murderbot gets swept into the comps pile. It might not have the romance I was hoping for, and way more robots than I ever might have planned, outside of Robot Visions, but the taste of snippy protagonist with plenty of internal gallows humor felt pretty relevant to my offerings.