Constantly afraid of being found out, constantly concealing its true nature, Murderbot is pretty much the perfect sci-fi metaphor for queerness and/or neurodivergence.

Murderbot is entirely too comfortable with violence– but at the same time it’s absolutely terrified of something as simple as a hug. As on the one hand, sure, Murderbot is far stronger than any flesh and blood human, and has energy weapons built into its hands … but at the same time Murderbot is asexual, agender, and more than anything, anxious. That relatability is what makes the Murderbot Diaries so popular. At which point Murderbot uses its newfound freedom to … slack off at work and watch Space-Netflix. Only the thing is, Murderbot (that’s the name it chose for itself) has accidentally attained sapience and broken free of its governor module.

They center on (and are narrated by) Murderbot, a synthetic/cybernetic android drone “SecUnit,” designed for any and everything requiring violence. In any case, Artificial Condition is the second in Martha Wells’ rather popular Murderbot Diaries. Which isn’t to say All Systems Red is bad by any means, but Artificial Condition was a lot more memorable than the first volume. Which leads me to wonder about the whole thing of “oh, it gets good once you’re X-amount-of-time-in” but … yeah. It helps that the Murderbot Diaries are actually well suited for this.Ĭause seriously, now I get it. Also didn’t some network announce they optioned the TV rights to this series? As just about every sci-fi franchise is getting an adaptation on one streaming network or another these days.

Fast forward to the present day, and I gave the second novella, Artificial Condition a read, mostly ‘cause my library app had it, and I wanted to read something with a spaceship on the cover.

The artificial condition