Artificial Condition
2018
- franchise:the murderbot diaries
- series:the murderbot diaries
- form:novella
- genre:science fiction
- human-computer interaction
- life on other planets
- artificial intelligence
- androids
- robots
- interplanetary voyages
The story
It has a dark past - one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself Murderbot. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more. Teaming up with a research transport vessal named ART (you don't want to know what the A stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue. What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks...
What it’s like
Dry, wry, and quietly tender, this novella reads like a pocket-sized comfort with teeth: short chapters, clipped first-person sentences, and a narrator whose sarcasm masks a deep, slightly anxious curiosity about itself. The sensory world is spare and industrial, with the hum of corporate transport decks, the sterile glare of mining-colony corridors, and the cold vacuum outside a viewport, all rendered in plain, precise prose that rarely lingers on scenery and prefers the texture of a mind thinking aloud. Pacing is brisk and conversational, the kind of read that moves in tidy bursts and pauses for wry asides, and the emotional register is low-key warmth: a lonely, self-protective being slowly testing the idea of friendship with a fellow machine. Violence is present and occasionally sharp, but brief and mostly off the page, with some tense action and grim memories rather than gore. It suits a rainy weekend, a late-night sitting-up, or a long journey, and fits readers who want clever, funny science fiction with a big heart and no cruelty for its own sake.
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