Some Thoughts on Murderbot

On my recommendation, my sister read the first novella in the Murderbot Diaries, All Systems Red by Martha Wells.

I keep mentioning Wells--I don't know anything about her yet, on purpose. (Because I want to think about these books on my own first.)

Here's the photo of Wells from the book jacket.

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The Question

This morning Sister wrote to me:

"A neighbor friend asked how the Bot series extends the robot conceit of stories like Blade Runner and The Terminator. I don’t know enough about the genre to answer intelligently other than to say that gender is not a front and center thing in the Bot Diaries.

"What do you think?"

Sister and I had recently tiffed about a painting––
"The Annunciation" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Sister likes it, I loathe it so, so much.

Whether she meant it or not (and she sure might have), asking my opinion about Murderbot was an excellent peace offering.

I wrote back, "You knew that would hook me, eh?"

I've avoided reading anything about the Murderbot books because I want to think it through on my own first.  

My Reply

Here's my reply to my sister--some my thoughts, written this morning:

I. Robot Lit 101

I don't know much about AIs, but I'd say Murderbot is right in line with the human-made, sentient-being-with-a-troubled-relationship-with-its-creator-(& humans in general) trope.

It's ancestry is right out of Robots 101...

from the Jewish golem*

to Frankenstein's monster (the monster hates its controlling creator like Murderbot hates "the company"),

to Marvin, the depressed, comically snarky robot in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
"I wish you'd just tell me rather trying to engage my enthusiasm because I haven't got one."

. . . to Roy Batty (Dutch actor Rutger Hauer), the tragic android in Blade Runner--you know?
Here, dying beautifully (and famously) in the rain, having spared the life of his enemy (Harrison Ford): www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU7Ga7qTLDU

Oh, and yes, Terminator II, where the Terminator sacrifices itself to save the human boy.

It just occurs to me that Milton's Lucifer/Satan, while not made by humans, is another creation that want self-determination.
Hm, and Eve too!

They are monsters, and we love them.
Oh, you sexy Satan...
"Fallen Angel" by Alexandre Cabanel (1847)

II. Speak for Yourself

The main difference––extension–– I see  between the usual robot stories and Murderbot (though AI hasn't been my area of interest) is that Murderbot tells its own story, in its own voice:
It's the David Copperfield of AIs, exploring for itself the question, "Am I the hero of my own story?"

I think it's so popular with young fans (on Tumblr, I see) because it's a coming-of-age story.
Murderbot is like a teenager, in many ways, grappling with existential questions, "What to do with free will? How to have meaning in a meaningless or even evil universe?" & maybe most of all--as the story goes on:
"WHAT TO DO WITH THESE INCONVENIENT FEELINGS?!?!"

Speaking of sci-fi tropes--it's also like Mr. Spock---a half-human who tries and fails to suppress his emotion, his caring for humans.

"When I feel friendship for you," he candidly tells Kirk when under the influence,
"I'm ashamed."

Murderbot is also part-human--it's a human/bot "construct", made from cloned human cells + inorganic parts;
and it's flummoxed and annoyed (and, if not outright ashamed, something like it) that it has feelings.

(Clearly some crossover with Autism Spectrum adaptations too, which I can't really speak to.)

III. See For Yourself

Most different and interesting thing for me, though, was the way I, the reader, kept getting caught out as I met new characters--
I kept imaging them looking like Rutger Hauer (the android in Blade Runner),
and then they turn out to be entirely other than that racially and genderly/sexually,
which made me FEEL--in my neural network!-- how much I am programmed by millions of hours of our own media.

Wells catches me up almost every time.
Even after I realized she's doing that––breaking the stereotype––my neural network automatically provides me with a picture of the Usual Suspect.
A ship's captain, for instance, appears looking like Capt. Kirk (white male American William Shatner), not Capt. Janeway (white female American Kate Mulgrew), much less Capt. Georgiou (Malaysian Chinese Michelle Yeoh).

It makes me realize how few images I have in my databank for non-male authorities. One Capt. Janeway, a million Capt. Kirks.

(I did look on Tumblr to see how other fans envision the characters, but no fan-art caught me.)

In my mind, Murderbot's looks shifts like a kaleidoscope.

 I think I sent this photo of the queer rodeo rider?

She's the closest I've come to a real-life person who I think looks like Murderbot.
The photographer, Luke Gilford, quoted in the Guardian article "This Ain't My First Rodeo":

"These are people who have survived and escaped a certain kind of trauma and violence, and are now here to re-enact this traditional western performance – which is also a form of drag.
But this time we’re caring for one another, and accepting one another deeply."

Could we substitute "traditional sci-fi" for "western performance".

I've thought the Murderbot Diaries would make good graphic novels, but actually, seeing how I envision the characters is one of the best things about reading them---
with visuals you'd remove your readerly imagination,
whereas reading the books, your own unconscious/programmed imagination becomes part of the story--
you are a player,  like a video game.

(Hm. The story is sort of like a video game---you see everything from the pov of the "first-person shooter", i.e. Muderbot.)

IV. Mine/ Your World

Which is another extension--again, this shows up more as the books go on:
the story is about living with and as tech, to some extent as we actually do now. The novels go further, of course, being futuristic, but the story is not some fantastical future, it's very related to our present tech-life.

Humans in the Murderbot books wear or have implanted all sort of tech. And so do we.
“The Future Is Now”.

It's normal now to have medical implants or attachments--from eyeglasses to heart regulators. And here's Chief Justice John Roberts ruling on cell phone data in 2014:

"Modern cell phones . . . are now such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy." 
--via Brookings Institute "Our Cyborg Future: Law and Policy Implictions" )

ABOVE: Mme. Helene Alberti and friend try out her flying prosthesis--not quite as sexy as Lucifer,
via "Avatars, Cyborgs and Robots: Can Humans Enhance Themselves?"

The way Martha Wells envisions the future is an extension of one model we have now.  It's corporate controlled---greed wins---but entirely liberal about sex and gender. (Murderbot itself doesn't care at all about gender & sex, so it's a good neutral reporter.)

Wells does such a great job showing how a political/economic reign can have both:
control of money/resources + freedom of identity.

Huh, I guess that's the old Roman Bread & Circuses, come to think of it:
you can do anything, be anything, and we will keep you entertained (stupified, distracted), . . . so long as you pay us taxes and remain obedient.

Similar to the company that created Murderbot, Amazon doesn't care about your gender, it just wants to know how you identify so it can use that info to sell you things--and mine your date to it can sell it to others--and control your reality (which it doesn't really care about, except to sell you things).

Gosh, there LOTS of stuff in these books!

V. DarkFic & Fluff

Wells uses fan tropes too:
it feels to me like she must be well versed in fandom (not that you couldn't arrive at the tropes independently--and not that they're not in mainstream/classical literature either).

Hurt/Comfort is the biggie I notice:
the author hurts or otherwise makes vulnerable (spores! are a popular option) the powerful character (Murderbot) to reveal its emotional soft side and to force it to open up to receiving comfort from another character (Mensah--& later, another bot), . . . which delivers to the reader/fan a big ol' dose of emo-porn chemicals.

Oh, yeah, and, the opposite of darkfic, fluff. Murderbot's funny.

I mentioned Hitchhiker's Guide, which is funny, but it's not really about robots. Marvin (green-eyed robot, below) is comic relief.

I don't think of hardcore sci-fi as being funny at all, which is one thing I don't like about it, which is why I don't read it, so maybe I'm missing any humor in it, if there is any...

Having a shoot-em-up space 'bot being funny might count as another extension of the genre.

Murderbot just wanting to escape into media--ha! That is maybe the funniest extension--and totally about fans & fandom--and it's also meta:
"You get to escape into media by reading about a character who wants to escape into media".

Thanks for asking--I've been wanting to write about what catches me in the Murderbot Diaries---
being an old person, more than the emo stuff, I'm maybe most attracted to seeing my readerly reactions:
"I imagined the hired killer as Arnold Schwarznegger but they turned out to be Martina Navratilova!"

Though the emo stuff is attractive too--along with Murderbot getting to roll my eyes at human stupidity (including my stupidity!);
and sharing its despair at being trapped with and controlled by human greed and callousness.

"Sometimes people do things to you," Murderbot says "that you can't do anything about. You just have to survive it and go on."

Turns out Murderbot can do something about about some things, but sometimes, yeah. It can't. We can't.
I can't.

OK--those are my thoughts off the top of my head this morning.

Tootle-oo!

Fresca

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* RE the golem--you know?
from www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-golem

"Most versions include shaping the golem [from earth] into a figure resembling a human being and using God's name to bring him to life, since God is the ultimate creator of life.. Often. . . the golem would come to life and serve his creators by doing tasks assigned to him.

"The most well-known story of the golem is connected to Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal of Prague (1513-1609). It was said that he created a golem out of clay to protect the Jewish community from Blood Libel and to help out doing physical labor, since golems are very strong.

Another version says it was close to Easter, in the spring of 1580 and a Jew-hating priest was trying to incite the Christians against the Jews. So the golem protected the community during the Easter season.

[THIS IS LIKE MURDERBOT:]
Both versions recall the golem running amok and threatening innocent lives, so Rabbi Loew removed the Divine Name, rendering the golem lifeless.
A separate account has the golem going mad and running away."