What Murderbot Is

Steve of Shadows & Light commented, "I don't even know what "Murderbot" is!"

Right, I've been posting about it off and on, but I've never fully explained, so here's an overview.
(I was thrilled to have an excuse to write this, since all I want to do is think about Murderbot. So, thanks, Steve!)

WHAT MURDERBOT IS (so far as I've figured out)
[Some mild spoilers ahead--I'll let you know when they start--but the first part here is stuff you figure out pretty soon, or anyway, that doesn't give away the plot.]

Murderbot is the first-person narrator of and main character in four novellas and one full-length novel so far, collectively called the Murderbot Diaries (2018–ongoing).

The stories are sci-fi/speculative fiction.
They're set in the distant future, when humans are far flung among colonized/terraformed planets. Space travel is via wormhole.

Murderbot does not bother to explain exactly how any of this works, except when bits become relevant, anymore than I'd normally explain in a blog, "I live in a representational democracy formed by X, n-years ago; I carry a handheld device fueled by ... blah-blah-blah."
Because I assume you readers know it.
Or, like me, have come to terms with not knowing it. (I have no idea how my phone works. As the father in Hannah and Her Sisters says, I don't even know how the can opener works.)

Details unfold as you go along, which is part of the fun.

Murderbot looks like a person (when clothed).
It is a fully self-aware, living machine–– a "construct" of part cloned-human tissue, part non-organic parts.

Murderbot is its private name for itself.
It is a, and is called by humans, "SecUnit", designed by a human corporation––"the company"–– to provide security to humans who go to unexplored and hence dangerous planets for the purposes of exploitation of resources or, less commonly, research.
The company owns and rents out the SecUnits along with earth diggers and other equipment.

SecUnits have some human brain neurons––there's some advantage to that, which I've forgotten [Update: bink said... "SecUnits have human brain neurons to add that robustness you get when things don't go as planned." Yes.]––but their physical abilities and intelligence (processing speed and neural networks) are well beyond human.
If it didn't want anyone to know that, Murderbot says, it shouldn't have run up a wall in public.

What it looks like, exactly, is indeterminate. It doesn't care, so it doesn't say, except to explain that SecUnits' bodies are standardized but their faces all look different because they look like the humans their cloned parts come from.
When possible, it prefers to always wear its opaque helmet around humans.

SecUnits are self-sufficient--they run on power cells that last for some extremely long time (a human life span?).

They have no reproductive (sex) parts or gender identity––their pronouns are "it/its"–– nor do they need to eat, drink, or eliminate fluids. They do bleed.
Murderbot doesn't want any of these things. It finds human biology, including what it has of it itself, faintly disgusting. Or more than faintly.
It hates to be touched (unless it's part of a rescue).

(Sexbots exist too, but normally SecUnits have nothing to do with them. It's vaguely hinted that perhaps they're not that keen on their jobs either...)

Murderbot does have emotions and feelings, however, but since they are viewed as simply an unfortunate side-effect of intelligence (which is necessary to provide security), it was never designed to deal with them.
Mostly, it doesn't care about stuff. 

When it does care, it covers with snarky comments or disappears into itself to watch media (which it downloads into its memory).
It's much like a young human in that way... Or an old human, for that matter.

It doesn't know what it wants, either, except to consume media––books, music, and especially serials like the space-soap The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.

Learning to deal with its feelings, figure out what it wants, and not freak out when it cares about things (especially about other sentient beings) is a major theme in the Murderbot Diaries.

Another central theme is whether or not it is a person.
Legally, in most of the "Corporation Rim" where it lives and operates, it is considered a dangerous weapon that must have a legal owner.

Note: MILD SPOILERS AHEAD

Before the stories start, Murderbot freed itself from (hacks) its implanted "governor module" that forced it to obey orders.
Now it has free will.
But what to do with it, when it's used to being told what to do every minute?
And how to survive in a cosmos where it is illegal to be free?

"I kept my day job," it says.

The first novella, All Systems Red, changes that.
The Company rents out Murderbot to a research team from a planet that does consider constructs to be people.
Mutual respect starts to develop between Murderbot and the human team, especially leader Dr. Mensah, who Murderbot admires as a "true galactic explorer," and a human smart enough to work with.

Murderbot rescues Mensah, and in turn, she buys it from the company. Now it has free will, and freedom (limited).
So it leaves town.

Murderbot calls itself "Murderbot" because in its past, it participated in a mass murder of humans on a mining site.
In Book Two, Artificial Condition (the titles are useless), it goes back to the now deserted mining pit to find out why.

And so on. The novellas could stand alone, but they're interconnected and come to a satisfactory conclusion. Or, a good place to pause, anyway.
The novel, Network Effect, continues the story.

A new novella--Fugitive Telemetry––is coming out at the end of April. I've already signed up for my copy at my local (walking distance) sci-fi/fantasty store, DreamHaven Books.

Murderbot is written by Martha Wells, "an American writer of speculative fiction", per Wikipedia.

I've avoided finding out anything about her because I'm figuring out her character & its world on my own, but let's just see one thing... How old is she?

She's three years younger than I am, which doesn't make me feel insufficient at all. Not at all.