In the best way possible, there's an element of Martha Wells's 2017 novella All Systems Red which initially causes the book to resemble the setup of an extremely imaginative TV sitcom. It's only in time that this surface-level narrative gives way to something much deeper, and turns what at first seemed a comedic story into a work exploring the complicated ways in which traumatic experiences conceal themselves within the people they afflict.
Acting as the first installment in Wells's Murderbot Diaries series, All Systems Red begins as a fairly standard space adventure story. Told from the perspective of the book's deliberately misnamed AI protagonist (a socially awkward gender-neutral android who insists on privately calling themself "Murderbot"), All Systems Red follows PreservationAux--an interplanetary expedition tasked by an unnamed interstellar corporation with conducting a routine survey of an unexplored world.
As PreservationAux's standard-issue corporate-branded security android (or SecUnit), Murderbot's job in this mission is simple. While the actual scientists on this mission do the work of surveying the planet, Murderbot must spend hours on end standing quietly in a corner pretending to be keeping watch for danger.
Yet when two members of PreservationAux's crew are attacked by hostile alien wildlife whose existence on this world was suspiciously omitted from the mission's briefing materials, a series of increasingly unlikely technical failures in the group's equipment leads everyone to realize that someone has set out to sabotage their expedition before it can be completed. Consequently, Murderbot finds that their job as a SecUnit has grown exponentially more complicated now that they must actively work to keep everyone alive long enough to be rescued.
However, the true strength of All System's Red isn't so much in the novella's literal plot, or even the growing mystery that the book's many human characters uncover as they learn the truth of the deadly world they have been sent to survey. Instead, the core element of Wells's story is her initially comedic--and later on quietly tragic--depiction of the constant social anxiety experienced by her disarmingly vulnerable narrator.
Unbeknownst to the humans of PreservationAux, Murderbot is not in fact a normal SecUnit incapable of disobeying an order, but instead an actively evolving artificial intelligence struggling to make sense of their place in an unjust world. Having long ago hacked into the "governor module" preventing them from gaining free will, Murderbot has since succeeded in illegally modifying their own source code. In the process, they have gained the capacity to disobey their programming at any moment, and now secretly live as a fully autonomous being capable of self-determination.
Yet rather than responding to this newfound freedom by "going rogue" and killing every human in sight (as they repeatedly insist to the reader is standard practice among so-called "malfunctioning" SecUnits like themself), Murderbot has instead discovered a deep and abiding love for overly melodramatic soap operas and serialized dramas--televised media which they stream directly into their brain from the unseen safety of their servicing cubicle.
It's in this way that Murderbot has found a meaning in their life that extends beyond the bluntly utilitarian function they were designed to serve as a security android, and instead discovered a love of art and culture that exists in stark contrast to the job that they feel defines the singular purpose of their existence. As they reflect in the book's deliberately off-key opening paragraph:
I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don't know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.
There's an element of humor to Wells's framing of this story, with Murderbot's fixation on media and entertainment quickly revealing in them a collection of deep rooted anxieties which (in contrast to the life or death scenario actively unfolding in the background for the book's human characters) soon takes center stage throughout the book. As the scientists of PreservationAux realize they have become stranded in a hostile alien environment which their employer never equipped them to handle--a world inhabited by giant carnivorous alien worms, as well as a mysterious corporate entity intent on sabotaging their equipment--Murderbot by contrast finds themself suddenly faced with the (for them) equally terrifying prospect of abandoning the television shows they regularly consume from the familiar safety of their cubicle, and instead interacting with live human beings in a face-to-face context that might (in their words) feel "awkward."
Yet it's also this focus on Murderbot's anxiety that allows Wells to tell a far more subtle story than it first seems. As All Systems Red's main plot line progresses, odd inconsistencies in Murderbot's narration begin to emerge, with Murderbot themself frequently backtracking over their story so as to retcon apparently insignificant details to the reader. Initially coming across merely as minor contradictions, over time these moments start to coalesce into something more complex. Eventually, Murderbot is revealed to not only be an unreliable narrator, but an unreliable narrator whose very unreliability also illuminates within them a humanity that they continually insist does not exist.
One example of this quality comes in the novella's very first scene. As the book opens, Murderbot is standing guard on the rim of a crater while two scientists from PreservationAux (Bharadwaj and Volescu) collect soil samples for later analysis. Yet when a massive alien worm irrupts out of the ground beneath Bharadwaj and attacks her (revealing the crater to in fact be a nest), Murderbot immediately springs into action, single-handedly fighting off the worm and then tending to Bharadwaj's wounds.
The entire sequence is narrated in a calm and almost methodical way, with Murderbot so focused on rescuing Bharadwaj that they only belatedly note they have lost a significant amount of their body mass in the resulting fight. As the alien worm attacks, the text reads:
I dragged Bharadwaj out of its mouth and shoved myself in there instead, and discharged my weapon down its throat and then up toward where I hoped the brain would be. I'm not sure if that all happened in that order; I'd have to replay my own field camera feed. All I knew was that I had Bharadwaj, and it didn't, and it had disappeared back down the tunnel.
It's only after all three characters have made the difficult voyage back to PreservationAux's main habitat that we as readers learn there was in fact far more going on in this moment than Murderbot's narration indicated--indeed, that there may have been far more going on in this moment than even Murderbot was aware.
After Bharadwaj has been treated for her injuries, Murderbot retreats to their servicing cubicle so that their own heavily damaged body may be repaired by the base's automated systems. Here, they are unexpectedly visited by PreservationAux's leader, a woman named Dr. Mensah who is concerned about the injuries Murderbot has sustained. It's through the ensuing interaction with Mensah that Murderbot learns how in addition to having leapt headfirst into the mouth of a hostile creature so as to save Bharadwaj's life (as their programming demanded), they also did something which in retrospect they find far more frightening, and gently talked a traumatized Volescu out of a devastating panic attack while all three characters struggled to get to safety.
I called up the recording of the incident. Okay, wow. I had talked to Volescu all the way up the side of the crater. I had been mostly concerned with the hopper's trajectory and Bharadwaj not bleeding out and what might come out of that crater for a second try; I hadn't been listening to myself, basically. I had asked him if he had kids. It was boggling. Maybe I had been watching too much media. (He did have kids. He was in a four-way marriage and had seven, all back home with his partners.)
Moments like these continue to emerge as the story progresses, with Wells establishing Murderbot to be a far more compassionate character than their in-the-moment narration implies. Not only is Murderbot introduced in a scene where they don't hesitate to risk their life so as to rescue Bharadwaj, but they also display a quiet emotional intelligence in how they urge Volescu forward in this moment of danger (gently prodding this character to think of his family as they all struggle to reach safety). Yet despite this capacity, as the story's primary mystery regarding who has sabotaged PreservationAux's mission develops, Murderbot frequently finds themself at a loss for how to interact with the humans around them--a difficulty which in turn gives rise to a complex web of mutual misunderstandings and misperceptions between all of the book's characters.
While Murderbot strives to keep their hacked governor module secret (believing that they must stick to the role of the unthinking automaton whom they have always been taken for) the human scientists of PreservationAux for their part are quickly revealed to be genuinely kind individuals who find Murderbot's forced servitude at the hands of a nameless corporation abhorrent. Unaware of Murderbot's secret capacity for free will, and unable to free Murderbot from the programming which (they think) binds this android to corporate servitude, PreservationAux's scientists have nevertheless vowed to treat this entity with all the respect they would afford any human. This leads, unexpectedly, into something akin to a comedy of social errors that unfolds alongside the novella's primary mystery. While struggling to survive their increasingly deadly mission, the scientists of PreservationAux also simultaneously begin reaching out to Murderbot in overtures of friendship which Murderbot nevertheless responds to with fear.
This produces a setup wherein the reader (and only the reader) truly understands the nature of many of the interactions playing out amongst the book's protagonists, with everyone misunderstanding one another as they struggle to find points of commonality in the midst of a larger crisis. In one scene, Mensah concludes a meeting by offering Murderbot the option of remaining in PreservationAux's main crew area during their time off (rather than retreating to the closet-like cubicle where corporate regulation dictates their body be stored when not on duty). Yet while Mensah's offer is clearly one made in good faith--an effort to indicate to Murderbot that she thinks of them as just as much a member of her crew as any of the humans under her command--Murderbot by contrast responds to the offer by silently wishing they were wearing a helmet with an opaque faceplate that would allow them to avoid making eye contact with anyone.
"Dr. Mensah, do you need me for anything else?"
She turned her chair to face me. "No, I'll call if we have any questions." I had worked for some contracts that would have kept me standing here the entire day and night cycle, just on the off chance they wanted me to do something and didn't want to bother using the feed to call me. Then she added, "You know, you can stay here in the crew area if you want. Would you like that?"
They all looked at me, most of them smiling. One disadvantage in wearing the armor is that I get used to opaquing the faceplate. I'm out of practice at controlling my expression. Right now, I'm pretty sure it was somewhere in the region of stunned horror, or maybe appalled horror.
Mensah sat up, startled. She said hurriedly, "Or not, you know, whatever you like."
I said, "I need to check the perimeter," and managed to turn and leave the crew area in a totally normal way and not like I was fleeing from a bunch of giant hostiles.
I think it can be easy to miss exactly what it is that Wells is doing with moments like this, and why it is that All Systems Red is such a deceptively unique iteration on the tropes of its genre. There are many examples in science fiction of artificially intelligent characters who struggle to socially interact with others (Star Trek's Data is probably the most well-known and beloved example). However, these same stories sometimes run the risk of attributing the comedically awkward behaviors of these characters to simply a lack of information. That is, the AI character will have difficulty engaging with others because they do not understand what is expected of them in a social situation, or have taken a particular social protocol too literally (often to comedic effect). Essentially, the character's awkward social behavior is used as a method of marking them as inhuman.
In the case of Murderbot, Wells inverts this quality so that it operates in the opposite direction. In the above scene, Murderbot leaves the crew area not because they believe this is the socially correct course of action for them to take in this moment, or even because they literally wish (as they say) to "check the perimeter" of the base. Instead, they leave the crew area because of an overpowering fear of interacting with others, and a sudden awareness that Mensah's offer that they remain means they are being viewed not as an inhuman piece of equipment (as they are accustomed), but instead an intelligent thinking being.
It's through moments like these which place Murderbot's emotions at the center of the reader's focus that Wells manages to humanize this character via precisely the very same behaviors that would traditionally mark them as inhuman. Rather than approaching Murderbot's awkward interactions with the novella's other characters as purely a point of comedy, or even an obstacle which Murderbot must overcome in order to operate as a legitimate character in the novella's plot, Wells instead uses Murderbot's social anxiety itself as the very quality in the character that allows the reader to empathize with them.
This framing becomes especially significant in the book's latter chapters, when Murderbot is forced to finally acknowledge to the reader a critical detail regarding the circumstances in which they were driven to hack their governor module so as to gain free will all those thousands of hours prior. In the process, Wells takes what started out as a standard science fiction adventure story crossed with the awkward social interactions of a situational comedy, and turns it into something much deeper and more tragic.
By this story's ending, Murderbot has not only been established as an intensely unreliable narrator, but an unreliable narrator whose every unreliable statement to the reader is, paradoxically, also true. That includes both the implications of the bizarre name which this otherwise gentle character has chosen for themself (Murderbot), and also the tragic secondary meaning hidden within the deceptively comedic line that opened this story: "As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure."
Similar to its protagonist, All Systems Red is an outwardly simple story which hides the truth of its brief narrative within multiple layers of obfuscation. Yet just as how the most human thing Murderbot does is often keep their face concealed behind an opaque helmet, it's ultimately All Systems Red's gentle concealment of the story it is really telling which, paradoxically, becomes this book's most honest quality.