 |
| (Cover Artist: Jamie Jones) |
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 half-human gender-neutral android who insists on privately calling themself "Murderbot"), All Systems Red follows PreservationAux--an interplanetary expedition tasked 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 do the work of surveying the planet, Murderbot must spend hours on end standing quietly in a corner keeping watch for danger.
Yet after 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 action-adventure 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 social anxiety experienced by her disarmingly vulnerable narrator.
Unbeknownst to the scientists of PreservationAux, Murderbot is not in fact a normal SecUnit incapable of disobeying an order. 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 their dry first-person narration repeatedly insists 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 often 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 discovered a love of popular culture that exists in stark contrast to the violent job as a security android which they believe defines their existence. As Murderbot reflects to the reader 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 undeniable element of humor to Wells's framing of this story, with it being Murderbot's fixation on media and entertainment that quickly reveals in them a collection of personal anxieties which (in contrast to the life-or-death scenarios actively unfolding in the background for the book's human characters) soon takes center stage throughout the book.
As the scientists of PreservationAux reach the terrifying realization that 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 in secret, and instead interacting with live human beings in a face-to-face context that might (in their words) feel "awkward."
Yet it's 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 progresses, inconsistencies in Murderbot's narration begin to emerge, with this character ultimately revealed to not only be an unreliable narrator, but an unreliable narrator whose very unreliability continually illuminates within them a humanity that they repeatedly insist does not exist.
One example of this quality comes in the novella's very first scene. As the story begins, 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, 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 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 boarded a short range shuttle and made the difficult voyage back to PreservationAux's main habitat that we as readers learn there was far more going on in this moment than Murderbot 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 habitat'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 dry in-the-moment narration lets on. 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 so as to distract him from the danger they are both facing).
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 best to interact with the humans around them. This in turn gives rise to a web of mutual misunderstandings and misperceptions between all of the book's characters. While Murderbot strives to keep their hacked governor module secret from the scientists of PreservationAux (believing that they must stick to the role of the unthinking automaton whom they have always been taken for) these same scientists are for their part quickly revealed to be genuinely kind individuals who find Murderbot's forced servitude at the hands of an interstellar 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 nevertheless are quickly indicated to have vowed to treat this entity with all the respect they would afford a fellow 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 responds to with fear. 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 with horror.
"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 in 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 with social interaction (Star Trek's Data is perhaps the most famous and beloved example), and yet these same stories also often 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 behavior is used as a method of marking them as inhuman, with their difficulty in forming social connections with others presented as an obstacle which they must overcome so as to gain full consciousness.
In the case of Murderbot, Wells inverts this trope 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 claim) to "check the perimeter" of the base. Instead, they leave the crew area because of an overpowering social anxiety, and a sudden awareness that Mensah's offer means they are being viewed not as an inhuman piece of equipment, 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 interactions with the novella's other protagonists as purely a point of comedy, or even an obstacle which Murderbot must overcome in order to operate as a legitimate character in the book'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 All System's Red's latter chapters, wherein Murderbot is finally forced to acknowledge to the reader a critical detail regarding the circumstances in which they were originally driven to hack their governor module. 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. By this story's ending, Murderbot has not only been established as an 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, as well as the tragic secondary meaning hidden within the seemingly 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 keep their face concealed behind an opaque helmet, it's ultimately Wells's gentle concealment of the story All Systems Red is really telling which, paradoxically, becomes this book's most honest quality.