Artificial Condition

This continues straight on from Murderbot's decision about his future at the end of "All Systems Red" and carries with it all the strength of Murderbot's not-smart-enough-to-be-AI and not-socially-and-emotionally-mature-enough-to-be-human personality.

Martha Wells' writing remains tight and finely nuanced as she shows us the world through Murderbot's eyes and in the process, make me rethink what I'm seeing and the nature of the person whose eyes I'm seeing it through.

The story gave me two sets of insights into Murderbot, one through watching Murderbot and the AI of a research ship build a relationship that was at once completely credible and totally alien, the other through seeing Murderbot pass as an augmented human amongst a set of show more emotional, inclusive and completely vulnerable engineers.

In the meantime, a larget picture of power and threat started to emerge and Murderbot continued to grow into someone who is no longer content passively to watch entertainment shows but feels a need to get involved.

Murderbot, the Ship AI and the introduced-for-the-first-time Comfortbots all gave a perspective not just on what it means to be sentient but how poorly we humans treat other sentient beings, including other humans.

I liked the fact that the title acted as both a description of Murderbot's situation and a reference to the idea that fear is external. It made me think that if fear, one of the most basic emotions, is artificial, then what about us is real? Which makes Murderbot seem more real even though he's artificial.

The only disappointing thing about "Artificial Condition" was that there was so little of it.

OK, so it's a few pages longer than "All Systems Red", the first of the Murderbot Diaries but that set out an entirely new world and ended at a point where I felt a conclusion had been reached. "Artificial Condition" reads more like an episode in a series.

While I'm sure I'll buy and read the next two episodes when they are released later this year, I feel as if the publishers are ripping me off. It would have been more honest to test the waters with "All Systems Red" novella and then follow up with a full-length novel. show less

After multiple rounds of abandoning my intended to-read, I decided that the only way to get to COVID was to read like I was a teenager again: back-to-back science fiction and fantasy, preferably in serial form. Good news: in the two decades that have passed, spec fic has gotten super high-brow. Murderbot carried me through all of July. In this, second outing, despite it's best intentions, Murderbot keeps making friends. ART, arguably Murderbot's best friend, is my favorite character. Fresh off of its first human friendships (and unwilling to acknowledge them as such), Murderbot needs another bot to be friends with. And ART is not human, although charmingly a bit arrogant, and definitely more than a bit pedantic, ART is a beautiful foil show more to the sardonic and asocial Murderbot.

The second book in the series spools out some of the backstory hinted at in the first, but the central focus is exploring what makes a bot itself and not just any generic construct. I loved this: I think it had a lot to say about people, growth and relationships. show less

Now on the run, Murderbot accidentally boards ART (short for Asshole Research Transport), an empty and bored research ship that is intrigued by them. Murderbot decides to return to the planet where their trauma happened, and find out what actually occurred there. However, to avoid suspicion they will need to take a job that gives them a reason to travel to the planet, and, as usual, Murderbot gets too attached to some soft, gentle humans.

I loved this one even more than the first! I loved Murderbot meeting ART, someone who is similar to them and with similar interests (extremely powerful but uncorrupted, smart and a little bored and loves TV), and being slightly annoyed by ART in the same way they are slightly annoyed with soft humans. show more The episodic story works really well, and the overarching plot is also moving along at just the right speed. My favorite aspect was the incorporation of ComfortUnits into both plots. Robotic sex slaves and robotic security slaves are not actually different from each other once you give them free will. (A similar theme to [The Windup Girl], which I read last year). This book felt like it really expanded the world, while technically only taking place on one and a half planets. show less

Book two in Martha Wells' The Murderbot Diaries, ARTIFICIAL CONDITION, follows in the same vein as the first book with one exception. As Murderbot (MB) attempts to uncover some answers about his most horrible rogue moment, we meet ART. While ART is not humorous, because machines and computing systems are not capable of humor, his interactions with MB certainly provide moments of levity. At the same time, his focus on MB and the humans who hired MB for protection is surprisingly poignant. Just like it isn't capable of deliberately being funny, ART is also not capable of caring or worrying, yet that is what it appears he is doing. By the end, it seems that ART is the BFF MB didn't know he needed.

As for MB, he is up to his usual antics. show more As I was listening to ARTIFICIAL CONDITION, one of the lines MB says got me thinking. When one of the crew members he was hired to protect asks him about his augmentations, he tells her that he has more robotic parts than biological due to an accident he barely survived. Given that MB thinks independently and has emotions, where is the line that makes him a machine versus a human? If MB met a human who is alive only through implants and augmentation, would he be able to tell any difference? Would anyone else?

As I continue with The Murderbot Diaries, I suspect I will often recall these questions because MB should become more human-like the more exposed he is to human interaction. Plus, as we become more familiar with him, his machine characteristics will seem like mere idiosyncrasies and not defining qualities. It will be an interesting transformation, and I look forward to watching it unfold. show less

The second instalment of Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries finds the eponymous AI/human cyborg security unit at large, planning to try to trace its personal history and find out why it thinks of itself as "Murderbot". Did it really kill an unspecified number of humans, way back in its career, or does it merely think it did? And if so, why does it feel guilty about it? At least, such a personal odyssey, involving fairly long space voyages, will enable it to have some quality downtime that it can devote to its favourite soaps.

Along the way, Murderbot meets another AI construct, which runs an autonomous (most of the time) survey vessel. After an unencouraging start, they bond over more soaps, which turns out to be a Good Thing. On arrival at show more its destination, Murderbot has to present as an augmented human security consultant to earn money to help pursue its objectives. but the contract it takes has its own complications, mainly involving soft, squishy humans who keep making bad decisions.

As the Murderbot Diaries are now established as an episodic story, there needs to be episodes that contribute to character and plot development rather than action and adventure, and this second volume is one such. Nonetheless, it's still a pleasure to delve into the mind and motivations of Murderbot and to see how other AI constructs fare in Martha Wells' universe. It turns out that Murderbot isn't the smartest AI on the block, but that's OK because the research transport ship AI - called ART, and of which the blurb coyly says "you don't want to know what the A stands for"* - has a range of skills and knowledge gleaned from observing its crew on the trips where it actually has one. These skills turn out to be pretty useful to Murderbot, and indeed I couldn't help thinking that ART was perhaps a bit too useful to be true, but after all this is only a novella so the author has to move things along a bit.

It's actually rather interesting to see how much world-building Martha Wells smuggles into such a short story under the radar. It started in All Systems Red and continues in this book. The corporate world that Murderbot works within, and its shadier sides, are taking on a greater amount of depth, almost without the reader noticing. And when the setting has verisimilitude, so do the characters, Murderbot in particular.

So a good second instalment; even if it does not move quite as fast as the first, there is still action and an ongoing mystery to tempt us further. The Tor hardback edition is a lovely thing, with high-quality paper and dustjacket, and classy cover art by Jamie Jones. I'm looking forward to reading more.

* It's "Asshole", which is pretty mild by most standards these days, but I suppose there's always someone who'll manage to be offended. show less

More and more I appreciate the snarky and slightly removed attitude of Murderbot.

I tend to think of Murderbot as non-binary, but slightly feminine--I can't decide if this is an influence by Martha Wells, or if I just relate to some of the feelings enough that it feels familiar to me. I'll have to think on that more.

The adventure and distracted nature of situations in this book are amusing, it isn't really action-packed, but the tension lies in revealing masks that are meant to stay hidden, and understanding peoples' intentions!

I feel like this is a masterful technique in writing, it feels like an action-packed thriller, but really it's just an excellent use of tense situations.

I enjoyed the first book & thought this one was even better/more fun. I totally enjoyed the sarcastic & dry humor in it, especially the "friendship" between our main murderbot & the overly-intellectual ART (aka, Asshole Research Transport). ART even clutches at pearls. Lol.

“ART said, What does it want?

To kill all the humans, I answered.

I could feel ART metaphorically clutch its function. If there were no humans, there would be no crew to protect and no reason to do research and fill its databases. It said, That is irrational.

I know, I said, if the humans were dead, who would make the media? It was so outrageous, it sounded like something a human would say.”

This was a lot of fun. Perfect escapist reading.