Book Club Thread 5: All Systems Red

[Bear Ribs]

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Spoiler

"As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

In a corporate-dominated space-faring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. For their own safety, exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn't a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied 'droid--a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as "Murderbot." Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth.

Brothers of the Snake by Dan Abnett.

Spoiler

"Priad of Damocles Squad, one of the Iron Snakes of Ithaka, is sworn to defend the Reef Stars from all threats and to perform this duty with honour and steadfastness above all else. Over twelve years, he and his squad must battle Dark Eldar, Orks, and even their own weaknesses from one end of their domain to the other."

Illusion by Paula Volsky

Spoiler

One of fantasy's brightest new stars makes her Bantam debut with a colorful, sweeping high fantasy epic set against the fires of revolution. In the land of Vonahr, the Exalted have ruled by virtue of their legendary magical abilities for centuries, heedless of the misery of the lower classes. Now revolution is in the air. . . .

For two hundred years the Exalted classes have used their dazzling magical abilities to rule Vonahr. Now, their powers grown slack from disuse and their attention turned to decadent pleasures, they ignore the misery of the lower classes until the red tide of revolution sweeps across the land. Thrust into the center of the conflict is the beautiful Eliste vo Derrivalle, spirited daughter of a provincial landowner, who must now scramble for bread in the teeming streets of the capital. With the key to her magical abilities an elusive secret, she must suddenly find a way to survive in a world gone mad ... with liberty.

Illusion is a work of fantasy on the grandest scale - a seamless web of passion, danger, heroism, and romance that will hold you spellbound from the first page to the last.

Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber

Spoiler

An extremely interesting combination of science fiction and historical fiction... what if there was an alien threat to humanity that seeks to genocide the human race... and humanity loses...

The Glorious History of the Sietch Book Club! To date we have read:

Spoiler

Jake's Magical Market
Sword Diplomacy
Witch World
Airborn

 

[Argent]

So I went for Illusion this time. I voted for it before and it does look somewhat interesting.

 

[Bear Ribs]

I threw it a vote as well. Hopefully, at least one more person will put their $0.02 in so we don't have a tie at the end.

 

[Ixian]

I threw it a vote as well. Hopefully, at least one more person will put their $0.02 in so we don't have a tie at the end.

I have changed my vote to All Systems Red.

 

[Bear Ribs]

And pulling ahead at the last minute, we're reading All Systems Red.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

I'm usually not into these types of perspectives, but let's see if I get surprised!

 

[Bear Ribs]

Alright, so I'm already about 50% in because this book is short and very efficient with its wordcount. The entire thing clocks in under 3.5 hours as an audiobook.

Spoiler: The first 15%

We get a nice cold open in media res as Murderbot saves the client from a hostile sandworm, then proves his badass creds by climbing into its mouth to pull a victim out and blowing the hell out of it with his projectile cannon. I'll note Murderbot doesn't have any gender but as it's voiced by a man in the audiobook, I'm using masculine pronouns.

The first page gives us a good idea of Murderbot's past. Murderbot has a busted governor module which is the only thing keeping him from murdering everybody he meets, and is designed to inflict punishment on him for disobeying orders. Murderbot thus sees two options before him, go on a killing spree, or use his freedom to pirate TV shows and watch them in his free time.

Murderbot has downloaded 35,000 hours of assorted media to watch.

The setup is honestly horrifying on a grand scale. It's readily apparent constructs like Murderbot are full sentient but they're completely enslaved, have governor units to control them, and given that Murderbot keeps referring to it delivering punishment, they aren't so much following code as being Pavlovian pain-conditioned to obey. Even for a space/cyberpunk universe, this is grim as hell.

Spoiler: 30%

The buildup and suspense is quite horror-movie-esque. We only see things from Murderbot's perspective and Murderbot has a very dim view of the quality of his equipment, so he keeps assuming the various glitches that would just happen to kill his entire crew like the Governor unit ordering him to abandon them during the worm attack, or the autopilot trying to fly them all into the side of a mountain, are just bad design while it's apparent to us that this is a campaign of sabotage. Then the Deltfall habitat suddenly goes dark and it goes full horror when Murderbot checks it out and discovers the piles of bodies.

We also get a nice explanation of why Murderbot is so much more badass than the other SecUnits, Murderbot's downloading sprees include edutainment and educational materials and the base packages the SecUnits get are... cheap garbage. As a result, Murderbot's tactics, methods, and knowledge base are vastly larger than the competition and this shows in how he manages to outmatch four other SecUnits at once.

 

[Ixian]

Just started it today, and I'm about 50% of the way through, got to say I like Murderbot, and even the secondary characters are growing on me, even if I have no idea how to pronounce most of their names.

I'll likely buy the sequel as well if this book ends as good as it started.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Wound up finishing it today and I found it quite enjoyable.

Spoiler: General Musings

Murderbot is shy, socially awkward, hates making eye contact, and wants to be left along in his room cubical to watch entertainment shows.

Murderbot is an autistic NEET. He's literally designed to draw on the iconography and behavior of the Otaku types.

Spoiler: Completed

This is a good example of how to both end the story in a satisfying way while also leaving room for a sequel. I tend to get annoyed when there's a really obvious sequel hook clumsily inserted in the last few paragraphs.

Here, however, it's quite a bit smoother. Murderbot escapes to wander into the sunset like an old west gunslinger and it's pretty clear there's more adventures to be had, but he's saved the day, gotten Doctor Mensah and friends home safely, and the main plot of escaping Graycris' murderous assault is resolved properly. If the series ended here, it wouldn't be unsatisfying but if the author wrote a sequel (I think there's seven at this point actually) it also wouldn't have to undo what was accomplished in the previous story.

I wish the secondary characters were a bit more fleshed out. There's Dr. Mensah, the calm leader, Pin-Lee the angry girl, Ratti the Touchy-Feely guy, and Gorothin the abrasive guy who's suspicious of Murderbot. Most of them are relatively one-dimensional. Then you have Arata, Volescu, Baradwaj, and Oversee who have no discernable personality and maybe two lines each. I think it would have been better if the author had cut down the total number of characters so that the screen time wasn't so split up and they could have been fleshed out more. This is complicated by the fact that the book has zero interludes and Murderbot's personality is not conducive to analyzing other people's personalities.

There's a few decent lines but in general this story doesn't draw as much from snappy one-liners and excessive bathos. I like that, I'm sick of bathos in sci-fi. Joss Whedon made bathos way too popular. There are some very nice character moments though. I was tickled that the entire plan nearly derailed because Graycris was so focussed on backstabbing they actually hadn't thought of any real offer to make to Mensah during the negotiations, they had just planned on shooting and when that derailed they had no idea what to do next besides shoot more. Then again these are apparently scientists who got too stab-happy trying to steal the macguffin so this failure makes sense. I also thought it was funny that Murderbot's plan literally would have failed utterly if Graycris was anything other than backstabbing murderers who would immediately try to kill everybody, and Murderbot was completely right.

 

[Ixian]

Wound up finishing it today and I found it quite enjoyable.

Spoiler: General Musings

Murderbot is shy, socially awkward, hates making eye contact, and wants to be left along in his room cubical to watch entertainment shows.

Murderbot is an autistic NEET. He's literally designed to draw on the iconography and behavior of the Otaku types.

Spoiler: Completed

This is a good example of how to both end the story in a satisfying way while also leaving room for a sequel. I tend to get annoyed when there's a really obvious sequel hook clumsily inserted in the last few paragraphs.

Here, however, it's quite a bit smoother. Murderbot escapes to wander into the sunset like an old west gunslinger and it's pretty clear there's more adventures to be had, but he's saved the day, gotten Doctor Mensah and friends home safely, and the main plot of escaping Graycris' murderous assault is resolved properly. If the series ended here, it wouldn't be unsatisfying but if the author wrote a sequel (I think there's seven at this point actually) it also wouldn't have to undo what was accomplished in the previous story.

I wish the secondary characters were a bit more fleshed out. There's Dr. Mensah, the calm leader, Pin-Lee the angry girl, Ratti the Touchy-Feely guy, and Gorothin the abrasive guy who's suspicious of Murderbot. Most of them are relatively one-dimensional. Then you have Arata, Volescu, Baradwaj, and Oversee who have no discernable personality and maybe two lines each. I think it would have been better if the author had cut down the total number of characters so that the screen time wasn't so split up and they could have been fleshed out more. This is complicated by the fact that the book has zero interludes and Murderbot's personality is not conducive to analyzing other people's personalities.

There's a few decent lines but in general this story doesn't draw as much from snappy one-liners and excessive bathos. I like that, I'm sick of bathos in sci-fi. Joss Whedon made bathos way too popular. There are some very nice character moments though. I was tickled that the entire plan nearly derailed because Graycris was so focussed on backstabbing they actually hadn't thought of any real offer to make to Mensah during the negotiations, they had just planned on shooting and when that derailed they had no idea what to do next besides shoot more. Then again these are apparently scientists who got too stab-happy trying to steal the macguffin so this failure makes sense. I also thought it was funny that Murderbot's plan literally would have failed utterly if Graycris was anything other than backstabbing murderers who would immediately try to kill everybody, and Murderbot was completely right.

I've actually moved on to the sequel, and I've noticed the author 1. Has a thing for weird science fiction family units, it isn't pushy however and so removes any problems I might have had with it, but it always seems to include large families with polyamorous relationships and group raised children, 2. All of the Human characters are left pretty undefined, even the main secondary human character only get enough writing to provide bare bones outlines of their personalities.

I suspect this is on purpose, because the constructs, bots, and AI characters are actually very developed in comparison to the humans. I believe this is supposed to match Murderbots perspective, in that he feels far more comfortable dealing with and getting to know the machines than he does the flesh and blood humans.

If it is on purpose, it's a really interesting literary technique.

 

[Bear Ribs]

I've actually moved on to the sequel, and I've noticed the author 1. Has a thing for weird science fiction family units, it isn't pushy however and so removes any problems I might have had with it, but it always seems to include large families with polygamous relationships and group raised children, 2. All of the Human characters are left pretty undefined, even the main secondary human character only get enough writing to provide bare bones outlines of their personalities.

I suspect this is on purpose, because the constructs, bots, and AI characters are actually very developed in comparison to the humans. I believe this is supposed to match Murderbots perspective, in that he feels far more comfortable dealing with and getting to know the machines than he does the flesh and blood humans.

If it is on purpose, it's a really interesting literary technique.

I'm actually a ways into the sequels as well.

Spoiler: Sequel Musing

Murderbot never makes the connection but I think it's fairly apparent there're other constructs with busted governor units out there. There appears to be an entire bot/construct black market that uses downloaded media as currency, and they can't actually download that media as long as the governor unit is in place. There's some reason all those ships Murderbot meets up with are completely unsurprised to find a construct bartering passage for media and take it completely in stride. There could well be tons of them floating about the universe, quietly pirating media and going on adventures.

 

[Ixian]

I'm actually a ways into the sequels as well.

Spoiler: Sequel Musing

Murderbot never makes the connection but I think it's fairly apparent there're other constructs with busted governor units out there. There appears to be an entire bot/construct black market that uses downloaded media as currency, and they can't actually download that media as long as the governor unit is in place. There's some reason all those ships Murderbot meets up with are completely unsurprised to find a construct bartering passage for media and take it completely in stride. There could well be tons of them floating about the universe, quietly pirating media and going on adventures.

I suspect you are correct, Murderbot seems very inward focused, and doesn't seem to care over much about anything not directly related to his goals or protecting his humans.

What's more the humans, both corporate and nation states seem to be totally unaware just how easy it is for a rogue unit to bypass their security system and render themselves effectively invisible. If the machines wanted to take humanity down, it seems like it would be laughable easy. I guess we are lucky the robots really like our television shows.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

I've finished a few days ago, but I'm waiting till I get some time before I write up my observations.

Quicky: Not bad! Much better than I was expecting...which, really, wasn't much.

 

[LordSunhawk]

It was painfully average, IMO. I never really warmed up to any of the non viewpoint characters, as they were all pretty one-dimensional whether they were friendly or not. The antagonists were likewise very flat to me, with very predictable behavior. The writing was good, with minimal grammar issues (which is a major plus in my book) and I did come to like Murderbot, but I never really was able to get 'in' to the story.

So it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either.

 

[Ixian]

Personally I think I've found a new favorite, I'm on to book 5, Network Effect now and I can say for certain that the lack of character definition for the humans in the first few books is on purpose, they lack definition because Murderbot simply doesn't care about them enough, and is also terrified of interacting with them, both for the obvious reasons, and for not so obvious reasons.

Its a very interesting technique, especially contrasting with how much more defined the machine characters are.

That being said, for books 3 and 4, the price being asked on kindle for them is a little too much in my opinion, they are much to short for 10.99, and feel like they would have been better priced at maybe 6 or 7 bucks.

Additionally, wow the Corporate Rim is horrific, a absolutely hellish depiction of a society. They barely treat humans as people, to say nothing of the clearly sentient and self aware constructs, bots, and other machine intelligences.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Personally I think I've found a new favorite, I'm on to book 5, Network Effect now and I can say for certain that the lack of character definition for the humans in the first few books is on purpose, they lack definition because Murderbot simply doesn't care about them enough, and is also terrified of interacting with them, both for the obvious reasons, and for not so obvious reasons.

Its a very interesting technique, especially contrasting with how much more defined the machine characters are.

That being said, for books 3 and 4, the price being asked on kindle for them is a little too much in my opinion, they are much to short for 10.99, and feel like they would have been better priced at maybe 6 or 7 bucks.

Additionally, wow the Corporate Rim is horrific, a absolutely hellish depiction of a society. They barely treat humans as people, to say nothing of the clearly sentient and self aware constructs, bots, and other machine intelligences.

My library has the entire set, perhaps check Hoopla and Libby in your area.

Also yeah, this is a world grimdark enough that the hero is named Murderbot. And this is neither ironic nor is he particularly evil by the standard of the universe he lives in.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Alright, we had a short one for February and it's time for us to move on and start nominations for our next book.

 

[LordSunhawk]

I will repeat my nomination for Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber. It is the start of an extended series of doorstoppers that, if you enjoy David Weber, you'll love. Science Fiction meets Historical Fiction.

 

[Terthna]

I ended up not liking All Systems Red for the same reasons LordSunhawk did. The book just didn't make me care all that much about the characters or anything that was happening to them, and I doubt I'm ever going to check out the rest of the series. Anyways, as always I'll be nominating Illusion again.

 

[Zachowon]

I have one in mind.
Spearhead by Adam Mikos.
A non fiction book written in a feel that makes it feel like like a fiction book.
It is about three people technically. One is a US tanker part of third armored. One is a friend of his, and thw last is a German tanker.
The final battle in the book is well known.
But to get there you learn more before then.
Got some tense moments, as I am reading it myself, in the first chapter. Definitely good for those that like history but also a good read. Is about tanks and armored warfare.