this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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Science Fiction

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Lemmy World Rules

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What I felt after reading "All Systems Red" by Martha Wells (literature.cafe)
submitted 1 year ago by Bebo@literature.cafe to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world
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What an enjoyable cozy scifi adventure! The story centers around a security bot with a self-hacked governor module, who refers to itself privately as "Murderbot" and likes to watch serials and movies surreptitiously in it's free time. The socially awkward bot repeatedly assures us that it definitely does not care about humans. When the team of scientists which have hired Murderbot are confronted by life threatening situations, it goes out of it's way to save their lives if only just so it is not labelled as an incompetent. Over the course of the story we observe how it's relationship with the humans in the group develops and changes. Murderbot's at times hilarious internal monologues concerning "her humans" were my favourite parts of the book. So those of you who have read the book, how did you like it? How are the rest of the books in the series?

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[–] klemptor@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think Martha Wells really tried to make SecUnit genderless, but because the books are written in the first person by a female author, SecUnit ends up sounding pretty female to me.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think this is it. Murderbot seems to talk about itself in actively gender neutral terms (it doesn't even have genitals!), and "it" is the most used pronoun, but like you said, it's a female author writing for a non-gendered character - not surprising it sometimes seems female.

[–] wendymetcalfe@mastodon.social 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@AFKBRBChocolate @klemptor I've never imagined Murderbot as female. To me, it's always seemed closer to male.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I was a couple books in before I started thinking maybe it's female, or maybe truly genderless. I even found myself going back and looking at the covers to see if there were clues. I'm still thinking actively genderless.