All Systems Red

By: Martha Wells

Narrated by: Kevin R. Free

All Systems Red is the tense first science fiction adventure novella in Martha Wells' series The Murderbot Diaries. For fans of Westworld, Ex Machina, Ann Leckie's Imperial Raadch series, or Iain M. Banks' Culture novels.

All Systems Red tackles questions of the ethics of sentient robotics. The main character is a deadly security droid that has bucked its restrictive programming and is balanced between contemplative self-discovery and an idle instinct to kill all humans.

In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.

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 are 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, all it really 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 their Murderbot to get to the truth.

©2017 Martha Wells (P)2017 Recorded Books

Wonderful choice

This is a fabulous, stand alone sci-fi about AI, kind off, including a mystery. The mystery was not that engaging, but the characters carried the story. Very comfortable narrator, a perfect choice for the story. The ending was a surprise. All around great listen. I hope this author has more.

My New Favorite Anti-Social Killing Machine!

All Systems Red, the first installment in Martha Wells' The Murderbot Diaries and winner of the 2018 Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Awards, is a heck of a lot of fun. This is a novella, so the premise is pretty simple - a rogue android has to help keep the humans who have contracted it for security alive during a planetary survey mission. Naturally, Wells inserts a few wrinkles along the way that point to something larger and more nefarious. A murderbot has to earn its pay, after all.

What separates All Systems Red from the pack of droid hero science fiction is the character of Murderbot itself. Murderbot has hacked the governor module that controls and dictates its behavior, making it a free agent, if not for the fact that it has to hide this tidbit of information from its human employers. Despite being fully self-aware and keenly intelligent, Murderbot is still listed as inventory in the Company that contracts it out for security services, so certain ruses must be maintained if Murderbot doesn't want to see itself reformatted and re-enslaved to its corporate masters.

Murderbot may not be human, although it does have some fleshy components, but it is most decidedly a person. Wells gives enough depth to Murderbot to make it sympathetic, relying on the android's personality and issues of human bias and notions of superiority in our historical dealings with artificial intelligences to give us a healthy degree of perspective on where exactly Murderbot is coming from.

And where Murderbot is coming from is decidedly simple - it hates humans and just wants to be left alone to watch its favorite downloaded television shows. Never before have I found an artificial intelligence to be so utterly relatable! While I can fully sympathize with Murderbot's ambitions, it's pretty damn hilarious listening to its encounters with its new human crew and their attempts to humanize a wryly grumpy killing machine, and how Murderbot responds to such showings of support and empathy. The scientific team it is charged with protecting is nicely drama free, but Wells manages to wring a good bit of emotive action out of how Murderbot and its crew respond to each other. Wells doesn't get deeply philosophical about the nature of life, intelligence, and free will, but she does raise a few poignant issues worth thinking about over the course of this short book.

Experiencing All Systems Red in audiobook format, though, leaves me slightly conflicted. It took me a while to warm to Kevin R. Free's narration, and while his reading here is serviceable I wish it were more engaging. Murderbot actually has feelings - it gets angry, its gets sarcastic, and it knows when it needs to be emotionally manipulative to draw out desired responses from the humans around it. Free's reading is dry and largely monotone; this makes for a dull listen despite Murderbot being anything but a dull character. I wish Free would have taken a livelier approach to the material, but I did eventually come around to his style - not enough to rave about his vocal showmanship, but enough that I'm still interested in pursuing this series in audio rather than switching over to print (at least for book two).

Although the narration didn't do the story justice, the character of Murderbot is most definitely one worth paying attention to and has me eager to sink straight into Artificial Condition next. I can't wait to see what further hijinks my new favorite anti-social killing machine gets up to!

5 star rating from a non-scifi person

This is GREAT! Interesting, funny, well-paced, overall completely entertaining. I think I got this as a daily deal, but in spite of the short length it's credit-worthy, In fact I happily shelled out a credit for the equally short sequel. Narration seems strange at first, but in the end I thought the voice captured the character well. Recommended highly.

Good but short

Not much meat to it especially for the price being the same as a full length novel. I only got it and the 2nd one cus they were on a BOGO sale. Its a good enough story though...

Sometimes whispers

I love the voice of this narrator but sometimes when he’s talking in the humans voice he whispers and it’s a bit confusing because it makes me think theres a reason the people are whispering in the book. Awesome story and amazing character though oh my goodness

More please

Entire series is awesome. Some of the best SCI-FI I have read in 53+ years of reading SF.

Murder or TV, Eh, TV

Short and sweet with no filler. Engaging main character and interesting story. Interested to see where the author goes with this.

Not as good as the hype

I enjoyed this and it isn't a waste of money to purchase but it didn't live up to the hype of a nebula award winning series in my opinion. Fairly basic concepts of personhood.

Love this series!

Highly entertaining, innovative ideas, but mostly I love the main character. And if I could get my teens to read or listen to books, I think they would enjoy it too.

So good, I wish it were longer

Love this story and look forward to the next ones I’m adding to my wish list. Good thing there seems to be many more.