I hate having emotions about reality

I guess I will find out, not today, but later in the year whether or not this book becomes a series for me. This is the same situation that always happens with any kind series, but here we are again. In this small novella (again, I am not so sure why this isn’t just the start of a novel that becomes published later, but novellas are big right now in genre fiction), we have a survey mission commissioned by a corporate entity on a foreign planet. The story is narrated through the consciousness of a “Murderbot” a cyborg security specialist enlisted by the corporation to guard over their interests in the mission. This consciousness has what is referred to as a hacked governor connected that is not hampering in the limitations of the programming. Also, there’s a kind of simple-minded or child-like personality embedded into the consciousness so that it finds interactions with the crew (who it neither trusts nor likes much) is a kind of awkward and annoying interaction and then it also loves consuming mass culture. But then, as you could have guessed, changes.

This most reminds me of the series of novels by Vanya Huff. Those novels, (The Valor series), are military fiction told tightly from the perspective of a low ranking but highly intelligent and competent sergeant, a cog in the machine. This too has that kind of controlled and competent narrative viewpoint. We are placed within this perspective and have gaps in our information that we have to work through on our own as reader. It’s generally pretty good, but not necessarily my most favorite kind of writing.

(Photo: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Martha%20Wells)