Artificial Condition

In my review of All Systems Red, I was telling you that I've grown wary of works that get a whole lot of love from critics and go on winning genre awards. Too often, politics have become part of the selection process. But when Martha Wells' novella won the Nebula, the Alex, and the Locus Awards, in addition to the Hugo Award for best novella, it dawned upon me that it had to be something special. Still, I was loath to give it a shot at the time.

The second installment in the Murderbot Diaries, Artificial Condition, racked up both the Hugo and Locus Awards for best novella. At that point, it became clear that I would have to read them. But I waited for more than a year before purchasing a set and just about as long to finally give them a go. On the one hand, I feel a little stupid for waiting this long. But on the other hand, I don't have to wait months between each volume. Which allowed me to jump into this one the day after I finished its predecessor.

As was the case with All Systems Red, I sat down with a cup of coffee and went through this sequel in one sitting. Weighing in at 158 pages, I devoured it in no time. Not only is Artificial Condition as good as the first installment, it builds on the existing storylines and reveals some answers to the many questions raised in the opening chapter of the series.

Here's the blurb:

Artificial Condition is the follow-up to Martha Wells's Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus Award-winning, New York Times bestselling All Systems Red.

It has a dark past—one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot”. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.

Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.

What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks…

Given the novella-length format, the worldbuilding aspect is kept to a bare minimum. Once again, Wells elaborates briefly on the Company and its contracts, the SecUnits and other bots, but we learn very little about much else. If anything, I think we discover less in Artificial Condition than we did in the first volume. Which is mostly due to the fact that Murderbot seeks answers about its own past in this one. As I mentioned before, this may sound like a pretty thin plot thus far. But there seems to be more than meets the eye here. Limited in scope and vision as the first two installments of the Murderbot Diaries appear to be, there is a depth to the storylines that will hopefully be explored in their sequels. As a matter of course, how ambitious and multilayered the sequence turns out to be remains to be seen. But there's no denying that the first two volumes make for compulsive reading.

First-person perspectives can be tricky, but Martha Wells created a decidedly compelling and endearing main protagonist. Murderbot's narrative gives these two novellas their unique flavor and makes this antisocial SecUnit one of the most interesting protagonists in science fiction today. Who would have thought that this AI could be so human? Believing itself free at the end of All Systems Red, Murderbot soon discovers that he's a fugitive and that the authorities are now looking for a rogue SecUnit. Still, Murderbot wants to learn the truth about its past. Namely, whether or not it is indeed guilty of mass murder. The answer to that question lies at the site of that former contract, RaviHyral Mining Facility Q Station. With its memory partially purged, Murderbot needs to know if it hacked its governor module in order to kill all those people.

Hopping a ride on an empty ship, Murderbot believes that it will have ample time to catch up on his favorite TV shows. Alas, the AI running that vessel is several orders of magnitude more powerful than the SecUnit and sees through Murderbot's ploy. To Murderbot's consternation, the AI has no intention of turning it in. Lonely, that artificial intelligence craves companionship and won't leave the poor Murderbot alone. Christened ART, which stands for Asshole Research Transport, though extremely annoying, soon Murderbot will realize that this mighty AI can help him in a myriad ways. And thus is born one of the very best tag-teams of SFF characters in recent memory. A more unlikely duo is hard to find and here's to hoping that they'll have plenty more misadventures together.

Since no one can land on RaviHyral without official authorization or an employment voucher, Murderbot is forced to accept a security contract for a bunch of technologists. Only then will it be able to investigate the site where all those miners were killed. Unfortunately, the people he has to babysit are do-gooders who seem clueless of the fact that they are going to get themselves killed. Which will put Murderbot in the face of danger before it can seek the answers it is desperate to unveil.

Martha Wells obviously wanted All Systems Red to be an introduction meant to allow readers to get acquainted with Murderbot. Artificial Condition, though it provides a few answers and leaves the door open for so much more, is a more self-contained story. Short fiction pieces mean a more episodic format. There's no helping that. But if each novella builds on the groundwork laid by its predecessor, I have no problem with that. The silver lining is that there is never any filler. At least not up until this point. So far, each novella is as long as it needs to be.

As I said in my previous review, the novella-length format precludes any sort of pacing issues. Still, I found the rhythm to be more even in this one. Which makes Artificial Condition another page-turner. Let's hope that the sequels are just as good!

The final verdict: 8/10

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