All Systems Red by Martha Wells



Blurb:

A murderous android discovers itself in All Systems Red, a tense science fiction adventure by Martha Wells that interrogates the roots of consciousness through Artificial Intelligence.

“As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure.”

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.

This is the May read for bookclub_dw, so I'll save most of my comments for there. But I will say that this was a completely fun read and now I want to watch the Murderbot Diaries, and also the other books in the series.

With this I have 4 bingo squares to go; I'm simultaneously reading three books that will satisfy three of those squares. Trying to decide what to do with the 4th, which is a book older than I am. I thought about finally trying to get through all of Wuthering Heights, something I've tried multiple times over the course of my life and never managed. Maybe with the incentive of finishing that last square, I'll finish it this time.