First thing since November that's had me doing a little happy dance!!!
posted by MonkeyToes at 11:14 AM on April 9, 2025 [7 favorites]

I was a Martha Wells fan before it was cool and am delighted to see her break out of the midlist doldrums into what is hopefully a ton of cash and has already been a lot of critical and audience love. Murderbot is great but go read her other stuff too! (This concludes your Martha Wells fan girl moment for the day. I also think the show looks fun.)
posted by PussKillian at 11:14 AM on April 9, 2025 [28 favorites]

murderbot
murderbot
MURDERBOT


i am excite
posted by zenon at 11:22 AM on April 9, 2025 [7 favorites]

They better have extensive and I do mean *extensive* segments of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon included.
posted by Molesome at 11:25 AM on April 9, 2025 [70 favorites]

Hooray!
posted by amarynth at 11:25 AM on April 9, 2025

They better have extensive and I do mean *extensive* segments of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon included.

I actually watched the trailer at work to see if there are clips in the trailer and there is a really brief one. :)

I probably will have to get Apple TV now or at least engage a trial period.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:27 AM on April 9, 2025 [1 favorite]

No. no no no no NO!!!

That is not my Murderbot. I will not be watching thankyouver'much.
posted by BlueHorse at 11:27 AM on April 9, 2025 [9 favorites]

I've never read the Murderbot series but this does look delightful. I love irritated and deadpan robots!
posted by Kitteh at 11:27 AM on April 9, 2025 [2 favorites]

I think for many people who love these books, they love them because Murderbot feels like a self-insert character to some extent. I never pictured Murderbot as looking anything other than "exactly like me, with my exact voice and mannerisms" lol so it's just super weird to see them on screen looking like THAT.

If I ran the world, Elliott Page would have been cast as Murderbot and then I definitely would have watched it. As it stands...IDK.
posted by potrzebie at 11:31 AM on April 9, 2025 [38 favorites]

It's quite different from how I would've imagined it, but based on this short snippet it seems to capture the spirit of the series well. Feeling optimistic about this one.
posted by tclark at 11:33 AM on April 9, 2025 [3 favorites]

They better have extensive and I do mean *extensive* segments of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon included.

They got John Cho! There are roles where you get a John Cho-level star for a cameo, but those are not roles where you drop the cameo in the trailer.

(I'm digging this. I'm seeing some people worried that this seems more comedic overall than the source material, but that internally comedic / externally dramatic tone would be really hard to translate to film. It feels a bit like they're aiming for "slightly more grounded Galaxy Quest" which I think is perfect.)
posted by thecaddy at 11:33 AM on April 9, 2025 [13 favorites]

Hmmm. It looks like they're being pretty faithful to All Systems Red, so that's promising.

In any case, I plan to finish reading all of the books before giving this a try.

Also, I'm glad Martha Wells is getting TV money.
posted by suetanvil at 11:38 AM on April 9, 2025 [9 favorites]

The trailer didn't sell me on the series capturing what I liked about the books. OTOH I can easily imagine enough action and humor for me to enjoy it regardless.

They better have extensive and I do mean *extensive* segments of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon included.

Oh, yes, that brief clip in the trailer was the bit that got me most excited!

I'm seeing some people worried that this seems more comedic overall than the source material

I found the source material so funny I'm just floored by this complaint. Your point on the internal/external contrast is pretty good.
posted by mark k at 11:40 AM on April 9, 2025 [6 favorites]

This might make me actually pop for Atv+.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:42 AM on April 9, 2025

"It calls itself 'Murderbot.'" Um, no. IIRC, only one human being ever learns what it calls itself. (ART undoubtedly knows, but ART is not even remotely human.) This may seem like a minor point, but I worry that Murderbot will be treated as a joke character, when it's not.
posted by SPrintF at 11:46 AM on April 9, 2025 [5 favorites]

I found the source books funny in a mix of what I had imagined as deadpan humor and the overly-earnest-its-almost-slapstick kind. The voice is throwing me a lot, I had always imagined a flat affect.
posted by Slackermagee at 11:46 AM on April 9, 2025 [8 favorites]

Like, it was funny but it was funny in spite of the corpo horror show.
posted by Slackermagee at 11:46 AM on April 9, 2025 [1 favorite]

I sure didn't picture Murderbot as a cis white man. Disappointing. But I am also glad Martha Wells is getting TV money!
posted by TimidFooting at 11:48 AM on April 9, 2025 [15 favorites]

"It calls itself 'Murderbot.'" Um, no. IIRC, only one human being ever learns what it calls itself.

What? This is the exact scene from All Systems Red where Gurathin finds out it calls itself Murderbot, and tells the whole team. It even has the same line in response, "that was private".
posted by allegedly at 11:52 AM on April 9, 2025 [45 favorites]

They better have extensive and I do mean *extensive* segments of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon included.

Judging by this article, The Murderbot Series is Kinda Two Shows in One, I think it will.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:55 AM on April 9, 2025 [2 favorites]

I completely forgot about this! Excited.

I always pictured murderbot as androgynous, but imagined a relatively feminine size compared to larger masculine combat secunits. Skarsgard wasn't it at all, but I'll see how it goes? The other casting for the all systems red survey team looks good.

Also they included sanctuary moon! And it looks awesome! Several direct quotes too, so hopefully they manage to keep the spirit of the book. Darkly comic murderbot that is basically depressed and just wants to be left alone (but secretly grudgingly cares), while the Company is pure profit driven banal evil is exactly the tone I got from the books, so fingers crossed.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 11:56 AM on April 9, 2025 [7 favorites]

Any excuse to reread the series is a good excuse. The trailer was pretty. I agree that Elliot Page probably matches my inner vision of SecUnit better than Skarsgrd, but i'm willing to see how it plays out.
posted by OHenryPacey at 11:57 AM on April 9, 2025 [3 favorites]

Still pouring one out for Vico Ortiz (though Elliot Page is another fantastic choice).

But the rest of the cast looks great. I saw a still and was like "oh! that's Ratthi!" and it totally was.
posted by humbug at 12:03 PM on April 9, 2025 [5 favorites]

Oh, also: kobo.com them as DRM-free epub files, so you can get them from there and read them on your preferred device.

(Note: DRM-free is not the usual thing on that store but the DRM type is listed at the bottom of store page, so double-check that before purchasing if DRM-free is important to you.)
posted by suetanvil at 12:09 PM on April 9, 2025 [2 favorites]

Judging by this article, The Murderbot Series is Kinda Two Shows in One, I think it will.

This may be acceptable to me.

Skarsgård is not my Murderbot, but I'm willing to give him a fair shake. They're Gwendoline Christie in my head.
posted by Molesome at 12:10 PM on April 9, 2025 [12 favorites]

ok, i'm in. not 100%. skarsgaard is not how murderbot should LOOK but as an actor he has a vocal delivery that is giving me chills.

i am however sad that it's got APPLE TEEVEE "look at my 13 stops of HDR baby" colour timing all over it. fuck me can we get something crisp, contrasty and clean that was shot on film, or at least looks like it was? i'm so sick of seeing every bit of detail in highlights and shadows, there's no story there, shoot to tell a story, not paint a fucking landscape

okay that rant may be 4 years coming and i'll still watch the show but COME ON
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:11 PM on April 9, 2025 [7 favorites]

I too would have preferred someone younger, less white, less male, to play Murderbot but I'm excited anyway because the books are awesome and could lend really well to a visual storytelling. I'm delighted for Martha Wells to hit the big time and I'm going to approach this with "enjoy it, don't look for a perfect adaptation or have overly strict expectations" vibe.

Murderbot!
posted by supermedusa at 12:12 PM on April 9, 2025 [7 favorites]

I think the song choice was going for a "Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack" kind of cool.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:13 PM on April 9, 2025 [3 favorites]

So do you start with the first book in the series or with a later one? I remember starting the first one and not getting far, but I may have been distracted by life and I should probably try again.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:14 PM on April 9, 2025 [1 favorite]

also i want to watch sanctuary moon as seen in murderbot

we are k-drama addicts and we MUST HAVE it
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:14 PM on April 9, 2025 [2 favorites]

Murderbot was always Janeane Garofalo in my head.
posted by Captaintripps at 12:15 PM on April 9, 2025 [24 favorites]

Man, I am going to love this. I wish I could recommend it to me so that I could soak up the reflected awesomeness.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:16 PM on April 9, 2025 [3 favorites]

Ooh, I didn’t picture Gwendoline Christie or Janeane Garofalo) but either would have been great! But I don’t have enough of a mental preconception of Murderbot to have a big preference, so it won’t wreck anything for me to have Alexander Skarsgard in the role either. I liked the trailer and I’m looking forward to seeing this! Damn Apple+, I keep thinking I’m going to cancel my subscription to cut down on streaming platforms but you keep putting out really good stuff.

And add me to the list of people who are eagerly awaiting any and all clips of Sanctuary Moon.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:17 PM on April 9, 2025 [1 favorite]

Countess Elena: Yes, start with the first one. The chronology gets weird later in the series, but that's quite a BIT later.
posted by humbug at 12:24 PM on April 9, 2025 [6 favorites]

Oh, also: kobo.com them as DRM-free epub files, so you can get them from there and read them on your preferred device.

True, and credit goes to the publisher, Tor, whose ebooks are all DRM-free.
posted by trig at 12:29 PM on April 9, 2025 [8 favorites]

Was also not expecting Murdergård but am willing to give it a try. I do wonder if the TV version will overtly interfere with the mental images I have from All Systems Red
posted by chavenet at 12:35 PM on April 9, 2025 [3 favorites]

I don't think there's any actor who'd match people's perception of MB. Wells has been fairly circumspect in terms of concrete MB details.

I did picture something more neutral in my mind, but I'm definitely stoked to see this world in motion.
posted by drewbage1847 at 12:36 PM on April 9, 2025 [4 favorites]

Many of the reasons I'm not interested in this series are detailed in this post: As a heartless killing machine I was a terrible failure which has an interesting gender discussion on Murderbot.

I was mildly, and rightfully, ripped by cooker girl in that post because when I commented, first correctly using the gender neutral pronoun, then I unconsciously switched to the male. Grrr, old habits. I reread the series with that comment in mind. It solidified the view of my Murderbot as gender neutral, but still androgynous human--because cloned of human tissue--with a wry internal dialogue, as opposed to a robotic indifference and no sense of humor. Not human, but as Mensa says "this is a person, an angry person...."

Right off the bat, my first objection is that a cis white obviously beefcake male plays this. According to Wikipedia, he was named the Sexiest Man in Sweden five times. (I can hear Murderbot laughing.) A flat affect done by someone like Page, Ortiz, Christie or Garofalo would have appealed to me more. Even more so, a unknown actor/actress without the ghosts of previous characters hanging on would be better.

I'll stick with the books, I guess. I am glad Well's is getting bucks from the TV production, and I hope it's big bucks! She deserves it. I also hope that she's entirely happy with who is playing what and their presentations in the show. I just hope the TV doesn't affect how she portrays her new characters in future books, and that the development of original characters stays true to the first books.
posted by BlueHorse at 12:39 PM on April 9, 2025 [6 favorites]

Would Keanu Reeves benefit from some of MB's human-mimic code?
posted by skippyhacker at 12:39 PM on April 9, 2025

I'm still not sold on Skarsgård but I'll probably re-up my ATV in June after a few episodes have landed and watch a bit, if only for Sanctuary Moon. I always pictured Murderbot as a really genericized ken-doll -- like broad because it's in security and has to do combat, but like, totally smooth and with an extra bland, androgynous face. Like the most boring forgettable human ever. They're clearly trying to downplay Skarsgård's looks here but he still looks like a Hollywood actor.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 12:41 PM on April 9, 2025 [3 favorites]

I appear to be the grump in the thread, but I do hope everybody who is excited about this has an absolute ripping good time with it. I hope the Murderbot series skyrockets, and the whole world figures out about Corporation Rim. Perhaps it will succeed well enough that Sanctuary Moon is a spin-off! I have no preconceptions of that, and it could be a hoot!
posted by BlueHorse at 12:50 PM on April 9, 2025 [5 favorites]

I see what people are saying about the casting, but I'm also wondering how white cis men who have wished they were Skarsgård since seeing him in something like Generation Kill or True Blood are going to react to Murderbot having gender-neutral pronouns and watching soap operas in a show called "Murderbot" - dudebros are going to spit teeth.
posted by Molesome at 12:54 PM on April 9, 2025 [21 favorites]

I was highly skeptical of this, but the trailer sold me.

I was leery of Skarsgård, but his delivery won me over as did the casting of the rest of the crew from All Systems Red.

In my head I had always thought of Murderbot as being somewhat male presenting because of the general patriarchal, capitalist, shittiness of the Corporate Rim. Skarsgård being as handsome as, well, Skarsgård is a bit off, but if that is the biggest problem with the adaptation, then we are in good shape.
posted by Dalekdad at 12:59 PM on April 9, 2025

I see what people are saying about the casting, but I'm also wondering how white cis men who have wished they were Skarsgård since seeing him in something like Generation Kill or True Blood are going to react to Murderbot having gender-neutral pronouns and watching soap operas in a show called "Murderbot" - dudebros are going to spit teeth.
posted by Molesome at 12:54 PM on April 9

It would be a bit like casting him as one of the subordinate characters in Ancillary Justice and having him use 'she/her' pronouns as part of the Raadch (apologies if I am getting too nerdy).
posted by Dalekdad at 1:02 PM on April 9, 2025 [12 favorites]

I'll go along with the consensus: it doesn't look terrible, but I'd have preferred a more androgynous look for the lead.

A series instead of a feature film is good. The plots of the novellas tend to be cyclical and I think this fits a running series better. (AppleTV is my least favourite streaming host, but that's me.)
posted by ovvl at 1:07 PM on April 9, 2025 [1 favorite]

I really enjoyed Kevin R Free’s performances as murderbot and the rest of the cast in the audiobooks, so his voices are my default, but I will give this a chance.
posted by nickggully at 1:17 PM on April 9, 2025 [4 favorites]

BlueHorse: "I was mildly, and rightfully, ripped by cooker girl"

Oh no no no, I'm so sorry if you thought I (even mildly!) ripped you for that! It was a gentle correction! All good!

I share your concerns with the casting, btw, but I'm absolutely going to watch this. How about if I think Skarsgård does Murderbot well, I'll tell you and you can decide to watch it?
posted by cooker girl at 1:22 PM on April 9, 2025 [2 favorites]

Casting aside, the whole tone was different than what I felt while reading. I mean, it's a different thing, it's not a book, so it can have a different tone, I'll be curious to watch, and see what an actual episode makes me feel versus a hype-it-trailer.
posted by stevil at 1:34 PM on April 9, 2025 [1 favorite]

I'm sort of guessing this will be a swing and a miss in terms of the books, but a very forgivable one, and that it might be fun in its own right. Kind of like the hobbit movies. Heh. Just kidding, hopefully nothing like the hobbit movies.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 1:35 PM on April 9, 2025 [3 favorites]

I don't think there's any actor who'd match people's perception of MB.

Because the books are all written from the first person, I'm realizing I never really had much of an image of Murderbot.
posted by nickmark at 1:36 PM on April 9, 2025 [8 favorites]

I don’t know if Martha Wells had anything to do with the development of the adaptation but I’m hoping that’s the case. If she did then I’m sure that the casting is as good as it needs to be, although you can count me in the large group of people who feel that a white cis male is not who I expected.

I’m looking forward to it! My wife doesn’t care for action or sci-fi (nothing, no Star Trek, no Andor, nothing!) so any advice on how I can convince her to watch this is welcome!
posted by ashbury at 1:39 PM on April 9, 2025

I'm realizing I never really had much of an image of Murderbot

We are all Murderbot.

Calling dibs on Fanfare. Is that a thing?
posted by Molesome at 1:41 PM on April 9, 2025 [7 favorites]

I truly do not know what to make of this show from watching the trailer. It has Wacky!!!! vibe and I don't know if that's right for Murderbot. Though frankly, I don't know WHAT tone would be right to take for Murderbot, either.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:44 PM on April 9, 2025 [4 favorites]

I will say, now that I've actually watched the trailer (dang work, not letting me turn up my laptop volume to max), that I do think Skarsgård gets the contrast between Murderbot's internal fluent snarkiness (voiceover) and external extreme awkwardness (speaking to other characters) correct. The contrast weirded me out a bit at first, but yeah, it's about as spot-on as it could reasonably be.

And Sanctuary Moon looks like a total hoot. The plasticky makeup jobs are amazing. I, too, would be not at all averse to a spinoff.
posted by humbug at 1:47 PM on April 9, 2025 [4 favorites]

This is not what its voice sounded like in my head, but that's fine. TV series and the books they're inspired by are 2 different things, and one does not improve or diminish the other.
This looks like fun.
posted by signal at 1:51 PM on April 9, 2025 [7 favorites]

ashbury: "I’m looking forward to it! My wife doesn’t care for action or sci-fi (nothing, no Star Trek, no Andor, nothing!) so any advice on how I can convince her to watch this is welcome!"

I'm in the same boat, but Alexander Skarsgård is the angle I'm playing up, IFKWIMAITYD.
posted by signal at 1:52 PM on April 9, 2025 [1 favorite]

ashbury & signal, can you just get them to read the books?
posted by joannemerriam at 2:05 PM on April 9, 2025 [1 favorite]

how white cis men who have wished they were Skarsgård since seeing him in something like Generation Kill or True Blood are going to react to Murderbot having gender-neutral pronouns and watching soap operas

Tbf, the books depend a whole lot, a whooole lot, on Murderbot being an unstoppable killer whenever it’s handy for the plot. A third of the payoff in each one even (the other two: Murderbot levels up; Murderbot forms human bonds).

I hadn’t decided if this is Murderbot’s tragic flaw or our own. In film, famously, it’s ours: “you can’t make an anti-war war film”.
posted by clew at 2:10 PM on April 9, 2025 [3 favorites]

A favorite thing of the murderbot books is how each one has the quote “I Love Murderbot!” By Anne Lecke plastered on the cover.

I like to believe that Anne provides a review of every new book that comes out in the series and every time the review is “I Love Murderbot”
posted by mrzarquon at 2:11 PM on April 9, 2025 [28 favorites]

The TV series of Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer was very different in tone (IMO) from the book (fantastic) but still really well done and very enjoyable. different mediums can call for different tonal interpretations and expressions while preserving the core truths of the story. I have hopes for this one.

(re convincing someone to watch: Eric Northman is as neuro-divergent media-obsessed killer-robot nerd)
posted by supermedusa at 2:39 PM on April 9, 2025 [1 favorite]

ok, i'm in. not 100%. skarsgaard is not how murderbot should LOOK but as an actor he has a vocal delivery that is giving me chills.

I am the exact opposite. Murderbot physically intimidates (deliberately) people a couple of times in the books so it came across as quite large and masculine in my imagination. The vocal delivery in the trailer is higher and sillier than I expected though and I don't like it.

Each of us seems to have their own version of Murderbot in their head, probably why the stories do so well.
posted by antiwiggle at 2:44 PM on April 9, 2025 [6 favorites]

The murderbot books were perfectly unconcerned with anyone else’s opinions and I look forward to seeing whether a TV show can uphold that same disregard. I watched the trailer and laughed. Looking forward to it!
posted by Callisto Prime at 2:52 PM on April 9, 2025 [9 favorites]

Kitteh: "I love irritated and deadpan robots!"

It's not a robot. It's a construct. Robots don't have squishy human components.

I am VERY HAPPY. I have been checking the AppleTV entry repeatedly waiting for a trailer, because I have been waiting and waiting to share this story with my wife and kid (who keep resisting my repeated suggestions to read the books)
posted by caution live frogs at 2:55 PM on April 9, 2025 [4 favorites]

joannemerriam: "ashbury & signal, can you just get them to read the books?"

Nah, my wife reads way too much for her job and for pleasure to ask her to read English-language scifi.
posted by signal at 2:55 PM on April 9, 2025 [1 favorite]

Molesome: "…are going to react to Murderbot having gender-neutral pronouns…"

Murderbot's pronouns are "it". Does that count as gender-neutral?
posted by signal at 2:57 PM on April 9, 2025

Showed my partner the trailer.

Their comment: “How much does murderbot remind you of me?”

I declined to answer. (This was the correct action.)
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:05 PM on April 9, 2025 [4 favorites]

I had been cautiously optimistic, but the trailer reminded me of a sitcom and that is not a good thing.

I'll probably give the first episode or two a shot, eventually, but I am in no hurry for it.
posted by johnofjack at 3:15 PM on April 9, 2025

→ AppleTV is my least favourite streaming host

aka the very expensive one. Would like to watch, probably can't afford to
posted by scruss at 3:22 PM on April 9, 2025

The expensive one? From the FAQs on this page I can see that AppleTV+ is the least expensive of the streaming services we subscribe to. You can get it free for three months with the purchase of a new Apple device. They're also running a $2.99 per month deal for three months. Otherwise it's $9.99 per month by itself or included in Apple's bundle of services Apple One, which bundles up to five different services and starts at $19.99 per month. We have it as part of the Apple One bundle, and as 1/5 of the package we pay for, it's less expensive than what we pay for Netflix, Hulu, HBO or Amazon by themselves.
posted by emelenjr at 3:32 PM on April 9, 2025 [3 favorites]

I have specific concerns about any Murderbot adaptation. Casting, yeah. Representing Murderbot's integration with drones and computer systems.

And I hope they absolutely 100% avoid any kind of romantic anything between Murderbot and anybody.
posted by gurple at 3:42 PM on April 9, 2025 [5 favorites]

Yeah if there's a romance I am OUT.
posted by joannemerriam at 3:51 PM on April 9, 2025 [8 favorites]

jenfullmoon: "I truly do not know what to make of this show from watching the trailer. It has Wacky!!!! vibe and I don't know if that's right for Murderbot. Though frankly, I don't know WHAT tone would be right to take for Murderbot, either."

I always felt that the tone of the first book was cynicism and depression which often manifested as humour.

antiwiggle: "Murderbot physically intimidates (deliberately) people a couple of times in the books so it came across as quite large and masculine in my imagination. The vocal delivery in the trailer is higher and sillier than I expected though and I don't like it.

Each of us seems to have their own version of Murderbot in their head, probably why the stories do so well."

For me, Murderbot sometimes came across as male but most of the time I didn’t actually have any gender for it. I think that Wells did a great job in emphasizing that gender just wasn’t a thing for it.

joannemerriam: "ashbury & signal, can you just get them to read the books?"

She doesn’t read a whole lot of fiction of any kind, unfortunately. It would be easier to convince her to watch the show, actually.
posted by ashbury at 3:51 PM on April 9, 2025 [2 favorites]

Thinking about it, my mental image of Murderbot is that it lacks body hair (as hair serves no purpose). Lacking beard or bangs or any of the usual gender signifiers. Most importantly, it doesn't have any behavioral signifiers. For example, I don't recall Murderbot ever exhibiting a macho swagger, or cooing over a baby lifeform.

I don't recall that the books ever addressed this, but what does Murderbot get out of its streaming habit? Does it just relieve boredom? Does watching Sanctuary Moon provide insights into human motivations? In the back of my mind, I think streaming content might perform a function similar to dreaming. Does Murderbot dream of electric sheep? (And do those sheep have fangs and claws?)
posted by SPrintF at 3:53 PM on April 9, 2025 [2 favorites]

I was very grumpy about the trailer for season two of Andor, and several people here told me in no uncertain terms to lighten up, and remember that trailers have their own logic to them. The vibe/music whatever is actually actually probably more unlikely than likely to carry over into the show.

It's easy to worry they're going to ruin something you care about, and Murderbot is... I mean, let's face it, it's really special.

I was also disappointed with the casting of Skarsgard at first (although I had always thought of a male-aspected person, it was just someone with a lot less, ummm, amazing cheekbones?), but after consideration, I think he has real potential. He can certainly do the flat affect thing well, and I can hear the awkwardness in his voice in the trailer. Once we get to the show and there aren't 40 jump cuts/minute or whatever, I suspect he'll carry the character quite well.

Overall, I think this looks pretty promising!
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 3:56 PM on April 9, 2025 [2 favorites]

I always imagined MB as having white skin because I just assumed that the Corporate Rim was racist as fuck, and used, like, the same vat of cloned flesh that they grow middle managers from.

I also thought of it as having a very square head, like Dolph Lundgren in universal soldier or Kurt Russell in Stargate. Or even maybe Kryten from Red Dwarf, though MB later passes as human with just some hair growth, so probably not. I admit I got some male coded pictures of it in my head. If anything, Skarsgård is a little too pretty to be the grizzled veteran I was imagining.

I feel like the trailer got the tone right, actually. And I could tell just from the pictures who everyone was. And Martha Wells was on set, so I'm hopeful.

Don't look at me.
posted by Horkus at 4:01 PM on April 9, 2025 [6 favorites]

SPrintF, they don't talk about why Murderbot likes Sanctuary Moon till much later in the series, in Exit Strategy. Mensah asks Murderbot why it likes that particular show. I replies:

"It's the first one I saw. When I hacked my governor module and picked up the entertainment feed. It made me feel like a person."

There's a little more discussion after that.

Also, in one of the other books, the issue of hair is addressed also.

(Big fan, add me to those not quite sure of Skargård, but willing to look.)
posted by Archer25 at 4:12 PM on April 9, 2025 [8 favorites]

Skarsgård wasn’t my mental picture of Murderbot either, but I’m more than willing to see him take a crack at the role. He seems to have an off-kilter sense of humor that I think will work well. That said, Vico Ortiz would have been great!

I love that the look is candy-colored (and not just for Sanctuary Moon). I would have been bummed if this had been yet another grimdark space downer.
posted by ourobouros at 4:28 PM on April 9, 2025 [3 favorites]

Loved this trailer so much that I started crying out of nowhere. It felt like relief, maybe: "the people who made this show GET what you loved about the books and AREN'T GOING TO UTTERLY RUIN IT and it's going to be FUN." Always hard to tell pace and tone from a trailer because a trailer is such a concentrated and short thing, but I liked the action comedy/"comedic thriller" tone a lot.

The utterly non-reassuring tone for "stay calm; it'll be okay" was great.
posted by brainwane at 4:36 PM on April 9, 2025 [9 favorites]

Yeah!

Please please please do a Sanctuary Moon spinoff.
posted by sammyo at 4:37 PM on April 9, 2025 [4 favorites]

→ AppleTV is my least favourite streaming host

aka the very expensive one. Would like to watch, probably can't afford to

AppleTV is my least favourite streaming host because it's extremely glitchy and unstable on our Roku... and of course, everybody says: "hey, just get the Apple device!" And my answer is: "paying for another device just to watch a show? Fvck that bullshit."

Sorry for the digression
posted by ovvl at 4:41 PM on April 9, 2025 [5 favorites]

I try not to imagine Murderbot's face much while reading because I empathize with its desire to leave the helmet on.

I'm looking forward to the series based on the trailer. Dastmalchian seems like good casting for Gurathin.
posted by audi alteram partem at 4:43 PM on April 9, 2025 [4 favorites]

I really enjoyed Kevin R Free’s performances as murderbot and the rest of the cast in the audiobooks

I've been hoping for a bit that they greenlight season 2 and hire Free to voice ART.

what does Murderbot get out of its streaming habit?

Fictional characters are a safe thing to have an emotion about.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:47 PM on April 9, 2025 [16 favorites]

As far as people's mental image of Murderbot - I always pictured it as looking like Martha Wells.

Mind you, I have never met or even seen a picture of Martha Wells and haven't the slightest guess of what she looks like. In my mind, it's just sort of humanoid with "MARTHA WELLS" written on it. (Not in words. Just... the concept of Martha Wells.)
posted by Xiphias Gladius at 5:13 PM on April 9, 2025 [8 favorites]

Just about everyone I know loves these books, but I could never get into them. This trailer looks mildly amusing and kind of fun, so I might watch the show.
posted by Well I never at 5:17 PM on April 9, 2025

Also, I love fake TV shows in books and other TV shows (Dog Cops from the Matt Fraction run of Hawkeye is probably my favorite) so I might show up just for that.
posted by Well I never at 5:18 PM on April 9, 2025 [2 favorites]

I'm OK with Skarsgard as Murderbot. He seemed to get the discomfort around people about right.
It's been ages since I read All Systems Red, but didn't they find out that it called itself Murderbot after it violently deactivated itself to stop the trojan? Do we know if the Apple series will be all the novellas, or just All Systems Red. IIRC, Murderbot's the only recurring character in the first 4 stories, so they could do a different one each series, with a largely different cast.
Also, Tor gave away the first 4 novellas as epubs when they released Network Effect.
posted by Spike Glee at 5:45 PM on April 9, 2025 [2 favorites]

Anybody else think that the shot of the ship in the Sanctuary Moon clip was a piss take on Star Trek: Voyager? I could swear there was a damn similar shot in those opening credits, and the ship shape seems very 90s!Trekky.
posted by humbug at 5:51 PM on April 9, 2025

I have the books on my TBR but have loved Martha Wells' earlier works. I am definitely more interested in reading/watching after seeing the trailer.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 5:59 PM on April 9, 2025

This looks delightful. Yes, I always picture Murderbot as male in aspect, so Skarsgard is fine with me. I loved the bit from Sanctuary Moon. I'll definitely be watching.

Apple is certainly not my most expensive streaming service, and it's been rock solid on my Roku.
posted by lhauser at 6:07 PM on April 9, 2025 [1 favorite]

I think it’s quite remarkable how focused this discussion has been on Murderbot’s body.
posted by Callisto Prime at 6:18 PM on April 9, 2025 [4 favorites]

BlueHorse: "I'll stick with the books, I guess. I am glad Well's is getting bucks from the TV production, and I hope it's big bucks! She deserves it. I also hope that she's entirely happy with who is playing what and their presentations in the show. I just hope the TV doesn't affect how she portrays her new characters in future books, and that the development of original characters stays true to the first books."

BlueHorse: i'm right there with you.

Also Hollywood adaptations of SFF properties universally suck. They dumb them down, they whitewash them, they stick dudes in them where no dudes should be, etc. Just read the fucking books!!!, that's my motto.
posted by adrienneleigh at 6:37 PM on April 9, 2025 [2 favorites]

Wow, I had a viscerally negative reaction to this trailer. I guess I'm going to stick with the books!
posted by No One Ever Does at 6:38 PM on April 9, 2025 [2 favorites]

Please please please do a Sanctuary Moon spinoff

TIMESTREAM DEFENDERS ORION
posted by miles per flower at 6:38 PM on April 9, 2025 [6 favorites]

It's a great (book) series with a bunch of action-y stuff without it taking over the entire plot. I'm going to be cautiously optimistic until I see more than some curated bits. There's a lot of room for them to fuck this up trying to push something that the books and stories within aren't.

It does look like the "media" that MB is consuming is going to be a non-zero part of the show, and I like that idea. Lots of places for that to go and other people to get in on it. Here's hoping.
posted by Sphinx at 6:43 PM on April 9, 2025 [1 favorite]

I kinda want Timestream Defenders Orion to be animated. I can't remember whether the books specify, but in my head TDO has this absurdly earnest and cheesy Captain Planet feel to it.
posted by humbug at 7:22 PM on April 9, 2025 [8 favorites]

Looks like Skarsgård gets the assignment and is invested in the property (he is an executive producer).

Honestly the casting of Pin Lee and Ratthi really sold me on this adaptation.
posted by Dalekdad at 7:33 PM on April 9, 2025 [4 favorites]

I was most worried about how Murderbot's internal vision of drones and cameras and feeds and everything else would translate to the screen. The trailer shows a little of that, and I think it looks okay.

The casting of Murderbot's first crew is fantastic. The actress playing Mensah, Noma Dumezweni, was so great in Made for Love, she feels just perfect for Mensah.

Martha Wells is pretty active on Bluesky, and she's been very positive about the show.
posted by gladly at 7:40 PM on April 9, 2025 [3 favorites]

Anyone have particular non Murderbot Martha Wells to recommend (since I finished all the Murderbots)?
posted by latkes at 7:56 PM on April 9, 2025 [1 favorite]

The murderbot books are like my least favorite Martha Wells books - and I am a massive massive Martha Wells fan, so that means I think they are still pretty damn good. Murderbot in my head has always presented as female / androgynous and it’s really interesting to me that more people don’t have that image. I kind of thought she was like the teacher in Derry Girlls: tough, inscrutable, no nonsense, secret sense of humor. I’m looking forward to this no matter what though. I need something frothy and light that’s not a romance, oh please.
posted by mygothlaundry at 8:11 PM on April 9, 2025 [3 favorites]

SPrintF, as Archer25 said, Sanctuary Moon was the first cast MB watched. They have a large curiosity bump and was probably wondering what all the fuss humans were making. So many monkeys watching it, and it's supposedly like on the eleventy thousandth iteration of an extremely long running series, so what's it all about? His curiosity moves him to explore short comedy skits, history, docu-dramas (although it has some questions and skepticism about the form) and other entertainment feeds. So there is a pretty balanced diet of media. What you said about electronic dreaming is interesting.

MB's comment about watching SM making it feel like a person reads to me like it was a way for it to define and put words to emotions as well as being able to understand how and a bit of why humans acted toward each other in different ways. It uses the feeds not only for clues on how to interact with humans, but how to fight and do the job. As it repeatedly says, The Company has shitty learning modules, and half the time it's winging it based on some show. When MB is working to solve the murder on Preservation Station, it wonders if a forensic analysis as shown in the casts is actually a thing in real life crime solving and is relieved it got things right.

There are a lot of clues for what MB looks like. MB is a pretty generic looking person even before it decides it needs to never stand out or be recognized in a scan. Humans have skin texture and fine lines from facial expression, so MB must have something in its face that keeps them from looking plastic, but no real obviously defining wrinkles that stand out in a crowd. No wrinkles codes as young, but it's able to project confidence and authority, so it can't be too old.

The biggest thing is it has no sex organs, and I would imagine that also means no secondary sexual characteristics of any kind. So no nipples and no male facial hair. Apparently, though it had a fine down of all-over body hair originally. ART increases the hair length to hide the join between its organic and inorganic parts and make them less noticeable as a construct. ART also grows the hair on its head. They don't like it, and worry more body hair will make it harder to put its combat suit on, but reflects that hairier humans manage alright. But it is never suggested the body hair is the increased hair growth on the chest, underarms, abdomen, and pubic area of an adult male.

Someone above indicated that Skarsgård doesn't have the voice pitch they imagined MB would have. I can't imagine either a deep or high voice--MB sings tenor AFAIC. I doubt it has an Adam's apple. It doesn't sound like MB has much skin texture, partially because it's regularly being regrown.

MB doesn't depend on muscle mass for strength, doesn't need larger stature, broad shoulders, a wide chest, or the longer arm and leg length or any mechanical size or ratio advantage. It doesn't have to be sized like a male because it's a construct. It would make sense that a construct would be made to look like a smaller human being both for cost effectiveness and ease during shipping. ART lengthens MB's arm and leg joints to make it less likely to be picked up on the scanners.

Most importantly, it doesn't have any behavioral signifiers. For example, I don't recall Murderbot ever exhibiting a macho swagger

Murderbot develops and runs all sorts of code to change their behavior to seem more human. They run a code for sub-vocalization, random movements, breathing changes, and use examples from casts on how to respond to humans. It doesn't need a macho swagger. It states what it's going to do, then it does it. Pretty scary. And MB is getting better at using body posture to convey his ideas. In Artificial Condition, Tapan knows it's unhappy with her without its saying anything; Tlacey knows it's pissed and she's in deep when it looks at her.
posted by BlueHorse at 8:27 PM on April 9, 2025 [6 favorites]

Sister Matthew Murdebot?!?!
posted by wenestvedt at 8:28 PM on April 9, 2025 [4 favorites]

Anyone have particular non Murderbot Martha Wells to recommend

I'm very fond of the Books of the Raksura, which starts with The Cloud Roads. And Wheel of the Infinite has a wonderfully grouchy lead character who feels so so real.
posted by tavella at 8:57 PM on April 9, 2025 [8 favorites]

Yes! Exactly! Perfect murderbot - and nuns are even more invisible than middle aged women.
Latkes, I have a particular fondness for the Raksura books. And the Fall of Ile Rien trilogy but not everyone loves those as much as I do.
posted by mygothlaundry at 8:59 PM on April 9, 2025 [3 favorites]

Like others, I visualized Murderbot as more androgynous and less white, the sort of look that could pass for nearly anything, but on the other hand none of the suggested other castings have worked for me either -- Vico Ortiz has way too much personality and life in their face! And Skarsgard at least can do the deadpan very well.

From the VF piece and the trailer, the people producing it appears to have genuinely read and liked the books, and seem to be trying to translate them well to the screen. So I'm cautiously optimistic, beyond just being happy that Martha Wells is getting Hollywood money.
posted by tavella at 9:16 PM on April 9, 2025 [1 favorite]

The idea of Martha Wells as Murderbot's visual is kind of breaking my head :) She's like the most non-threatening human you can imagine.

Yes on Books of Raksura, and Witch King is great in a brain bending way - the sequel Demon Queen is coming out this year. Kai is not like Murderbot at all, but just as fun.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 9:27 PM on April 9, 2025 [2 favorites]

I would caution some people in this thread against equating appearance and gender too strongly. Murderbot's appearance may not be something it chooses, and people can look as masc or femme as they like and still be non-binary (including with "it"). It's not just for androgynous waifs.

The trailer looks neat.
posted by one for the books at 10:03 PM on April 9, 2025 [14 favorites]

Ok, finally had a chance to watch the trailer. I recently finished reading the series for a second time, the books are fresh in my mind, so let's go:

Too slapstick/"wacky" - possibly, though they could be just playing up that aspect in the trailer. I absolutely get the "sitcom" vibe, which I would strongly disagree with if that's how the series actually manifests. It damn well be at most a dramedy, is all I"m sayin'.

Re: the Murderbot character itself - yeah, not digging the approach I see here; too...panicky sounding, not deadpan enough. I mean, I know MB is fraught and all, but I'm not yet convinced they got the right tone of voice. Then again that's just a few brief trailer moments, who knows what the character will be like overall. I've always assumed that MB's build would have to be in the robust-to-beefy range to do the action/combat things it did in the books; but as far as face/skin color, I guess my imagination put MB looking (and sounding?) closer to the main robot in the 2004 I Robot movie rather than any particular human shade or gender. I'm not yet convinced about the casting choice there, but I'm reserving judgment for now.

And god forbid anything like a romantic interest, just no!! Welllllll...then there's its relationship with ART...

Speaking of which, I always imagined ART sounding similar to HAL in 2001, or perhaps Garfield (Lorenzo Music).

Music - I love that song! But here? Mnyeh.

Looks llike excellent performances by some of the other actors, though!

In conclusion: land of contrasts, taking a wait-and-see attitude. Don't have/won't buy AppleTV however, so I'll have to wait a while to see how this actually turns out...
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:19 PM on April 9, 2025 [2 favorites]

Kai is not like Murderbot at all, but just as fun.

I dunno, actually. I just finished a reread of a bunch of Wells (Murderbot, the Ile-Rien novels, City of Bones, and WotI), and my theory is that Wells just really loves her some feral young men.

Before Murderbot, all her male leads were basically feral young men: Moon from the Raksura novels, Ilias the wizard-hunter from the Ile-Rien novels, Nicholas Valiarde, and Khat from City of Bones. They are all quasi-outsiders, perceived as "uncivilized", and highly competent (usually with violence).

Murderbot is a bit outside that, because it's ungendered, but is literally outside humanity, and again is extremely good at violence and physicality.

My recollection of Kai from Witch King is that he's considered pretty alien by most of the community because of his background (he's actually kind of a spirit occupying a human body). And he's really really good at what he does. Which includes violence.

The storyline for most of these characters includes the development of relationships and communities in which they can find emotional support, even if some of them (::cough:: Nicholas) don't really mesh very well.

I think Murderbot is waaay out on the far end of that continuum, but is still very very slowly developing a place in a community. Building relationships, making a home. It's just a lot more aware of its alienness while being even worse at understanding everyone else.
posted by suelac at 10:30 PM on April 9, 2025 [7 favorites]

Also, I love fake TV shows in books and other TV shows (Dog Cops from the Matt Fraction run of Hawkeye is probably my favorite)

Argh! No spoilers! No spoilers! I have the season finale on my DVR still to watch, Tony just hasn't gotten around to hooking up all the leads. #in-joke
posted by Molesome at 11:13 PM on April 9, 2025

I haven't watched the trailer yet, much yet the show obviously, so it may not pan out -- but I'm entertaining the idea that a good actor whose body signals masculine and sexy, and who can act Murderbot's agender and asexual, could make this great.

We're never actually told that Murderbot doesn't look like Skarsgård. (My reading is probably not, but there's nothing definitive.) If Skarsgård genetic material was cheap one day, the Company would fucken use it, and Murderbot would be "it" exactly the same as whichever other lowest-bidder genetics came in. If you misgendered Skarsgård-skinned Murderbot as "she" versus as "he", I believe those are both equally wrong from Murderbot's point of view.
posted by away for regrooving at 12:32 AM on April 10, 2025 [2 favorites]

suelac that's a fascinating line to draw through. (And now I'm interested to see that integrated with Cherryh, who has a pattern of non-competent outsider young men.)

Witch King might be a masterpiece, ask me again after I understand what's going on.
posted by away for regrooving at 12:37 AM on April 10, 2025 [3 favorites]

I wonder how they will handle the threaded conversations - something I really liked was the idea of murderbot doing parallel conversations with the same character as well as different things with others, and the gradual loss of ability as it takes on more and more controls. The picture-in-picture for sanctuary moon is a good start, of course.
posted by fizban at 1:25 AM on April 10, 2025

I would caution some people in this thread against equating appearance and gender too strongly. Murderbot's appearance may not be something it chooses, and people can look as masc or femme as they like and still be non-binary (including with "it"). It's not just for androgynous waifs.

Which is of course fair, but this is about a specific character that already exists and has been described. In All System Red, standard SecUnits, including Murderbot have a 'generic human' face, very short head hair, and a general androgynous appearance. They don't have a gender identity, being a construct - neither human nor bot, but a Company hybrid of machine and vat grown human tissue that has no rights and are literal slaves controlled by torture. Very few organs, and definitely no sex ones. Murderbot is majorly damaged repeatedly and has to go into a repair cubicle to have new flesh and skin grown over the mechanical parts (Murderbot hates when it's leaking). IIRC it's unnaturally smooth and hairless skin from a later description. There are various mechanical parts that aren't covered, like the feet. Murderbot has hacked its regulator (torture device) to no longer be under control, but still hides in plain sight and acts as if its still property. And mostly watches media shows where it can safely have emotions without involving messy people, and much prefers keeping the helmet on.

One of the unnerving things about secunits is they don't have human body movement or tics; they stand unnaturally still and their motion reads as robotic to others. Tackling this, along with hacking its system to grow longer hair and increasing its height are some of the things Murderbot does to later try and pass as a heavily augmented human as opposed to a rogue secunit. This later gender appearance, and skintone and eye colour are never specified as far as I remember.

So Murderbot in later books when it's had help to try and pass for aug human at times is a much wider field for what it looks like; pretty much anything would be valid. But attractive and gender typed isn't how normal secunits were described, so it's not surprising that people's mental image of Murderbot at the start is clashing a bit against having a specific actor's face now. Personally, I was more imagining Brienne of Tarth (but less blonde)
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 1:53 AM on April 10, 2025 [5 favorites]

I always imagined Murderbot as a young woman.
posted by xtian at 5:30 AM on April 10, 2025

My partner suggested trying to cast Sanctuary Moon as a k-drama but I don't think we know enough about its characters or plot.

And yet someone on the Murderbot team has done a lot of work on Sanctuary Moon...
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:59 AM on April 10, 2025 [1 favorite]

I wonder how they will handle the threaded conversations

YES. It's been 10 years since the "Every Frame a Painting" on how film and TV handle displaying text messages/messaging, text chat, and email. The examples in that video all include someone typing on some device such as a mobile phone, but Murderbot can send a textual message over a network without performing any externally visible action, or while saying something separate aloud. It would be neat if this show could effectively use that for comedy and to illustrate tradecraft. Individuals in chats can also "tap" someone else's feed, as a "heads-up" ping or as a "yup, I saw that" acknowledgment; it would be extra cool if this show could find a way to display that, but that seems even harder.
posted by brainwane at 6:32 AM on April 10, 2025 [2 favorites]

*ahem* Sister Michael Murderbot, actually.
posted by cooker girl at 6:33 AM on April 10, 2025 [5 favorites]

Yeah, I don't know that I would suggest Witch King as a non-Murderbot starting point because I know a lot of people found it very confusing, although I really liked it and for whatever reason didn't struggle too too much with it. But she has so much good work out there. I was hooked from her first Il Rien book, The Element of Fire, and honestly it is probably still my favorite even if it is perhaps the most "traditional" book of hers. I love the characters in it, especially Kade Carrion, who interestingly is a feral outsider young woman, not young man.

It's probably time for a reread.
posted by PussKillian at 6:58 AM on April 10, 2025 [6 favorites]

I have consumed most of the MB series through the audiobooks, so any voice except Kevin Free's flat affect will feel wrong to me. Since we know MB was created by corporate types (both in its own universe and in ours) , it doesn't shock me at all that its body would be based on a male looking template. MB's whole "thing" is that it is who it is *in spite of* the physical and behavioral boxes that the corps forced on it. Here's hoping they can capture that essence.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 7:06 AM on April 10, 2025 [3 favorites]

On the topic of missed representations what is up with MB's helmet? The "more expensive" version is totally what I had in mind. The version used is way too distinctive.

Murderbot physically intimidates (deliberately) people a couple of times in the books so it came across as quite large and masculine in my imagination.

I really leaned into Murderbot being average. Eg someone like the Mandalorian's Cara Dune (Gina Carano is only 5'8").

I sure didn't picture Murderbot as a cis white man.

Me neither. I had a picture of someone so androgynous you couldn't really say whether it was female or male presenting.
posted by Mitheral at 7:09 AM on April 10, 2025 [1 favorite]

I always understood the books to be indicating that Murderbot is not aware of how much information it actually and inadvertently conveys about its emotional state through body language, facial expressions, and tone. So it doesn't feel off to me for Murderbot to be fairly expressive.
posted by prefpara at 7:18 AM on April 10, 2025 [12 favorites]

And yet someone on the Murderbot team has done a lot of work on Sanctuary Moon...

Just rewatched and Jack McBrayer is the guy that says, "Stars, Captain!"

There's gonna be a lot of Sanctuary Moon in this.
posted by thecaddy at 7:41 AM on April 10, 2025 [2 favorites]

I have always coded Murderbot as female. Later on Amena refers to Murderbot as "my third mom".

It does look a bit whackier than I would have expected, but, "I Love Murderbot".

Wonder who will voice ART. Give ART a female voice, that would be odd.
posted by Windopaene at 9:03 AM on April 10, 2025 [1 favorite]

Some day, I swear, I'll do up a Why I Hate This Adaptation Of A Book/Play/Fanfic/Podcast/Meme Preemptively With Or Without Having Seen The Trailer bingo card; it may need more than the usual 5X5 grid, but I'm pretty sure that "I imagined the protagonist as me even though rationally I'm quite aware that the odds of the protagonist looking/behaving/identifying anything like me were always going to be infinitesimal" will be the free space in the middle. (It will need a lot of room for all that text, I know.) This looks potentially pretty good; Skarsgård, usually a ridonkulously handsome man, seems adequately glammed down for the role, and the Sanctuary Moon bits look to be a hoot.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:08 AM on April 10, 2025 [8 favorites]

From a Vanity Fair [archive.today] article:
One of the funniest sequences in the series involves Pen15’s Anna Konkle as a human indentured servant who has been alone too long in the reaches of space and makes the mistake of trying to seduce the uninterested security unit.
“I ruined so many takes because Anna is just liquid funny,” Skarsgård says. “She would do it slightly differently each time. I play a goddamned android; I couldn’t be giggling there. Murderbot finds physical contact, intimacy, all that kind of stuff to be repulsive. So when she leans in for what she thinks will be an emotional, beautiful moment—a kiss—it was important to keep a straight face and be confused and frozen. But I was really struggling.”
posted by indexy at 9:47 AM on April 10, 2025 [6 favorites]

Askars playing Murderbot is fine with me. I also would've been okay with Tom Hiddleston or Michael Fassbender, but they might be already too identified with their roles in the Avengers and Prometheus/Alien series, respectively.

Or the producers could've done a veer left and gone with someone like Aaron Pierre.
posted by fuse theorem at 9:48 AM on April 10, 2025

There's gonna be a lot of Sanctuary Moon in this.

I find the inclusion of Sanctuary Moon the most reassuring thing in the promo. Because it indicates they are trying to adapt the actual books, not just going "hey we've got a property with a cool cyborg, let's remake Robocop/Terminator/whatever". It may still be a failure, because good SF TV is hard, but it isn't going to be because the creators didn't read and love the books.
posted by tavella at 10:02 AM on April 10, 2025 [9 favorites]

I like to think of Murderbot as a mischievous badger.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 10:06 AM on April 10, 2025 [6 favorites]

I suspect the trailer leans into the humour to stress that this is not a Big Manly Space Adventure. The reverse of all the movie trailers that hide that the actual movie is a musical.

Martha Wells mentioned on Bluesky that the new helmet is so that viewers can keep track during combat scenes. The "expensive" one is the one on the covers of the books.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 10:11 AM on April 10, 2025 [8 favorites]

I guess this is where I confess that I kinda visualize Murderbot the way this creator did in the Murderbot Diaries Animatic (set to "I'm Not Your Hero" by Tegan and Sarah.

I love this video very very much. It does cover more than All Systems Red.
posted by Archer25 at 10:29 AM on April 10, 2025 [3 favorites]

“I ruined so many takes because Anna is just liquid funny,”

I liked this turn of phrase, and then wondered if it was a widely used thing I just hadn't heard before. Turns out Google results for "just liquid funny" (or even "so liquid funny") are very sparse!

• The Murderbot interview quoted here with Skarsgård, about Anna Konkle.

• A 2021 article by Paul W. Downs, one of the creators of Hacks, about Jean Smart (and, elsewhere, a 2021 interview where he says the same).

• And in the earliest (and only other) results I could find, Jack Brayer (best known as 30 Rock's Kenneth) uses the phrase in Wreck-it-Ralph interviews in both 2012 (for the first movie) and 2018 (for the sequel), both times about Jane Lynch.

Anna Konkle, Jean Smart, and Jane Lynch. Liquid funny.
posted by nobody at 1:35 PM on April 10, 2025 [1 favorite]

First, excited to see what they come up with.

I too was initially off-put by the trailer, which seemed a bit Guardians of the Galaxy. The choice of music was probably part of that.

While the Murderbot series is very funny, the trailer felt a bit jokey and flippant.

I think they have a very tough task adapting the series. Part of it is the first person bit that has been mentioned upstream. I also think it is very tough to capture the tone when the book is almost entirely MB's internal monologue. Just the very act of taking the internalized monologue and making it external changes the tone rather significantly. I think that's where i was getting the flippant vibe.

But I'm excited for it, and I think sometimes having a writer room's worth of talent dig into a property makes for a better story. I think, for instance that AppleTVs Shining Girls was a better story than the novel (liked both).
posted by chromecow at 1:49 PM on April 10, 2025

standard SecUnits, including Murderbot have a 'generic human' face, very short head hair, and a general androgynous appearance.

I do like to read Murderbot's "generic human" description as possibly reflecting some ugh can we stop thinking about humans in the context of my body, and maybe SecUnits have some human-face-material variation that Murderbot is very bored with your talking about for thousands of milliseconds and it has turned off its acoustic sensors now.

(Did the book say androgynous? beyond the not having sex parts attached obviously. I didn't recall that.)
posted by away for regrooving at 5:02 PM on April 10, 2025

I was not expecting Skarsgård to make a good Murderbot, but he really nails it. Keeping emotion out of the facial and body language, and even the tone of voice, but managing to deliver the wry cynicism, informed by years of bitter experience, that we expect from Murderbot. Better than any of the audiobook narrators.
posted by Phssthpok at 5:32 PM on April 10, 2025 [2 favorites]

I don't know about Apple TV+ prices versus other streaming services in the US, but they do seem to be pretty generous about just giving subscriptions away with devices, etc., but I will say, their content, while there's less of it than on other streamers, is just a lot better on average. Severance is of course the one everyone is talking about, and it's great, but there's also Slow Horses, which is fantastic, and if you're in the mood for sci-fi, the Foundation show really grew on me after a kind of slow and chaotic start, and I'm excited for the next season. I haven't watched Silo or For All Mankind, but those are also supposed to be good, and I've heard very good things about Seth Rogen's new comedy show "The Studio".

I've just never watched anything on Apple TV and thought it was mediocre, everything that looks like it should appeal to me, actually does. They don't promote their shows for shit, though, so no one watches them (or at least didn't until Severance became a phenomenon), but what I've seen has been consistently great.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 5:53 PM on April 10, 2025 [2 favorites]

looks really fun! big SCUD the Disposable Assassin vibes if you halved the Rick and Morty and doubled the What We Do in the Shadows. These are all good things. one of these days, I may actually get appletv for a month
posted by es_de_bah at 6:44 PM on April 10, 2025 [3 favorites]

Dr. Mensa is perfect though.

And I think she is the main character.

Every book has her being awesome. I Love Murderbot, but Dr. Mensa is just such a good person. And it's totally what I expected to see as Dr. Mensa. Knew from the first bit who she was. Well done.
posted by Windopaene at 7:09 PM on April 10, 2025 [5 favorites]

IMHO Murderbot is an extremely unreliable narrator when imagining how others are perceiving and reacting to it. In my head this definitely extends to its appearance. It could definitely have movie star looks and still think it was hideous and off-putting.

It's clear that it inspires loyalty and even affection in others, and I think this goes far beyond just "Hey, we're grateful you disarmed that person by letting them shoot into you at point blank range until they ran out of bullets."

It's an ambiguity that's a lot of the fun of the books for me, so I'm definitely not on the "I pictured Murderbot this one way" side of things. But either you can't maintain in a dramatic presentation, so best I can hope for is that they make up for what they lose there in other ways.
posted by mark k at 7:10 PM on April 10, 2025 [12 favorites]

I 100% agree that Murderbot is an unreliable narrator about a lot of stuff, including how other people react to it, and about what it itself is saying/doing.

Early in All Systems Red -- this is actually in the very first chapter --

Spoiler

Murderbot's report to us has no dialogue in between "Dr. Volescu, it’s gonna be fine, okay? But you need to get up and come help me get her out of here.....Grab my arm, okay? Hold on." and then, after the ascent up the crater's side, “Dr. Mensah, I can’t let go of her suit.” It's all description of what Murderbot notices happening, physically, on the feed, and decisions it's making, but there's no dialogue.

Later in Chapter 1, Dr. Mensah says it had been very helpful during the crater incident, in particular with Dr. Volescu's shock, and Murderbot is dubious:

She continued, “You were very good with Dr. Volescu. I don’t think the others realized . . . They were very impressed.”....

It left me wondering what they were all marveling at so I called up the recording of the incident. Okay, wow. I had talked to Volescu all the way up the side of the crater. I had been mostly concerned with the hopper’s trajectory and Bharadwaj not bleeding out and what might come out of that crater for a second try; I hadn’t been listening to myself, basically. I had asked him if he had kids. It was boggling. Maybe I had been watching too much media.....

This is a trick that is easier to pull in prose than in TV/film. I wonder whether they'll try.
posted by brainwane at 10:03 AM on April 11, 2025 [13 favorites]

That bit is also fascinating because it suggests that Murderbot's awkwardness with humans isn't entirely inherent? When Murderbot puts its mouth on autopilot because it's got so many other dire things to cope with, it does just fine. When it's actually paying attention to humans (worse if they are also paying attention to it), it has difficulty.

So if I were gonna direct brainwane's suggested trick somehow, I'd start just like the trailer did -- Murderbot sounding strained and off-kilter because it's focused on the human in front of it just then, and the human on it.
posted by humbug at 10:42 AM on April 11, 2025 [4 favorites]

You don't necessarily have to have a new Apple device to get a 3-month free trial of Apple TV. Here in Canada, the PC Optimum card is always offering a 3-month trial on their app (scroll down to the bottom of the app's Dashboard screen). You just need a (free) Apple ID. Other cards and services probably offer similar promos.

I just used my trial to get S2 of Severance (and forgot to cancel on time, so I got another month for CAD$12.99. Don't be me! Cancel on time!) My partner will take the same deal on his Optimum app in mid-May so that we get the full run of Murderbot.
posted by maudlin at 10:59 AM on April 11, 2025

I think it would have been interesting if they chose to delay the audience seeing Murderbot’s face, showing it only briefly and late in the series. (Think Dark Vader, or The Mandalorian.) They could shoot Murderbot from behind or backlit or otherwise obscured, in the scenes where the helmet has to come off. It would be a bit gimmicky, but I think it could have been fun if they leaned into it.
posted by mbrubeck at 12:05 PM on April 11, 2025

→ The expensive one?

You're not in Canada, are you?

Already used up any free trials, and don't use shop apps. I also have zero income. So I get to call expensive when it's expensive
posted by scruss at 7:40 PM on April 11, 2025 [4 favorites]

I think the trailer looks pretty bad. I wish they had cast Mae Martin or Caleb Hearon as murderbot.
posted by zymil at 7:55 PM on April 11, 2025 [1 favorite]

... Caleb Hearon? Is there like a different actor with that name rather than the comedian? I suppose everyone has their own image of Murderbot, but I don't think you are going to find many matching that.
posted by tavella at 8:24 PM on April 12, 2025 [1 favorite]

The voice/accent/delivery/whatever that Skarsgard is doing for Murderbot reminds me of something very specific that I can't place, and it's kind of driving me nuts.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:01 AM on April 13, 2025

He sounds a lot like a friend of mine from Ohio, if that's any help (which is unlikely).
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:10 AM on April 13, 2025 [1 favorite]

... Caleb Hearon? Is there like a different actor with that name rather than the comedian

I think Caleb the comedian would work because he has a surprising amount of mysterious Chris Fleming energy and can also play straight.
posted by zymil at 5:17 PM on April 13, 2025 [1 favorite]

Well, you do you, but that seems a great dealer farther from the books than Skarsgard.
posted by tavella at 7:22 PM on April 13, 2025 [1 favorite]

Come on, the whole thing about Murderbot is you never knew the gender. I am not even as sensitive to these issues as many people, and this seemed like a glaring mistake.
posted by mecran01 at 8:03 PM on April 13, 2025 [3 favorites]

I don't see any reason to dance around it: the objection to Chris Hearon is most likely body shape.

So here's a question: thoughts on casting, let's say, Nicola Coughlan as the ComfortUnit from a couple novellas down from All Systems Red?

I think she'd be terrific. But then again, I'm fat.
posted by humbug at 7:58 AM on April 14, 2025 [1 favorite]

Apart from the unlikelihood of the company giving a a general purpose SecBot that is supposed to run and jump around a lot of extra flesh to carry, one of the few scraps of external description we get for Murderbot is "lean". So yeah, farther from the books than Skarsgard.
posted by tavella at 9:28 AM on April 14, 2025

Come on, the whole thing about Murderbot is you never knew the gender.

You know the gender almost immediately -- SecUnit doesn't have one. SecUnit is fully neurally and physically asexual and agender. SecUnit feels down to its internal support structure that gender is (a) something for humans and augmented humans and (b) utterly revolting.

What we don't know much about is its general body shape and size. Which is so so so very much not the same thing.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:35 AM on April 14, 2025 [5 favorites]

What we don't know much about is its general body shape and size.

Its GISS, if you will.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:50 PM on April 14, 2025 [1 favorite]

The _other_ otherness I’d like to have in a Murderbot drama is bots as the immiserated working class. Raised to be expendable, terrible education.

No idea how I’d do that in voice let alone film without slamming into every location’s other assumptions about class. Heck, for all I know Skarsgaard fits; big and strong used to be lower-class back when “hunk” meant “Bohemian unskilled labor” and was meant as an insult.
posted by clew at 4:57 PM on April 14, 2025 [1 favorite]

I have just reread All Systems Red and freshly appreciated

spoiler

the bookending: the crater rescue near the start, and then the rest of the team rescuing Murderbot after the explosive beacon launch. Murderbot helping Dr. Volescu get out of the shock that automatically accompanies great distress, deliberately performing emotional labor, asking him for help which is what gets him moving --

During all this, Volescu was huddled on the churned up rock, losing his shit, not that I was unsympathetic. I was far less vulnerable in this situation than he was and I wasn’t exactly having a great time either. I said, “Dr. Volescu, you need to come with me now.”

He didn’t respond. MedSystem was advising a tranq shot and blah blah blah, but I was clamping one arm on Dr. Bharadwaj’s suit to keep her from bleeding out and supporting her head with the other, and despite everything I only have two hands. I told my helmet to retract so he could see my human face. If the hostile came back and bit me again, this would be a bad mistake, because I did need the organic parts of my head. I made my voice firm and warm and gentle, and said, “Dr. Volescu, it’s gonna be fine, okay? But you need to get up and come help me get her out of here.”

That did it. He shoved to his feet and staggered over to me, still shaking. I turned my good side toward him and said, “Grab my arm, okay? Hold on.”

-- Murderbot, the construct, helping Dr. Volescu override his own governor module, using its own face and voice and a request to help his teammate, and then talking him up the crater by asking him about his family, about his children, not even paying attention to itself as it does....

and then, much later, after Murderbot has sacrificed itself for its clients, as they're rescuing it:

I said, “This unit is at minimal functionality and it is recommended that you discard it.” It’s an automatic reaction triggered by catastrophic malfunction. Also, I really didn’t want them to try to move me because it hurt bad enough the way it was. “Your contract allows—”

“Shut up,” Mensah snapped. “You shut the fuck up. We’re not leaving you."

The distant, third-person language of contract, recommendation, and permission replaced by the earthy, direct language of the bond among people. Dr. Mensah, who till now has been reliably polite and diplomatic even under stress, listening to Murderbot and making space for its strategic assessments, utterly rejecting this one, saying not only "shut up" but with an obscenity, rejecting the automated voice-of-the-company-speaking-through-Murderbot's-mouth. Rejecting whatever last vestiges have remained even after it's hacked its governor module. Rejecting the assumption that this SecUnit is disposable, a thing to be used. Care as not just a thing a SecUnit gives, is constitutionally made to give all its clients, but as a nonnegotiable thing Murderbot will receive from this group.

Just a marvelous pair of passages, and so rich and indicative when one puts them side by side.
posted by brainwane at 7:16 PM on April 14, 2025 [8 favorites]

The _other_ otherness I’d like to have in a Murderbot drama is bots as the immiserated working class. Raised to be expendable, terrible education.

I'm pretty sure they'll go there. It's one of the central themes of the stories after all, along with the horror of how the Corporation Rim chews up people. I don't know if it will get into some of the more subtle things, the relationships and views between constructs; rereading the series recently, I noticed there's a lovely little evolution, Murderbot starts out somewhat contemptuous of sexbots -- emphasizing the different between it and them, the sort of hierarchy that oppressed people will often maintain among themselves. Then in Artificial Condition, it refers to the Ganaka Pit ComfortUnits as sexbots only once, and then as it realizes what they tried to do, it stops. It doesn't yet generalize its solidarity, still referring to Tlacey's bot as a sexbot, until the confrontation with Tlacey where it seems to come to sort of an epiphany -- and it never refers to sexbots again, it's always ComfortUnits through the rest of the books.
posted by tavella at 7:41 PM on April 14, 2025 [8 favorites]

(and I could in fact see Nicola Coughlan in the role; Murderbot notes somewhere in the series that ComfortUnits are much more customized and varied, and I could see that sort of girl-next-door comfortable look being something some clients would want, and Coughlan has a kind of vulnerability that I think could be very effective.)
posted by tavella at 7:46 PM on April 14, 2025 [2 favorites]

The utterly non-reassuring tone for "stay calm; it'll be okay" was great.

I now disagree with my former self! That line delivery is really funny but it's not true to the book. (A few things in the trailer are also departures from the book, such as the "going through something" line and the specific identities of who's in the crater.)

But. A friend pointed out that this might be unreliable narrator stuff - like, the show might show us that this is how Murderbot remembers the interaction, even though in reality it was genuinely reassuring. And then there might be a flashback showing us how others saw it.

(It's a trailer, it's a tiny tiny sample of 10 hours of show, I shall attempt to stop extrapolating and speculating quite so much now.)
posted by brainwane at 1:59 AM on April 15, 2025 [3 favorites]

I don't have a strong sense of what Murderbot looks like- androgynous, bland, but often masked. I do have a strong sense of their voice, and the voice feels weirdly wrong to me. The actor looks more male than I'd like, but I'm not surprised. I'll watch, because it's been so fun to read.
posted by theora55 at 11:40 AM on April 15, 2025

The 10 hours makes me wonder if they are incorporating part of the other books. Because I can think of maybe 5 or 6 major plot beats that you could reasonably build an episode around: creature attack/discovering the missing data; visiting one of the blank sites; visiting DeltFall; the evacuation; the negotiation with the attackers/setting off the beacon; and possibly a wrapup episode if you brought the negotiations over saving Murderbot into the foreground. I could see the negotiation/beacon being a 2 parter maybe, but still, a lot of stretching for 10.

On the other hand, if I was producing it, I'd really like Murderbot walking off the station as a season ending point. Still a reasonably satisfying ending if they only get one season, enough unresolved to make people want more, at least if they succeed at making the PresAux people loveable, and a good setup for a next season that incorporates a split between Murderbot's journeys and the legal battles, with Mensah's kidnapping bringing them back together.

So if they want that ending, then the obvious thing is to bring in some alien remnant troubles from the later books. Maybe a midseason segment where having evacuated to a unknown to them location, they run into active remnants? Or maybe they'll just invent a lot of interpersonal drama. Gurathin sneaks behind the others' backs to try to shut Murderbot down or whatever. I'd definitely prefer the former!
posted by tavella at 1:36 PM on April 15, 2025 [1 favorite]

They should've cast a nonbinary actor, period. That was never going to happen, because fucking Hollywood, but casting a tall hot guy with a six-pack was absolutely not a reasonable casting decision.
posted by adrienneleigh at 2:05 PM on April 15, 2025

Murderbot isn't nonbinary, though. It is entirely agender, a rather different thing.
posted by tavella at 2:20 PM on April 15, 2025

Some nonbinary people are agender! (Me, for instance.) But also, in an imperfect world, basically any nonbinary actor would've been a better choice than fucking Skarsgard.
posted by adrienneleigh at 2:23 PM on April 15, 2025 [2 favorites]

The 10 hours makes me wonder if they are incorporating part of the other books.

It does seem to be a lot of time to cover a novella. My hope is that the gaps are filled in by showing us a lot of Sanctuary Moon, because I always enjoy more John Cho.
posted by creepygirl at 3:09 PM on April 15, 2025 [2 favorites]

The tall part is at least accurate to the books; even after ART has shortened it by 2 cm, Murderbot is a head taller than Gurathin (who has to go on tiptoe to see over its shoulder), and probably even more for Ratthi (who has to look around it instead), and sufficiently taller than Mensah that she has to look up and it has to look down when conversing. So it seems likely it is well above average for Preservation humans, and given Preservation has at least two generations of universal healthcare and nutrition, they probably are not a short people.

In fact, I had to withdraw one of my objections to Skarsgard on rereading; I had remembered Murderbot using a female-gendered ID at one point, which suggested a height that wouldn't be very memorable for someone checking ID; there's certainly 6'4" women, but they are more likely to be remembered which isn't good for a cover identity. But in fact, it was just "indeterminate". And it does make sense for the company to make SecBots taller than average, since one of their uses is to intimidate oppressed workers.

My personal image is still something closer to Frankie Adams (Bobbie from The Expanse), but I'm becoming more sympathetic to the producers; it's clear that the images people have are so wildly varying that there is no way they could get a casting that would satisfy the majority of readers. I mean, someone suggested Elliot Page and I was like, Elliot Page? 5 foot tall Elliot Page? And so on.
posted by tavella at 10:46 PM on April 15, 2025 [6 favorites]

I'm becoming more sympathetic to the producers; it's clear that the images people have are so wildly varying that there is no way they could get a casting that would satisfy the majority of readers

YEAH. And this is one problem with adapting text that is already good.

The Murderbot Diaries are so beloved by so many people as books. And I have this working model when it comes to adaptations: an amazing artwork is amazing partly because of how it uses its medium. And so it's going to be super tough to adapt a really good artwork into a different medium and make another great piece of art. For instance, I don't believe anyone has ever been able to make a Thomas Pynchon film adaptation that lives up to the quality of the original book. It is more possible to adapt an okay work and make the adaptation great in a different medium. Example: Jurassic Park is a good novel, but not a great one, but reusing the bones of it made a great movie. (By the way, I originally wrote this chunk down as I was complaining about a stage adaptation of The Great Gatsby I saw last year, so if you want more of that, head to my profile, go to my website, and search for Gatsby musings.)

But the Murderbot books are better than that. And a bunch of that is because of the way Wells uses the things prose fiction can do really well: tight first-person point of view, the unreliable narrator stuff we've talked about in this thread, the deliberate lacunae (physical descriptions of people, but also things like Murderbot consistently avoiding naming "the company"), and the quantity and proportion of narration. Murderbot frequently tells us their assessments/habits/history/expectations, which gives us context when something happens that surprises them; next time you reread, check out how much of that internal narration breaks simplistic "show, don't tell" rules for fiction. Not to mention things that are of course easier in text than in a filmed medium specifically, like describing threaded text conversations, setting scenes in twenty different locations, etc.

Wells chooses to not have Murderbot describe some things about its own body, and that works on Watsonian and Doylist levels. The Watsonian level: Murderbot has no reason to talk about those observations, and (if I understand correctly) is usually pretty dysphoric about the meatsuit it's stuck in. Doylist: this allows a wider swath of readers to imagine being Murderbot, as there's much less "it doesn't look like me" mental barrier. Or to imagine Murderbot being whatever image makes sense to any given reader.

The audiobooks (performed by Kevin R. Free) seem to work for a lot of people, which makes me curious to try them out, and I wonder whether animation, or a more stylized live-action approach, would work well for a television adaptation, reducing the "that actor doesn't look like the Murderbot in my head" effect. The four Murderbot fanvids on Archive of Our Own include two original animations and two vids that take other approaches, in case anyone wants to compare them to the official trailer, and use them as jumping-off points to imagine the show that would more precisely suit their tastes.
posted by brainwane at 4:27 AM on April 16, 2025 [8 favorites]

is usually pretty dysphoric about the meatsuit it's stuck in

I think the often-repeated "I hate it when I leak" is an example of that.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:23 AM on April 16, 2025 [1 favorite]

Along those lines, brainwane... I think one thing the show can do that the books have more trouble with is showing the worlds and systems, and more about how the people in the milieu (humans and bots) survive (when they do) and make what they can of their (often craptastic) situations. The books are constrained by the tight points-of-view; we can only see and hear what the narrators do.

(I think this is one reason we don't get direct ART POV in the books. An authentic ART voice would be hard for us merely human readers to understand unless vastly simplified and slowed down, because ART's simultaneous-processing capacity is so tremendous and ours so limited. Murderbot has some cognitive capacity and skill we don't, but it's still mostly on our level.)

One way to approach this is Peter Jackson's in Lord of the Rings, or Philip Pullman's in His Dark Materials -- occasional use of vignettes that are not precisely part of the main story but lend depth, commentary, and context to everything nonetheless. Obviously the inclusion of Sanctuary Moon helps legitimize such a technique in Murderbot, though the show will have to be careful about the lines it draws between in-universe reality and in-universe fiction.

If I were Martha Wells, I think I might jump at the chance to flesh out some of the stories Murderbot only glancingly witnesses.

Re dysphoria: now I'm thinking about connections between Murderbot and a couple-three AIs in Chambers's Wayfarers series. I won't spoil, but I suspect folks who have read both won't have trouble following my thoughts.
posted by humbug at 8:32 AM on April 16, 2025 [1 favorite]

I think the often-repeated "I hate it when I leak" is an example of that.

Does anyone enjoy leaking?

but also things like Murderbot consistently avoiding naming "the company"),

Be interesting to see how they handle that. The company branding is all over the place.
posted by Mitheral at 9:36 AM on April 16, 2025 [1 favorite]

I think the often-repeated "I hate it when I leak" is an example of that.

Does anyone enjoy leaking?

No, but for most organics it's usually something like "Yikes I'm bleeding, gotta fix that quick!" whereas for MB it's less panicky and more just "Eww, gross."
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:48 AM on April 16, 2025 [1 favorite]

Be interesting to see how they handle that. The company branding is all over the place.

A wordless logo seems like a good fit in a multilingual world. Maybe a perfect circle with a subtle gradient and central void.
posted by trig at 1:06 PM on April 16, 2025 [4 favorites]

I started rereading the Murderbot books on the Kindle app on Android and I notice they've replaced the cover with one featuring the TV actor. :sob:
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 6:28 AM on April 18, 2025 [4 favorites]

the antecedent of that pronoun, I saw that, and I am furious! I hate it. I can't believe that Wells agreed or wasn't coerced into agreeing to that. The artwork was part of the appeal of the books.
posted by BlueHorse at 8:28 PM on April 21, 2025 [1 favorite]

Covers are normally the domain of the publisher, and yeah Tor is going to try to sell more books using the TV show. I don't mind that, but I didn't particularly like the one they chose, it's kind of ugly.
posted by tavella at 8:32 AM on April 22, 2025 [3 favorites]