“Artificial Condition” (The Murderbot Diaries No. 2) by Martha Wells
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…
Review
Note: Murdebot refers to itself with it/its pronouns so I will use those when referring to Murderbot. It does not consider itself human and does not want to be considered a person.
I enjoyed this one as much as the previous story. I really liked the sort of friendship Murderbot develops with ART – I don’t think Murderbot would call it a friendship but it approaches that level. Murderbot does a lot to help ART figure things out by sharing the media it has watched and ART ends up helping Murderbot figure out what happened in the past. I also enjoyed how Murderbot ends up helping the group of humans it encounters while traveling back to where the massacre occurred to do its research to find out what happened to it in the past. There’s a lot to be said about Murderbot learning from its past and how it interacts with people and other AIs.
As much as I’ve enjoyed the first two books I have to say I have mixed feelings with the way intelligence is talked about in these books, and I had some addtional thoughts written here that I’m moved to another post called Additional Thoughts About Murderbot if you would like to read it.
Warnings and additional reviews are available on the StoryGraph page for “Artificial Condition”.
Book Details
- Author’s Website
- Martha Wells
- Publisher / Date
- Tor.com, May 2018
- Genre
- Science Fiction
- Page Count
- 117
- Completion Date
- August 29, 2024