Artificial Condition

Book 2 in the Murderbot Diaries series

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This was a fun read! It reminded me of a TV series in which an issue gets presented and solved within that episode while a longer-standing issue was inched towards its end-of-the-series resolution.

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After the first book, that I chewed through in like 2 hours, and which has a lot of dialog and almost no science fiction, I assumed this series was going to be like candy. But this second book added layers to the story.

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Alliances were made, information was gathered, friendships initiated. This story has some elements of sci-fi and certain moments of extreme tension and mystery. I really enjoyed the interaction between the Murderbot and a very advanced, massive, space vehicle that Murderbot dubbed ART (Assh*ole Research Transport).

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So we watched Worldhoppers. It didn’t complain about the lack of realism. After three episodes, it got agitated whenever a minor character was killed. When a major character died in the twentieth episode I had to pause seven minutes while it sat there in the feed doing the bot equivalent of staring at a wall, pretending that it had to run diagnostics. Then four episodes later the character came back to life and it was so relieved we had to watch that episode three times before it would go on.

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At the climax of one of the main story lines, the plot suggested the ship might be catastrophically damaged and members of the crew killed or injured, and the transport was afraid to watch it. (That’s obviously not how it phrased it, but yeah, it was afraid to watch it.) I was feeling a lot more charitable toward it by that point so was willing to let it ease into the episode by watching one to two minutes at a time.

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After it was over, it just sat there, not even pretending to do diagnostics. It sat there for a full ten minutes, which is a lot of processing time for a bot that sophisticated. Then it said, Again, please.

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For as grumpy as this character feels about itself and life, how socially anxious it is, it bonds pretty easily with humans and takes its programming, of keeping them safe, seriously which makes it very likeable.

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Something I particularly like about this book series is how its major characters learn how to be heroic or to do the right thing from the media they consume.

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