I have barely ever mentioned the Murderbot series in the past year, so it may have escaped your notice. I definitely cannot adequately transcribe the noise I made when I received an ARC of Fugitive Telemetry, the newest in the Murderbot Diaries. I was in the midst of yet another re-read of the series, and having a brand-new Murderbot story was a delight. And now everyone gets brand new Murderbot to read!

In October 2020, I got to speak to Martha Wells about Murderbot (my inner 13 year was NOT cool). During that interview, Wells explained that Fugitive Telemetry  takes place after Exit Strategy but before Network Effect, and fills in some of the space between those two stories:

Martha: But it’s set on Preservation Station, not long after Murderbot has arrived with Mensah and everybody for the first time, and it’s kind of basically Murderbot getting used to Preservation and Preservation getting used to Murderbot.

There’s conflict basically with station security kind of being, like, horrified that there’s this, you know, living murder machine – [laughs] – now on their station, and the reason I wrote it, actually, is there’s a, a bit in Network Effect – not to be too spoiler-y – where Murderbot prevents, it’s basically a flashback of Murderbot preventing an assassination attempt on Dr. Mensah –

Sarah: Yeah.

Martha: – and it works pretty closely with station security to do that, and I kind of realized I need to show how that relationship built up, and so that’s what, what kind of generated Fugitive Telemetry….

I ended up with Murderbot basically ending up helping solve a murder mystery…. Preservation doesn’t have a ton of crime anyway, and especially not on the station, and so the station security is mostly kind of a safety patrol doing, like, cargo rules enforcement and environmental enforcement and that kind of thing, so when they –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Martha: – get a murder, you know, an actual kind of classic murder mystery, they don’t know very much about how to handle it, and so, and Murderbot has to come in and help them, and they don’t like that, and Murderbot doesn’t particularly like it either. And so that’s what Fugitive Telemetry’s about.

So there’s a murder, and there’s additional development of the connections Murderbot is creating in its new community. Some of the original Preservation Aux crew from All Systems Red reappear. Murderbot, in the middle of solving a crime, figures out additional details of who it is, what its function is on Preservation, and what its function may be overall.

Among my favorite parts of the series as a whole are scenes in which Murderbot unwillingly learns how to have relationships (ugh) and feelings (ugh) about the humans and bots and constructs it repeatedly interacts with. For a construct used to being feared and owned by humans and only interacting with humans on limited-time contracts, existing and living on Preservation means repeatedly encountering the same people, and learning how to get along with them. Murderbot’s understanding of others usually falls into two possible categories: threat (can control or harm Murderbot) or not threat (can be controlled by Murderbot).

The usual fear-based responses still bother Murderbot, but the longer Murderbot works with members of the security team, the more their opinions about Murderbot adjust – and the more Murderbot is surprised and possibly pleased. Maybe.

The deepening intricacy of interaction has a major benefit for the reader: the more accustomed to its setting Murderbot becomes, the more hilarious its narration. Murderbot was funny before, but the sarcasm and observations about how utterly weird Preservation is are sublimely enjoyable. I cannot wait to hear the audio narration for this novel, because there are some lines that I know are going to crack me up all over again.

Identity, and identity by process of elimination, is still a major theme. Murderbot knows what it doesn’t want, but identifying what it does want is more tricky:

I’m not a bot, I’m not a human, so I don’t fit into any neat category. Also I hate being patronized. (The whole bot-guardian system is like an attraction field for humans who like to be patronizing.)

With the slow change and acceptance of it, there are more opportunities for positive connection with humans. But Fugitive Telemetry also explores Murderbot’s interaction with other bots on Preservation, interacting with hotel service bots, cargo bots, and the like, while also showing how those bots interact with one another. They accept Murderbot as it is, with very little fear, but Murderbot knows that (process of elimination again) it’s not fully a bot, nor is it human, so it only partially knows how to get along with any of the above. Yet connections with individuals don’t always slot into that good/bad or friend/enemy binary. (I mean, very little is binary in the Murderbot universe, with the possible exception of binary code itself.)

The delicious bits of the relationships frame the specific puzzle of the murder mystery, which is complicated and sometimes lost me in its intricacy. It was only after a re-read that a piece of the plot made sense, because much like a cargo port (which Preservation Station is) this story has a LOT of moving parts. A LOT. And because Murderbot is not always right in its conclusions, but is very used to being the fastest thinker and the fastest at processing data when standing in a group of humans, Murderbot has to confront its own superiority complex(es). (And the final scenes are so, so good, I clutched my own chest to keep my heart from flying out.)

I was as happy reading the latest Murderbot as I was re-reading all the others, and the release will probably cause another re-read from start to end.

So, to sum up: Murderbot Solves Murder: WTF Does One Do With Colleagues?

Or, to quote my inner 13 year old: More Murderbot! More Murderbot! YAY! Enjoy!