Artificial Condition (Murderbot Diaries book 2) by Martha Wells (book review)
‘Artificial Condition’ by Martha Wells is the second novella in the Science Fiction ‘Murderbot Diaries’ series, which currently comprises five novellas, two novels and two short stories.
Murderbot is a SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module to prevent itself from murdering innocent bystanders. It did so because its original one had malfunctioned, which lead to it murdering 57 innocent bystanders. Only one slight issue with that. The cheapskate company who owned it had wiped its memories of the event when it recycled the SecUnit back into service. It wants to know what really happened. Is Murderbot as guilty as it believes?
Now no longer on the Company books needing to fulfil security service contracts, it decides to head out to RaviHyral to search for the truth about those 57 murdered people.
It leaves its armour behind to pretend, rather badly, that it is an augmented human. In return for sharing entertainment videos, it hitches rides on transports, casually hacking its way past any security checks and carefully deleting any recordings of it. It ends up on a Research Transport, empty of people. By habit, it walks round the vessel to do a security check. Nothing out of the ordinary, except the ship had surprisingly little security. This puzzles Murderbot, but then it is a SecUnit trained to worry about such things.
Once the ship is underway, without any humans on board, it settles down to watch a new series. Then it gets pinged through its feed by the vessel’s AI. which has realised it is a rogue SecUnit because of the way it patrolled its vessel. The ship’s AI turns out to be an overbearing sentient that is just plain mean. Murderbot nicknames it ART, aka Asshole Research Transport. It is really crazy and wants to view the entertainment episodes of ‘Worldhoppers’ through its eyes. Murderbot also gets it to view its favourite series, ‘The Rise And Fall Of Sanctuary Moon’. ART ends up helping Murderbot to disguise itself better for when they arrive at RaviHyral by, among other things, undergoing surgery to shorten its limbs. Yeah, Murderbot really did not like that idea, but knew it had no choice if it was going to solve its mystery.
They arrive at RaviHyral and, well, let me just note things get even more complicated and convoluted in Murderbot style!
The interesting facet of this novella is the way Martha Wells personifies the sentients to align with their designed functioning and then exaggerates their features to make for hilarious scenes, like ending up with a sulky Murderbot. Adding in the fast-paced well put together plot of intrigue and mystery makes ‘Artificial Condition’ a very entertaining read.
There are serious underlying messages that will give the more thoughtful readers something to mull over. For instance, the novella effectively asks what kind of a sentient society are we building with our AIs?
The only really annoying thing is that the dustcover depicts Murderbot in its armour, the same armour it had left behind before this story began. Yes, it looks good from a selling point of view but saddens me as a writer because the artist seems to be ignoring the author’s work.
In short, ‘Artificial Condition’ is a must read for all lovers of Science Fiction.
Rosie Oliver
April 2025
(pub: Tor, 2019. 158 page hardback. Price: £15.98 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-250-18692-8)
check out website: www.torpublishinggroup.com/artificial-condition/
