Obsolescence

by Martha Wells

On a space station near Jupiter, station manager Jixy discovers one of her friends, Greggy, an “augmented human,” has been brutally murdered. The crime resembles past incidents on other stations where people were attacked and their augmented body parts stolen. A semi-mythical figure called Piecework has been blamed for the attacks. Determined to protect the others on the station, Jixy sets out to see if Piecework—or someone else—is responsible for the crime.

(First published in Take Us to a Better Place: Stories, now available as a free eBook and audio book.)

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Mystery, Crime, Fiction, Space

ebook

Published January 1, 2020

About the author

Martha Wells has been an SF/F writer since her first fantasy novel was published in 1993, and her work includes The Books of the Raksura series, the Ile-Rien series, The Murderbot Diaries series, and other fantasy novels, most recently Witch King (Tordotcom, 2023). She has also written media tie-in fiction for Star Wars, Stargate: Atlantis, and Magic: the Gathering, as well as short fiction, YA novels, and non-fiction. She has won Nebula Awards, Hugo Awards, Locus Awards, and a Dragon Award, and her work has appeared on the Philip K. Dick Award ballot, the British Science Fiction Association Award ballot, the USA Today Bestseller List, the Sunday Times Bestseller List, and the New York Times Bestseller List. She is a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and her books have been published in twenty-five languages.

She is also a consulting producer on The Murderbot Diaries series for Apple TV+.

Reviews

[Andrea]

Read for 52 Book Club Challenge 2025 29) Shares universe with prompt 28.

Short story in the Murderbot universe based on a throwaway line in Exit Strategy. Murderbot watches a documentary about Mars Rovers, but rejects it as not being realistic as he finds it hard to accept any kind of friendly relationships between bots and humans. As ever, Martha Wells explores what it means to be human and inhuman, humane and inhumane. There are no easy answers but lots of interesting questions...

[Carter Kalchik]

A little peak into the pre-history of Murderbot universe “constructs”. Wells’ Murderbot stories have a driving linearity to them which isn’t my favorite but is more than made up for by being with SecUnit. No SecUnit in this one just made it a bit more of a plod. Still interesting.

[Ron]

Something happened to his old bot parts, Jixy thought, even as her stomach tried to surge right up her throat. Something exploded. That shouldn’t be possible. Augments didn’t explode, even augments as old as Greggy’s.

A partly dismembered body and no ready suspects lead station manager Jxy into a makeshift murder investigation. Kidland Station orbits Jupiter as an education and retirement station for future and retired spacers. Help is far away. Her most perceptive advisor may be a youth who watches too much crime media. As likely culprits are eliminated, Jxy must consider threats which may endanger all on the station.

“You’re doing the dumb thing people do in horror stories.”
“I know. But I have to check. We have to know.”

Martha Wells takes us back to the Murderbot universe, but this short story is a prequel, set hundreds of years (maybe) before the main corpus Murderbot stories. Along the way, she reveals the history of and ambivalence toward human-robotic constructs. Quibbles: there is a many minute delay in speed-of-light communication, but help arrives in just twelve hours. Why construct an entire space station as a school and supply transfer point, and another as a hospital, as a different one as headquarters?

“What the fu— What the hell happened?”

Mercifully missing is the excessive profanity prevalent in later Murderbot stories. Her one f-bomb has impact precisely because it was singular. Don’t know why she thinks it’s necessary elsewhere; this story proves it isn’t.

“If you get killed, I’m making a formal complaint.”

(First published in 2020 in Take Us to a Better Place: Stories) Available online.

[Danielle]

“Obsolescence” by Martha Wells as part of my Murderbot Marathon! Martha Wells could rewrite the phone book and I would read it at this point.

Update 2026: Goodreads keeps removing this short story for whatever reason. Frustrating. Leave it alone. I’m tired of tracking it down every time it disappears from my library. Especially now that I don’t have to use the original anthology for just one short story.

[Inês]

This was a really thought-provoking short story set on the murderbot universe, but with entirely different loveable characters and a mystery to solve.

I liked the mystery part - it was no Agatha Christie, but that wasn't the point; the social critique within the sci-fi plot was, and it worked perfectly. 

I only wished we had had confirmation regarding Lilly's school program change! 

[Sofia]

What a deeply sad and absolutely believable story from the Murderbot universe. Possibly set hundreds of years before the events of the Murderbot Diaries, but after the establishment of permanent human habitation in space. This is a story of the terrible consequences of corporate greed and the devaluation of human life.

[Laura Shoults]

Okay but that was the very beginning of a story and not a whole story….

[Steven R. McEvoy]

I have read the first seven novels and novellas in this series. As I await the release of the eight I am going back and reading the 4 short stories. Two are prequels and two falls between other works. This one it is hard to tell where it fits. I am thankful I gave this series a try, it was highly recommended from an author I love. I read this volume and the other 4 shorter works on the same day.

The earlier stories in this series were novellas then a full length novel and now back in the novel range for book 7. This one was written a number of years ago. All of the stories in this series are excellent reads. And I was excited find out after reading this that an eighth volume has been announced for release early in 2026.

The description of this instalment is:

“On a space station near Jupiter, station manager Jixy discovers one of her friends, Greggy, an “augmented human,” has been brutally murdered. The crime resembles past incidents on other stations where people were attacked and their augmented body parts stolen. A semi-mythical figure called Piecework has been blamed for the attacks. Determined to protect the others on the station, Jixy sets out to see if Piecework—or someone else—is responsible for the crime.”

This story was originally in the anthology Take Us to a Better Place: Stories, published in 2020. This particular story is available online as both an eBook or as an audio book. Short fiction is a very different art form that writing novels and very short fiction like this is also a different skill. Wells is a master of all three, and has all three in the Murderbot Universe.

This is a wonderful little story in this universe. It does not have any direct or inferred appearance of Murderbot, but readers will recognize the universe and some of the technology, especially hybrids or augmented humans. It is a mystery story, and involves a serial killer. It is a tightly written story. It really adds some interesting information into the Murderbot Universe.

I read the stand alone version, but picked up the anthology and plan to reread it as I work through that collection. I have heard the audio version is excellent as well. A great read I can easily recommend.

[Cherie]

I read this a while back, in a short story collection before the individual title was added to Goodreads, but I remember it vividly. That's one of the great things about Martha Wells' writing - there's so much imagery that I can easily remember it.

Overall I was disappointed in the story because of the ending. To quote myself, "It was an alright short story, a closed-door mystery, but the ending felt forced, rushed, and unfulfilling." However, looking back on it now, I also remember that (not focusing on the ending) it was extremely exciting and the characters were likeable. I was disappointed that it didn't have Murderbot, but Martha Wells has such a way of writing that just makes it impossible for me to not like. I very much wanted this story to tie back into the main Murderbot series later on. If it had, maybe I likely would have enjoyed the story more at the time. Maybe there will be more references to it in later books. That would be a treat.

[coury]

This side story, not written in Murderbot’s voice, was honestly not something I’d think I would enjoy. But the reason I love the Murderbot series is not just because of his voice—it’s also because of Wells’ writing style. She somehow made a short story so developed and rich with mystery and sci-fi terminology that otherwise would’ve gone way over my head. I'm a sucker for murder mystery plots and so it's not a surprise that I liked how shocking and dramatic the opening was and how the story unfolded. I especially enjoyed how Wells develops her ‘antagonist’ into a multifaceted (flawed) character. I really wanted to hate the character involved in Greggy’s death because of how nice and loved he was in his little community. In the end, I ended up (much like Murderbot’s stance with the government) hating and blaming the entity that created the character for causing Greggy’s, and presumably other innocent rovers', death.

[Lau]

3, ó 2.75

Precuela de Murderbot, que no afecta ni aporta nada a la historia principal. Prácticamente sin relación.

Es un asesinato en una nave-colonia, y una "investigación" (creo que es mejor llamarle una búsqueda). Nada de otro mundo, irónicamente.

Casi podría ser parte de cualquier serie de ciencia ficción donde los humanos tengan complementos robóticos y estén colonizando el espacio. Se puede leer de forma aislada perfectamente.

[James Wheeler]

A prequel or adjacent short story to the murderbot diaries series. The titualar murderbot character is not in this story, instead it focuses on Rovers, which are a type of augmented human.

This is my fourth read of the murderbot universe and can see that Wells sci fi has a definite solar punk vibe, similar to Becky Chambers.

I found this particular short story, wells wrote 4 to go along with and expand the muderbot universe, in an pdf of the free e-book Take us to a Better Place.

[Christie]

Not really MurderBot, but MurderBot adjacent in that there are augmented humans. I learned about rovers and want to find out more about them (I feel like I’ve come across this term in the MurderBot books but it was just one more term that went over my head). Anyway, I enjoyed it and would like to read more about KidLand.

[Misty's Book Space]

This is a short story in The Murderbot Diaries series and to me it's kind of pointless. Maybe once I read further in the series this one will make more sense to me but right now there's no point to it. It's literally a story about completely different characters that I don't think we've met in any of the main books yet. It wasn't a bad story I just don't get it's point yet.

[Strelitzia]

Neat little glimpse into the history of the Murderbot universe. I can't say this was my favorite piece of writing but it was short and while I'm a bit disappointed we didn't get more, I think leaving some up to speculation also makes it more interesting.

[Angela]

This says it’s a Murderbot story. It is not. This short story does take place in the same world as the Murderbot ones. The story is quick and interesting, but I like the stories with Murderbot and/or ART much better.

[Emily]

so thrilling for so short!

[Gabi]

Quick, hopeful, and empathetic murder mystery in the Murderbot universe with the same A+ Murderbot vibes.

[Rach]

At this point I'm only interested in "what does it mean to be human" literature from Ms. Wells

[David Hedley]

If only murderbot knew

[Ashlyn Miller]

love world building short stories!

[Maggie]

Set long before the events in the 1st murderbot book

[Željko Filipin]

A murder. In space. Many years before Murderbot.

[Alex Perron]

3 stars. Some nice background about early constructs in the Murderbot universe, but otherwise pretty forgettable.

[James Oddo]

I read this in the middle-ish of my Murderbot series run, and I can't decide what my thoughts are on placement. As an independent prequel taking place potentially hundreds of years before the first novella installment of Murderbot, it provides a lot of really cool context to the universe Murderbot is set in. On the other hand, the impact of the short story hits harder given our attachment to Murderbot by this middle point of the series.

In Obsolescence, Wells does a particularly good job highlighting the contrast between the cold, corporate structures and the warm, genuine care and community people and augmented people can form. This really comes to head when Piecework's motives are revealed, how having been abandoned by the system that created him has driven him to lose his sense of humanity. In effect, Piecework has become in-human, not through augments, but through trauma. It is heartbreaking to know that this universe devolves into further corporate greed, and the divide between humans and bots grows to such greatness that Murderbot himself cannot picture a world in which they work together in friendship. This is a perfect prequel to frame Murderbot's world.

This would've been a fun read standalone, but I love what it adds to the Murderbot universe. 4.5/5

[Alex]

wished there was more about Piecework.

[Hannah]

3.5⭐️