SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Discuss anything Murderbot related!
Please tag spoilers and mark with chapter number (and book).

All Systems Red
Artificial Condition
Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy
Rogue Protocol
Exit Strategy
Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory
Network Effect
Fugitive Telemetry
System Collapse
Platform Decay

The Future of Work: Compulsory
https://www.wired.com/story/future-of...

Murderbot poem
https://twitter.com/tordotcompub/stat...

So, Rogue Protocol next week maybe? If Rachel gets hers this weekend?

In case someone has managed to miss the fact that there is going to be a Murderbot Novel, now you know!

Yes I expect to receive this this weekend. (Also new Chambers book so have to decide which to do first!)

I'm not in a hurry to start Murderbot, it's so short I can start almost at a moment's notice. That'll also give me time to decide with format I want to get :D

I'll see if I start All Systems Red this week.

Yay!

I ❤️ MURDERBOT

Rachel wrote: "Yes I expect to receive this this weekend. (Also new Chambers book so have to decide which to do first!)"

Since we don't have a horde of Murderbots* breathing down our necks to start reading, let's start this after you're done with Chambers? Record already has a tiny bit of discussion going on anyway. And maybe Leticia (and others, anyone?) can catch up! I'll set the start date for August 20th for now, but if anyone has a preference for another date, let me know!

* Are Murderbots like crows, is their collective noun 'murder'? Does that mean it should be 'a murder of bots' or 'a murder of murderbots' ?

It’s available for me on Storytel, woohoo! I’m listening to the third book now, it’s so short I’ll probably finish it today. Sorry, I couldn’t wait :D

That's cool, let us know if it's magnificent or just amazing! It's on Storytel?! Thanks, that's great, I can listen to it from there, no need to decide which edition to buy.

Well.... I got it last night and meant to just have a peek today and..I’m on page 65....

I found all three of them on the weekend. Looking forwards to starting the first one soon.

Somehow RP jumped to the top of my very full queue.

RP, first few pages: (view spoiler)[Awwww, Murderbot misses ART. So do I! (hide spoiler)]

Well I’ll be finishing today. Guess I’ll have to use spoiler tags for the first time!

Spoilers for the end:

(view spoiler)[Ok, so some of the action felt a little like "more of the same" since we're on the 3rd book at this point. But I loved it so much anyways. I like how Murderbot is having a harder and harder time pretending that it doesn't care about anyone, and how it's coping with the realization that it has feelings.

I thought the point about whether Miki was a "pet" or a "friend" was pretty interesting. Pets clearly can be friends, but they also have owners, and Abene was Miki's owner, right? But finding out at the end that Abene had trusted Miki to make its own decisions about its priorities made it seem like she viewed Miki as more of an equal, and with less of the paternalistic relationship we associate with the pet-owner dynamic.

So that bag that Murderbot has at the end, that was from Wilken and Gerth's gear, right? What was on those memory chips?!?
(hide spoiler)]

So, was Rogue Protocol as good as the previous ones? I still haven't started, should I lower my expectations, or is it safe to be super hyped?

Anna wrote: "So, was Rogue Protocol as good as the previous ones? I still haven't started, should I lower my expectations, or is it safe to be super hyped?"

I say both. I was not disappointed, it was still super fun. That said, a little of the novelty has worn off, so I wasn't as surprised by how fun it was (if that makes sense?).

So, lower your expectations a little, and then you'll probably still really enjoy it?

Yes, that makes perfect sense! I expect I'll get to this early next week. If I start lowering my expectations now, they should be at a reasonable level by then :D

I read All Systems Red yesterday afternoon and I too love Murderbot. Thank you all for bringing these books to my attention. This is exactly why I’m here.

Sometimes short books don’t have enough going on but there was a lot of action in those few pages and I really liked the characters and was invested in their welfare. Might curl up with Artificial Condition this afternoon depending on how Hubby decides we’re going to spend our Saturday.

To read Murderbot is to love Murderbot.

So true Anna 😍

Today is a Murderbot kind of day. I'm trying to pace myself, but it'll be over very soon.

Murderbot always knows how I feel!

(Rogue Protocol)

Chapter 3

(view spoiler)[ "I don’t know, everything was annoying right now and I had no idea why."

"I was having an emotion again." (hide spoiler)]

Chapter 4

(view spoiler)[ "I'd missed my armor off and on before this, usually when I was having to walk through large crowds of humans"

"After being forced to do it to survive, I was sort of used to talking to humans and making eye contact, though I didn’t like it." (hide spoiler)]

I liked Rogue Protocol tad more than Artificial Condition, mainly because of the tight action sequences.

Anna wrote: "Today is a Murderbot kind of day. I'm trying to pace myself, but it'll be over very soon.

Murderbot always knows how I feel!"

I wanted to quote EVERYTHING and had to force myself to take it easy.

I may need to reread the last chapter, I think I was asleep during most of it. But yeah, I want a book of Murderbot quotes! Rogue was more similar to All Systems, with the human interaction. I really liked it, although the end was very action heavy, which isn't my favorite thing.

Chapter 5

(view spoiler)[ "I know that’s actually not a permanent solution and pretending bad things aren’t happening is not a great survival strategy in the long run, but there was nothing I could do about it now." (hide spoiler)]

I finished All systems red and like it a lot. Pity the next books are so expensive in comparison to most books around.

Leticia, they are! For novellas, they're way more than usual. The first one is often on sale, I guess they can rely on everyone loving it so much they'll pay anything to get the next one. Can you get them from the library? Or ask them to get the series, if they don't already have it.

I think I liked Rogue Protocol better than the previous story, too, though neither have been as strong as the first one. I still really enjoy them, though! They're just really good, light reading and with a robot as the lead, which I have a soft spot for :)

Luckily they have all been available on Storytel, the audiobook app I subscribe to, on release day even.

Storytel seems good but they don't have it where I live, Germany. I'll check at the library when I'm back from vacations though they don't have so much new stuff in English there. If not in the library I may get it on Audible or wait one year to see if the price goes down.

Is anyone jumping on Exit Strategy today? I'm so temped to start it right now!

I’ve got it ore-ordered but don’t have it yet...I’ll probably do it this weekend?

OK, so if I read it today, and I have An Emotion, I won't have to wait too long for someone to share it with me. Yay!

edit: Who am I kidding, it's happening! I'm going to start it.

I'm just posting quotes again, like with Rogue Protocol. I'll try to limit it to just a few.

ES, Chapter 1

(view spoiler)[ "(Possibly I was overthinking this. I do that; it’s the anxiety that comes with being a part-organic murderbot. The upside was paranoid attention to detail. The downside was also paranoid attention to detail.)"

Replace 'part-organic murderbot' with 'part-functional human' and it's me! Murderbot even uses parentheses like I do! (hide spoiler)]

I just started Exit Strategy - getting through the workday will be hard...

MrsJ, ditch work and watch Sanctuary Moon!


ES, Chapter 3

(view spoiler)[ I was having an emotion, and I hate that. I’d rather have nice safe emotions about shows on the entertainment media; having them about things real-life humans said and did just led to stupid decisions (hide spoiler)]

Ack. It was in a box on my porch. But I’m in the middle of Lagos.....

ES, Chapter 5

(view spoiler)[ I was the only one here, so I braced myself and made the ultimate sacrifice. “Uh, you can hug me if you need to.” (hide spoiler)]

Chapter 5 already?! You’re finishing it today huh

Yup!

Anna wrote: "Yup!"

*jealous*

I'm on chapt 3 still.

Well. Peer pressure works. (Really peer ..envy?)
Read 17 pages.

Opening line is great!

I finished and I'm definitely having an emotion. Possibly several.

I’m wondering if a refresh of All Systems Red might be needed....

I didn't feel like I needed a refresher, but I did reread All Systems Red at one point, I think maybe when Artificial Condition came out?

Anna wrote: "I finished and I'm definitely having an emotion. Possibly several."

This.

And it's over? No more installments? :-(

Well there's the novel coming in 2020!

so if i don't really remember the human characters from ASR...does it matter?

Anna wrote: "Well there's the novel coming in 2020!"

YES!! That's what I was hoping. The fact that she won a Hugo made me think Tor.com wouldn't want her to continue writing novellas and get into a full-length.

I don't think so, Murderbot does talk about them enough to jolt your memory, at least that's how I felt.