A different take on robots and cyborgs

kw: book reviews, science fiction, robots, cyborgs

Murderbot is a cyborg with a conscience. Strangely, the transport-controlling "bot" he calls ART (for Asshole Research Transport) seems to have one also. Maybe ART is part human, as is Murderbot, which is what he calls himself, in preference to an Alphanumeric designation that is never stated. He also uses the term "murderbot" more generically, to refer to all SecUnits; the term isn't explained in Artificial Condition: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, but it's pretty clear that it means Security Unit.

Unless I missed something, there are three levels of mechanical and part-mechanical entities in Artificial Condition, in addition to non-mechanical humans:

• Bots, which are probably wholly mechanical, though this isn't always clear in the book. They have various amounts of AI. ART, in particular, is an extremely capable and extremely powerful entity, built into the Research Transport (something like a self-driving Space Shuttle). ART may be part human; that is left ambiguous.
• SecUnits and their ilk, that exist for specific tasks. They are very dangerous, and have "Governor" units built in to keep them from "going rogue". They have a minor but important human component, including brain, face, and some other portions.
• Augmented humans, more human, less mechanical, but typically stronger and faster and more capable in chosen ways, than they were before augmentation.

Certain entities may be more like the SecUnit, such as ComfortUnits, AKA SexBots. A ComfortUnit that plays in the story has a Governer circuit also. I guess you'd want a mechanical sex partner that was stronger than you are (so you couldn't hurt it) to be "governed" from hurting you.

As for the plot, I'll just provide a glance at the setup. Murderbot is rogue, having hacked his Governor circuitry, and is thus operating on his own. He is trying to find out if he was truly the SecUnit that "went rogue" some years earlier and killed a lot of people, or, indeed, if the deaths were even due to a rogue SecUnit at all. Parts of his memory were "wiped" so he has to do on-the-spot research. As cover, he poses as an augmented human and has himself hired by a trio of scientists who want to go to the same moon, to retrieve data that was stolen from them. He is to be a bodyguard. ART runs the Research transport vehicle that takes him to a waystation near that moon.

With the help of ART, he takes better care of the scientists than they expected. He and ART have a fraught but useful relationship.

I was most fascinated by the interior life of Murderbot (of course, as imagined by the author). Though this is a small book, it takes an important step in a direction that Isaac Asimov was going with his Robot stories. Does the inclusion of a human brain in a massively powerful cyborg endow it with a conscience? In at least this case, perhaps it does. I don't know if Ms Wells plans more little books (150pp, more or less), to become a Murderbot series. I'd welcome it.