System Collapse by Martha Wells

Murderbot is back, navigating a tricky situation on a frontier planet where the interests of its employers are tested against those of the Barish-Estranza megacorp. Murderbot's team are working with the colonists to secure their own self-governance, whilst Barish-Estranza is trying to get them classified as indentured servants of the corporate interests and get them shipped offworld as effective slave labour. The situation is complicated when a hitherto unknown group of colonists is discovered underground in the polar region, with both factions rushing to contact them before the other.

System Collapse is the seventh book in Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries series. It follows the misadventures of "Murderbot," a former security robot or SecUnit which has achieved sentience and aligned with a group of humans seeking equal rights for sentient machines, a position the megacorp-dominated far future is distinctly opposed to. Murderbot is once again operating undercover along with its powerful AI ally, ART, and a group of humans on a frontier colony being divided by legalese and moral controversies.

This is a novel rather than a novella, but still a short one at only 250 pages. The book is also slightly out of pace chronologically, taking place soon after the events of the fifth volume, Network Effect, whilst the sixth volume, Fugitive Telemetry, took place earlier in the series. Not a major issue but a quick refresh of Network Effect might be in order before tackling this book.

As usual, Wells delivers an effective mixture of action, existential musings, and light comedy. Murderbot's ongoing development towards being a fully-realised sapient being is here interrupted by an involuntary shutdown, leading to a crisis of confidence as it fears what would happen if the problem recurred during a dangerous situation, resulting in its own destruction or that of allied humans. Murderbot's attempts to fix the problem are complicated by its discomfort with the well-meaning but overwhelming attempts by ART and its human allies to help. This introspection could become a bit too much, but the limited page space means the story has to proceed at a clip, and it ends up being an effective personal crisis for Murderbot to navigate whilst it deals with more traditional action-adventure and mystery plots.

There is also a nice subplot as Murderbot has to create its own media to convince a bunch of colonists about corporate corruption and indentured service, which is an interesting twist given Murderbot's own addiction to TV shows. This is a nice idea but it's given relatively short shrift, when it feels like it could have been expanded into a much larger episode. Interesting to see if the author revisits the concept later on.

The book also has an interesting line where an antagonist is turned into an ally, and seeing how Murderbot deals with this trope it's familiar with from its media exposure should be more interesting and fun then it ends up being.

Still, System Collapse (****) does what the series does best: a short, punchy story with enough time for thoughtful musings on the nature of sentience and self-volition, whilst fitting in some very nice action setpieces, worldbuilding and characterisation. The book is available now. New omnibus editions of the previous books should also be launching around this time, and the Apple TV+ adaptation of the books looks like it will launch later this year.

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