All Systems Red

 

Author:  Martha Wells

Begun: Jan 9th 2025

Finished: Jan 9th 2025

Type: Audiobook 

Narrator: Kevin R Free

Rating: 10/10

All Systems Red is a comfort read for me.  I can't think how many times I've read it.  Over ten.  Not as many as twenty.

It's a novella so it's a quick read.  SecUnit has hacked its governor module, and instead of going on a murderours rampage it's downloaded thousands of hours of soap operas and spends its time surreptitiously watching them when it's meant to be working.  Sent to a planet to be the SecUnit for Mensah and the Preservation team, shenanigans ensue.

Absolutely delightful story.  Fun, funny, and relatable.  MurderBot is a delightful character and I love it very much.

Kevin R Free is not a great narrator.  He emphasizes the wrong thing, and puts pauses in where there shouldn't be pauses.  It's not so bad in this book, but in later books it's awful.  It's almost like he did no research and is just narrating cold and the pauses are him reading ahead.  I can't listen to the later books it's so unprofessional.  

Shortly after re-reading this book I discovered that a tv series was going to be made of it.  I have no idea how they're going to pull it off as most of the interesting stuff that's said is internal.  You can't externalize it without ruining the whole character.  Furthermore, despite MurderBot being literally sexless, when it impersonates an augmented human the other humans around it assume its female (as seen in the third book, Rogue Protocol).  Therefore it must be somewhat female presenting. 

Imagine my disgust and horror, then, when I see that a male has been chosen to portray MurderBot.  Right from the get go they've ruined the entire series.  I am horrified and appalled.  I feel like going around like Spongebob, repeating, "Soiled it.  Soiled it."  

To me this shows the inherent sexism still rife in the entertainment industry.  Clearly only a male can be powerful, protective, and have several big guns.  

I'm so incredibly irate and disappointed.

Thus, I went ahead and purchased every single MurderBot book that's currently been published. In hardback form.  Just to make sure I have copies of the original beautiful artwork, before they slap the tv characters on the front and a huge, irremovable "as seen on tv" sticker.  If you love MurderBot, I advise you to do the same.  You know they're going to alter the covers of the audiobooks and ebooks, because you don't really own those, you just lease them.