Artificial Condition (Martha Wells)

Artificial Condition
The Murderbot Diaries, Book 2
Martha Wells
Tor.com
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: After its last job, the SecUnit that calls itself Murderbot no longer works for the company that manufactured and deployed it... but it still technically belongs to humans, if humans who consider artificial entities as equals: even "equals" apparently require a living guardian. It also still has questions about its past, about the incident for which it named itself - the incident that led it to hack its governor module and develop free will. So it slips its leash again and strikes out on its own across the galaxy. With the help of a massive (and arrogant, not to mention incredibly nosy) transport ship bot, ART, Murderbot returns to the scene of its crime, the RaviHyral Mining Facility... only to become entangled in fresh problems and a new crop of humans who can't seem to survive without a little artificial security assistance.

REVIEW: Once again, Wells delivers a compulsively readable adventure with a fun main character who would rather sit around watching media shows all day, but is forced - by circumstances and its own developing personality - to wander a hostile galaxy, assisting humans (who seem remarkably incapable of basic survival skills) along the way. Murderbot still longs to be left alone, but remains troubled by what little it knows (and the many things it doesn't know) about its violent past. On RaviHyral, it finds even more disturbing questions when all record of the incident appears to have been scrubbed from memory - but, of course, there are plenty of problems in the here-and-now, when it finds itself acting as a "security consultant" to a group of wronged researchers. ART makes a fun sidekick, if one Murderbot is reluctant to accept, even as it provides another window into the inhuman mindset. Unlike most "free will machine" stories, the artificial beings in these books do not aspire to humanity - Murderbot has seen more than enough of them to never want to be one, for all that it doesn't generally wish them active harm (who would make media shows if they were gone, after all?) - but rather independence and the freedom to determine their own destinies... and to not be used as instruments of mass murder, when feasible. The in-story adventure resolves, as it did in the first tale, but larger questions remain as Murderbot seeks to unravel its origins and the truth about the "incident" on RaviHyral. Overall, it's an enjoyable, if occasionally violent, romp.

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