Imagine, for a moment, a story in which an non-gendered lead character’s gender was never an issue, in which pansexuality and polyromantic relationships existed and none of that made any difference and had nothing to do whatsoever with the story. Imagine, instead, that the story was about a self-aware rogue bodyguard cyborg who was a raging pop culture geek and had severe social awkwardness in a variety of dangerous and complicated situations that involved alien contamination, space colonization and computer hacking. Just imagine that.

Well, you don’t have to, because Martha Wells has imagined it for you in the Murderbot series. I mentioned All Systems Red back in an overview of Queer Friendly Science Fiction I’d been reading in 2018, but have never reviewed one this series, specifically. There are a lot of reasons why I have not done more than mention it, but today I want to entice you all to read the series if you have not yet done so.

In All Systems Red, we meet an organic-tech construct, a contract bodyguard that calls itself Murderbot. Murderbot prefers watching media to being with its human clients, who treat it like a robot or its corporate owners who treat it like equipment.  I will spoil nothing, but Murderbot’s story continues in Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol and Exit Strategy at the end of which Murderbot’s circumstances are vastly different than they were in the first novel.

Which brings me to Network Effect, the newest entry. In Network Effect, Murderbot is kidnapped and asked to do the right, most dangerous thing, for the right reasons by an entity Murderbot has a complicated relationship with. It is a rollicking action tale and would be worth reading on its own, but as part of this specific continuum is breathtaking. What makes Network Effect worthy of an Okazu review are key characters around Murderbot. Dr. Mensah, a main player in earlier novels is in a polyromantic familial relationship. That’s it. That relationship exists. People in it show affection and caring to one another. Two of our main female supports are in a partnership. None of this has anything to do with the plot per se, although the relationships are relevant to what happens and why. Like any relationship might be. Murderbot is uninterested in being gendered and ultimately finds “it” more comfortable, presumably to keep a hold onto it’s not-humanity, in which it finds comfort.

If you had asked me, I would have assumed the series would end at the finale of the 4th book, but Wells has skillfully set up a scenario in which she can continue to plausibly write Murderbot for as long as she desires, and has provided room for spin-offs and sequels that would be wholly organic. Pun intended.

Since the first four books are novellas, they make quick reading and although this book is a full-length novel, I had to keep my reading paced or I would have blown through it quickly. More than ever, the action was very visually evocative. In places I felt that this book was being written for the movie it will hopefully one day become. (With flashbacks to fill in the earlier books). For once, that really worked.

This book is not “lesbians in space,” its “well, yes there are lesbians in space, but there’s an actual story that involve them and not just some YA coming out schtick in space or vague mentions of lesbian-ish relationships.”*

Ratings:

Overall – 9

For action filled action, a non-gendered dorktastic protagonist, and alien worlds with queers in space, Martha Wells’ Murderbot is among the best, along with Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota series and Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch series. We are in a renaissance of queer sci-fi and I, for one, am loving it.

*I’m still looking at you Melissa Scott.