Review: Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells

Russ Allbery eagle at eyrie.org
Sun Feb 24 21:04:03 PST 2019


Artificial Condition
by Martha Wells

Series:    Murderbot Diaries #2
Publisher: Tor.com
Copyright: May 2018
ISBN:      1-250-18693-5
Format:    Kindle
Pages:     160

Artificial Condition is the second in the Murderbot Diaries series of
novellas. There's enough context here that you could probably read it
out of order, but since All Systems Red has the "get you hooked" low
starter price, I'm not sure why you would.

There's no way to talk about this novella without partly spoiling the
end of All Systems Red. That's a spoiler that I had before starting to
read this series, so I don't think it's too significant, but you should
stop reading here (and go read the first one!) if you haven't read the
first novella and want to go into it without any information about the
ending.

Artificial Condition picks up very shortly after All Systems Red leaves
off: Murderbot has made it to a new station undiscovered, and although
the events of the first story have made the news, including some of
Murderbot's role, it has been relegated to human interest story so far.
Just as it would prefer. It wants to slip away unnoticed to the site of
a previous contract to do a bit of personal research.

Did it hack its own governor module before or after it went rogue and
killed a large number of people? The precise order of events seems
rather important.

Getting there requires another transit hop, and when Murderbot's first
choice of an automated transport on which to hitch a ride is surrounded
by unwanted attention due to a hauler accident, it decides on the
second choice and an earlier departure from the station. That is how
Murderbot ends up aboard a long-range research vessel with a rather
more powerful AI than Murderbot had expected. Even worse from
Murderbot's perspective: that AI takes a rather personal interest in
Murderbot, its entertainment vids, and its intentions, and has the
computing power to draw some rather accurate and unwelcome conclusions.

I think a reader's opinion of this entry in the series will depend on
what you think of the role of the research vessel (or, as Murderbot
calls it, ART, the Asshole Research Transport). I'm not sure it counts
as a deus ex machina if the machina is introduced at the start of the
story, but ART has a lot of plot-convenient capabilities. Murderbot
largely solved its own problems in All Systems Red, but Artificial
Condition would have gone far more poorly if ART weren't willing to
throw around its rather considerable weight and political connections.

What makes this feel a bit strange is that ART's motives are murky. The
surface-level curiosity is easy to accept, but ART takes what seem to
be some significant risks on Murderbot's part for no entirely
understandable reason. I'm hoping that this is a sign of mysteries that
will be revealed later in the series.

I think some readers will find this forced and a bit too convenient for
the plot. I raised an eyebrow several times. But for me this was a
minor point compared to my joy at having an intelligent, protective
starship as a major character in a series whose characters were already
a delight. This is one of my favorite tropes in science fiction; I was
far too busy being delighted by ART's interactions with Murderbot to
quibble about its unexpected capabilities.

Murderbot itself is the same wonderful mix of shyness, cynicism, and
grumpy introversion that it was in All Systems Red. It ends up with a
doomed security contract as a way of getting onto the station it is
trying to get to, and of course cannot help but do a rather more
competent job at that contract than it strictly needed to. Its personal
investigations are left still somewhat unresolved, and doubtless will
continue to be a plot point in later novellas in this series, but it's
starting to ask, and answer, some harder questions about what kind of
intelligent being it wants to be and how that fits into the world in
which it lives.

I'm thoroughly enjoying this series of novellas (and have now bought
all of them published to date). The short length keeps the stories
tight and fast-moving and makes them feel approachable, and I'm still
getting as much enjoyment out of each as I get out of many novels. If
you liked All Systems Red, keep reading.

Followed by Rogue Protocol

Rating: 8 out of 10

Reviewed: 2019-02-24

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>


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