36. System Collapse (Murderbot Diaries #7) by Martha Wells

Murderbot Diaries complete!  What a lot of fun.  As advertised, all the way to the end.  I was half-joking about my previous complaints that Fugitive Telemetry and System Collapse were put together in the same book when Network Effect takes place between them, but it really is quite egregious.  System Collapse is more than just a follow-up to Network Effect. It's basically the second half of the story.  System Collapse is entirely dependent on Major plotlines and characters are all established in Network Effect.  It would be quite confusing and spoilery to read it first.  The publishers should at least have put a disclaimer between the two books.  

Network Effect is about rescuing ART's crew and figuring out the mystery of the Lost Colony.  Now that we know what is going on.  And there is a lot going on with factions of colonists, two layers of semi-failed terraforming/colonization, the evil corporation coming and trying to turn the colonists into indentured servants while the good people of ART's university crew (actually more of an advocacy group that secretly rescues and supports lost colonies) and Murderbot's Preservation friends try to save them.

The final act gets a bit confusing and drawn out and was somewhat of an anti-climax.  There were so many moving parts and while it was emotionally satisfying and there was some decent action, I was hoping for something on a grander scale.  An epic battle between secunits riding those crazy alien-contaminated ag-bots for instance would have worked.  I'm nitpicking and as this is an episodic type series, going against my own values.  Still very entertaining.  I'm excited to learn that there is a new novella at work for 2026 and two short stories online that I will read next.

Some thoughts on the Murderbot TV series

I've watched the first 6 episodes and it's not quite doing it for me.  It looks great and most of the actors are excellent (and look correct as well).  I have two issues.  First, while Skarsgard is fine, I hate to be super work but I really have to question the casting.  One of the genius touches of the books is that Wells never identifies Murderbot's gender nor really their appearance.  I realized at some point in that I was vaguely imposing my own masculine default image in my mind, but Murderbot could be any skin colour, gender or body type even.  Like why not a thick, short butch lesbian look?  Skarsgard is about as generic white male as you can get.  It just anchors the show back to the 20th century.  He is an executive producer so maybe a lot of the money came from his work, so I can accept him wanting to star if so, just not an ideal choice.

I can live with the boring safe choice but what really irks me is the obviousness of the writing.  The books are far from subtle but Wells always delivers her various themes with a light touch.  Murderbot is always sardonically commenting on the naivete of humans outside the Corporation Rim, but they are all quite competent (again, for humans) and don't ever flip out unecessarily and screw shit up.  In the TV series, Dr. Mensah has to keep having panic attacks and they even wrote in an entirely new character who would betray them just so Murderbot could blow her head off in front of them all so we could get an entirely new level of freak-out and mistrust by the wimpy liberals.  Yes, they are humanists and soft-hearted, but they are all experienced researchers who come from a refugee colony and have seen some  shit.  I can just see some producer going "we need to punch this up!"  It's just so stupid and obvious and manipulative rather than good characters reacting with complexity to interesting situations (which is what the book delivers so well on).

This concept that progressives are soft and don't understand reality is a long-used propaganda narrative by the right and given that the entire thesis of the Murderbot Diaries is against corporatism and the need for authoritarian control (in the symbol of Murderbot's rejected governor module), it is depressing to see Hollywood once again internalizing it making it a fundamental aspect of the show.  That's your coastal elites for you, always bending the knee to money and the power behind it.