“Is this really a good idea?”
There is no way to honestly answer that question without being insulting, so Ayda Mensah opts for, “If I’d known the survey team might almost be murdered in a corporate sabotage attempt, I would have picked another planetary franchise.”
She’s in one of the Planetary Council offices on Preservation Station, talking to Ephraim, a fellow councilor who was planetary leader last term and should know better than to have this conversation. The office is a bland one meant for temporary work, the chairs are comfortable but it’s undecorated, the walls a default cool silver blue. It’s making her uncomfortable in a way it hasn’t any other time she’s been in here. Maybe someone’s adjusted the local environmentals badly; the air feels still and oppressive, though it’s not warm. It makes her skin creep.
WHO loves Murderbot? We all love Murderbot. Many of the books in Martha Wells’s series have won (or been shortlisted for) Nebula, Hugo, Locus and other awards. Writers and reviewers are open about their feelings for the eponymous protagonist. “I love Murderbot!” was sci-fi writer Ann Leckie’s take. “I might have a little bit of a thing for a robot,” wrote Jason Kehe, a culture critic at
Wired. I have to sheepishly put my hand up as well.
So why are we fawning over a grouchy, ungendered hybrid of human neural tissue and integrated AI combat weapons?
Fugitive Telemetry, the latest instalment, only deepens the devotion. The 176-page novella is set between the five novellas of the All Systems Red series and the novelNetwork Effect.
At this point, everyone knows about Murderbot. If you don’t know about Murderbot, what rock have you been hiding under? (Is it a comfy rock? I could use a nice rock-based holiday, away from all the news. And the pandemic.) Martha Wells’s
Fugitive Telemetry is the sixth outing in the award-winning Murderbot Diaries. It forms a prequel to 2020’s
Network Effect – a novel I read four times within a month of it arriving on my doorstep, and delighted in each time.
Fugitive Telemetry is not as substantial a story as
Network Effect: it’s a long novella rather than a novel, and so it packs rather less in. It’s also a little bit less compelling, for where most of the other Murderbot stories are in the action-adventure mode,
Today, a quartet of publicists and marketers from the Tor family of imprints (Tor Books, Tordotcom Publishing, Tor Teen, Nightfire, and Forge) took to Crowdcast to give readers a preview of what’s coming to bookshelves next year. From a new Murderbot tale to Nghi Vo’s take on an American classic to not just one but two books from Charlie Jane Anders, there’s a lot to look forward to reading in 2021. You can watch the panel here, or read the highlights below!
Publicist Lauren Anesta, marketing manager Isa Caban, publicist Libby Collins, and marketing manager Rachel Taylor took turns enthusing about next year’s list, with highlights from January to August here’s a month by month breakdown!