A shy robot

Both my son and grandson loved "The Murderbot Diaries," a series of short sci-fi novels by Martha Wells, so I took their advice and read the first in the series, All Systems Red (2017). Now I'm all aboard.

Can robots be introverted? Well, they can, apparently, if they are part human. And just as the Bionic Man of the old TV series was mostly human with a little bit of electronics filling in the gaps, so this SecUnit has a bit of humanity mixed in with his electronics and metal.

Although officially called a SecUnit, available for rent like a U-Haul truck, our narrator calls himself a murderbot because killing is his purpose when defending his humans.

What his humans don't know is that their SecUnit has a broken governor, meaning that it is actually an independent agent. It follows orders because it wants to, not because it has to. What's more, it is capable of giving orders, which it does when necessary to save lives from a murderous foe on a distant planet.

The adventure of eluding and eventually conquering this unknown enemy proves exciting enough, yet the novel's real appeal lies with its central character. The shy murderbot prefers isolating itself from humans so it can watch the thousands of hours of secretly downloaded video episodes about fictional interplanetary adventures.

When it writes, "Now they knew their murderbot didn't want to be around them any more than they wanted to be around it. I'd given a tiny piece of myself away," our hearts melt, as if it were 100 percent human.