Robot makeover

I'm programmed to be paranoid.

Martha Wells, Artificial Condition

I loved Isaac Asimov's novels and short stories about robots. They centered around the Three Laws of Robotics, which seemed simple enough, but in Asimov's imagination led to a variety of perplexing ethical questions and plot twists.

Now Martha Wells has raised the stakes in her Murderbot Diaries series of novels, the second of which, Artificial Condition (2018), I have just read. Where Asimov just had humans and robots to deal with, Wells imagines an even more complex future. There are simple robots. There are robots, or constructs, with a little bit of human tissue, brains and feelings mixed in. There are augmented humans who are partly robotic. And then there are humans.

Murderbot, as it calls itself because it was designed to protect humans by often killing other humans, is a construct that has become a free agent by disabling the governor that allows it to be controlled. Yet it is human enough to feel compelled to help humans who engage its services, even though it would much rather just watch television. In this novel, Murderbot helps three foolish humans trying to retrieve important files from a woman who wants to kill them.

Murderbot undergoes surgery to allow it to pass as an augmented human. To accomplish this it allies reluctantly with a robot that controls a spaceship and is capable of doing things Murderbot cannot do alone.

This short novel, like its predecessor, All Systems Red and like all those Isaac Asimov stories, fires the reader's imagination as it entertains with an exciting tale.