This book is an exciting sequel to All Systems Red and is a short, fast-paced read.
Murderbot is back! And is on a mission to the mining colony, where it turned murderous. It hopes to find answers to help it understand why it did what it did and whether it poses a future danger to other humans.
Amusing Bits
This book introduces ART - a hyper-intelligent advanced AI Bot that controls a Transport Ship and assists Murderbot in its investigation. In a way, its character reminded me of Star Trek TNG’s Data. As an AI construct, ART does not have a lot of comprehension of understanding human nuances, although it occasionally transports human crew.
The overbearing AI’s interaction with Murderbot provides humor. It certainly feels like a deviation from the somewhat self-deprecating humor from the first book.
You have a weapons system.
ART repeated, For debris deflection.
I was starting to wonder just what kind of university owned ART.
An Implanted Messaging System
The first book introduced “feeds’ as a subliminal way in which humans, AI constructs, and bots interacted with each other. I didn’t give it much thought when reading that first book, but it kind of stood out to me in this book as some awesome sci-fi tech. I haven’t read many sci-fi books to know if this is derivative, but it certainly felt original to me.
Feeds are equivalent if you had slack implanted in your brain and could control that UI subliminally.
It also reminded me of the early days of text messaging with cell phones. There was an article explaining how teenagers (at the time) were more inclined to communicate with each other over text messages even though they were in the same room. However, in this book, this technology is smartly used to augment voice - it is used for sharing video, images, or even for communicating incognito in dire situations.