SecUnit Murderbot, the security android with a mind of its own, returns in SYSTEM COLLAPSE which picks up directly after the end of the brilliant NETWORK EFFECT.  If you have not read any of the earlier books in the Murderbot Diaries series, you will get the picture starting with this one, but the characters and setup will be unfamiliar. So just go with each scene and you’ll find it’s not as complicated as it looks.

Ratthi, Iris, Tarik, and Karime from the University of Mihira and New Tideland have arrived at a lost colony planet in far space. Following a scattering of the original colonists, who were trying to terraform an inhospitable surface, some kind of alien virus infected the machinery programming. The first thing Murderbot needs to do is neutralise a giant agricultural bot that is terrorising the team. After that, presuming they survive, they’ll try negotiating with the various tribes.

The amoral Barish-Estranza corporation is here, too, and wants to make profits. Whether that’s salvaging machine parts or strip-mining, or enslaving inhabitants for mining other worlds. The university folks are bringing information and help to the abandoned colonists on the planet, who might have alien contamination. Situation difficult, as always.

After a while, I realised that I was reading Pandemic literature. The SecBot is wandering a dark lonely enclosed space with no outside views and a fear of viral contamination. Few characters other than the team are present, and they don’t seem talkative. The outdoors is uninhabitable and dangerous. Murderbot is suffering from delayed shock due to prior adventures and keeps almost shutting down or blanking out, with only a minimal drone feed (the best part of NETWORK EFFECT, in my opinion) and no communications with ART, the AI running the transport ship Perihelion. I had to wait a while, but the SecUnit got back to doing what it needed to do to protect its humans.  

The autonomous robot, which likes to focus on media entertainment while humans are busy doing human stuff, is not conversational but still manages to swear a lot. Fans of the multi-award-winning Murderbot Diaries have been following its progress since overriding its governor module and starting to make choices. Martha Wells seems to be making the bot more human, by giving it new failings and new reactions to stress. SYSTEM COLLAPSE is a worthy addition to the series, with some lighter moments to balance the SecBot’s useful paranoia.