“Anyone who thinks machine intelligences don’t have emotions needs to be in this very uncomfortable room right now.”

After four novellas, Network Effect was the first time I had to settle into a full-length Murderbot story. Until this point, the books moved quickly. Most could be finished in a couple of sittings. This one had room to stretch. There were more characters, a new corporate entity Barish-Estranza, more moving parts and a threat that felt larger than anything the series had attempted before.

And Murderbot has to encounter relationships. He has seen the long running family dramas. But as he says, they are only twenty percent true. In reality, it is far more complicated. He has his humans – the team from PreservationAux, where he now lives, “temporarily”. And those humans have a leader called Dr. Mensah. And she has family.

The book opens up with Murderbot’s sea research vessel under attack by raiders. On the vessel, we have Thiago, who is the marital partner of Dr. Mensah’s brother. And there is Amena, one of Dr. Mensah’s children. And our favourite SecUnit is there to provide security.

He does what he does best. Saves his humans from the raiders, while observing how stupid those same humans are in face of danger.  He explains the attitude of his past human clients on a spectrum of – we need more security, while being surrounded by SecUnits to let’s go in this not so welcoming dark cave alone, and we don’t need a pesky SecUnit. Preservation team, in his estimation, is far to the right of this spectrum.

And then they get attacked again. We don’t have Dr. Mensah leading the expedition. In this book it is Arada, and she is closest to Mensah in her attitude towards Murderbot. So, she tries to save everyone during this second round of attack. But Amena and Murderbot get captured by a large ship that looks like ART. And then Murderbot realizes it is ART.

And his friend ART seems to be dead, and in its place there is some other system running the ship. ART’s humans are missing as well.

And you see that it has started thinking in terms of family and friends. There are people who trust it, people it worries about and people whose safety influences its decisions. Murderbot would probably object to describing any of this as a community. It spends a remarkable amount of energy insisting that humans are exhausting. Unfortunately for it, the evidence has become increasingly difficult to ignore.

Even though, it declares its escapist tendencies almost with pride.

“I was watching episodes of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon again, because there wasn’t time to start anything new before we reached the station. (Being interrupted isn’t nearly as annoying when I already know the story).”

Even though, by this time in the series of books, we know that he is most in his element when he is in mission mode. Also, when I read this I realized that it has become almost the same for me. Any new “content” requires a time commitment. I do watch some movies or series from time to time, but there is enough out there which is in my watch list and I don’t have time. From The Sopranos to Breaking Bad to The Wire and a lot of others. The wishlist is long, but the time is scarce. And when that happens, and a new window of thirty minutes opens up, I watch a rerun of Office Office. Being interrupted isn’t nearly as annoying when I already know the story

Anyway, back to the book, As you know, the title is Network Effect. It made me pause and took me back to economics lessons. In economics, a network effect describes a situation where something becomes more valuable as more participants join the network. A telephone is useful because other people possess telephones. Social media platforms depend on connections between users. Individual nodes matter, but the relationships between them often create the real value.

Here, it is about network of relationships.

The construct that once wanted isolation now exists within a growing network of relationships. Those relationships repeatedly shape its choices. They influence its priorities. They pull it into situations it would otherwise avoid. And while Murderbot often complains about this development, it rarely acts as though it truly wishes to escape it.

ART sits at the centre of this idea. When we met ART in Artificial Condition, it was masquerading as a transport vessel, without any crew. It spoke about its humans. Murderbot actually scoffed at the idea of a bot being that attached to its humans in that book. In Network Effect, the attachment is in full display.

That line about emotions and machine intelligence at the top of this post, that comes from a section where it has been revealed that ART kidnapped Murderbot to help rescue himself and his humans. But during that kidnap, Murderbot’s humans were in danger. And that is a line that you don’t cross with Murderbot. So, emotions. Plenty of them.  

And you see that even ART is defined as much by relationships as by intelligence. For all its computational capabilities, it remains deeply invested in specific individuals. It worries, intervenes and it forms attachments. Like Murderbot, it repeatedly chooses involvement over detachment.

Speaking of networks, I was fascinated by the contamination that takes over ART. A relic from the pre-Corporation Rim era, built around neural tissue rather than conventional programming, it is capable of overwhelming a ship as powerful as ART. Perhaps I am reading too much into it, but in a world increasingly run by artificial intelligences, I found it amusing that the threat arrives in the form of another network altogether.

By the time we reach Network Effect, Murderbot is no longer alone. It still talks as though isolation would be preferable. It still complains about humans with remarkable consistency. Yet almost every major decision it makes is now shaped by people it cares about.

What I enjoyed most was that Martha Wells never turns this into a sentimental lesson. Nobody delivers speeches about community. Nobody announces the moral of the story. Instead, the idea emerges through action. Through rescues and arguments. And through people showing up for one another when things become difficult. Even Murderbot’s friendships are expressed less through declarations than through behaviour.

By the end of the novel, I found myself thinking about how far the character had travelled without really noticing it. Murderbot would probably insist that none of this was intentional.

ART would almost certainly disagree.