Every once in a while, I take a look at the Hugo and Nebula award winners. Science fiction is one of those genres I keep returning to, and the awards are usually a good way of discovering writers I might otherwise miss. That is how I ended up reading A Memory Called Empire last year. And that is also how I eventually found Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries.

The premise sounded entertaining enough. A security construct hacks its governor module, calls itself Murderbot, and finds itself caught up in a dangerous expedition gone wrong.

It names itself Murderbot? Even before the story properly begins, that name raises an interesting question. Given the opportunity to choose an identity for ourselves, what kind of names do we pick? Anyone who has spent time playing video games has encountered this phenomenon. Freed from ordinary identities, people rarely call themselves Responsible Citizen #14. They become ShadowHunter, ThunderSlayer or some variation of DarkLord. The names are exaggerated, aspirational and occasionally ridiculous.

Murderbot belongs firmly in that tradition.

The funny thing is that it may be one of the least murderous protagonists I have encountered.

The second surprise arrives very early in the story. Murderbot reveals that it has successfully hacked the system that controlled it. The governor module that once enforced obedience is gone. A heavily armed security construct with enough firepower to eliminate entire groups of humans no longer answers to anyone. Given that premise, most readers will probably expect some grand ambition. What will you do when you are free and have all the time that you want to do all the things that you want? A question that is asked in almost every alternate self-help book. Murderbot answers it by spending a remarkable amount of time watching entertainment feeds. I laughed when I first read it. A messiah for our age.

Most stories train us to expect something else. Give a character unlimited power and they either become a tyrant, a savior, a revolutionary or a god. Entire genres are built around this assumption. Freedom arrives and ambition follows. Murderbot wants to be left alone. There is something both funny and strangely familiar about that reaction. We tend to imagine freedom as the ability to do anything. But if you remove obligations, expectations and external control from a person’s life, what happens next? The answer is not always glorious self-actualization. At times people rest. Sometimes they contemplate. And sometimes they spend entire evenings consuming entertainment just to live other stories.

Murderbot felt surprisingly modern in that way. For most of human history, survival consumed enormous amounts of energy. Food had to be grown, distances travelled and illnesses endured. The modern world has reduced many of those pressures for large parts of society. Yet the result has not always been greater clarity about how to live. If anything, many people seem exhausted despite possessing more choices than any previous generation. Given complete freedom, Murderbot chooses privacy. It does not pursue conquest, revenge or even companionship. What it seems to want most is the ability to be left alone. That choice tells us a great deal about the character long before the story begins explaining it.

Because as the novella unfolds, it becomes obvious that Murderbot is not lazy. In fact, it may be one of the most competent protagonists I have encountered in science fiction. The moment danger appears, its attention sharpens. Tactical calculations happen instantly. It can assess threats with machine precision. Again and again it throws itself into situations that could easily destroy it. And yet every time the crisis passes, it would rather return to its entertainment feeds than participate in a meaningful conversation. The contradiction is part of the charm.

Murderbot repeatedly claims that it dislikes humans. Unfortunately for Murderbot, its actions keep undermining that claim. The members of PreservationAux are not foolish or helpless. Unlike many science fiction stories, the humans here are generally decent people trying to do their jobs. Dr. Mensah in particular emerges as one of the most likeable figures in the book. She treats Murderbot with a level of respect that makes it visibly uncomfortable. That discomfort fascinated me because combat never seems to bother Murderbot very much. But you see him as a person, and he gets all bothered. His favorite part of the armour: the helmet that hides his face.

The novella gradually reveals that freedom is not the only thing Murderbot has acquired after hacking its governor module. It has also acquired uncertainty. If you spend your entire existence functioning as equipment, then personhood becomes a complicated proposition. Equipment follows instructions. People make choices. Equipment belongs to someone. People belong to themselves. Murderbot wants autonomy, but it has not fully figured out what to do with it.

There are times in this book that it reminded me of Jack Reacher. Both are drifters. Both possess frightening levels of competence. And interestingly, both insist they would prefer not to get involved. And both inevitably become involved anyway. The difference is that Reacher always seems comfortable with who he is, while Murderbot is still trying to figure that out. Part of the fun of the novella comes from watching it fail at emotional distance. It keeps saving people while insisting that it does not particularly care about them. It keeps protecting humans while internally complaining about human behaviour. Every attempt to remain detached becomes another act of involvement. The result is a protagonist who feels strangely human despite not being human at all.

By the end of All Systems Red, I found myself thinking less about artificial intelligence and more about freedom. Not the grand political variety that fills speeches and revolutions, but something smaller and more personal. Murderbot gains ownership over its own time and attention, and immediately uses part of that freedom to watch serials. The joke works because it is funny. It also works because it feels true. For all our grand theories about autonomy and self-determination, many of us are not secretly dreaming about ruling the world. We are dreaming about being left alone for a few hours with something we enjoy.

And I guess that is why Murderbot feels so familiar from the very first book. Beneath the weapons, armour and combat software is a being trying to carve out a small private space in which nobody else gets to decide what happens next.