Platform Decay by Martha Wells is #8 in The Murderbot Diaries series. The latest instalment was published in May this year. I’m a big fan of this series and you can find reviews about other books on this blog. The protagonist is a Security Robot, or SecUnit, who has managed to hack his own governor module, giving him control over his own actions. As a result he goes on a journey of self actuation. Perfect in this age of AI!

There was nothing I could do about it now, so I watched episode 487 of Sanctuary Moon and tried to pretend none of this was happening.

Over the course of the series, Murderbot has been on an emotional maturing journey – from being horrified by humans and socially anxious (All Systems Red), running away from any mention of emotions (Network Effect) to PTSD (Systems Collapse). In Platform Decay, Murderbot has installed a repaired risk assessment module and a mental health module that provides regular emotion checks. 

Emotion check: If we ran into any human murderers they had better be heavily armed, because I am in a bad fucking mood.

Murderbot is on a rescue mission with another SecUnit named Three to extract Dr. Mensah’s family, including children – ick. Things go a bit pear shaped and becomes way more complicated when a dying enemy asks SecUnit to save their five person crew as well.

Yes, getting one group of humans out and then going back for another go would be exponentially more risky for me and the chances that I would (a) fail, and (b) get dismantled and my parts redistributed in a corporate factory with my organic tissues melted and thrown away like so much garbage were high. (I didn’t want to look at those numbers but the pings from risk assessment were increasingly urgent.) (You know, I think I liked risk assessment better before I tried to fix it, when I knew for sure it was full of shit.)

Murderbot’s internal monologues and external quirks are as dry, hilarious and endearing as ever, and there is plenty of hi jinx and action. Platform Decay is a fun, fast paced novella.

Emotion check: Having someone else support your bad decision feels kind of good.

If you are interested in becoming acquainted with Murderbot I recommend you start with book #1 All Systems Red as you will probably get hooked.