Apple TV+ has been airing the first season of Murderbot, based on The Murderbot Diaries books by Martha Wells, lo these past several weeks. The finale is set to air this Friday, and Wells has a gift ready for fans of the original books: a brand new novelette set in the Murderbot universe called “Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy.”
Murderbot is about a security robot, called a SecUnit, who hacks its own governor module, effectively giving itself free will. The problem is that it's not sure what to do with that freedom, so it mostly watches soap operas while attending to the needs of the stupid human meatbags who hired it to protect them on a scientific expedition. That said, Murderbot — that's the name it's given itself — has gotten close to these hippy scientists over the course of the first season. We'll see how their story ends this Friday.
As for the new novelette, you'll be able to read it on Reactor at 10:00 p.m. EST this Thursday night, July 10. The story centers around not Murderbot, but a different machine intelligence named Perihelion, or Peri for short; Peri is a space research and teaching vessel capable of flying into wormholes, and it's having a bit of an existential awakening. You can read a short excerpt here.
Reactor recommends that you not read the novelette until you've read Artificial Condition, the second book in The Murderbot Diaries...but if you want to read it anyway, who's going to stop you? And if you're wondering just what exactly a "novelette" is, it's a piece of fiction that's longer than a short story but shorter than a novella, which itself it shorter than a novel. We're talking around 10,000 words here.
Or you could just watch the TV show. It's been pretty fun so far, and although Apple hasn't confirmed a second season, the signs are looking decent. Also be sure to check out our exclusive interview with author Martha Wells herself:
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