A Review of Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

By



Fugitive Telemetry is not the best book in the Murderbot Diaries series. Fans of Murderbot will not care; they get to spend more time with Murderbot! Let me say it again- Murderbot! The funnest, murderiest, nicest robot in the universe, even with the anxiety disorder and the aversion to human feelings of all kinds. 


When I discovered last week that my public library had a copy of Martha Wells’ newest Murderbot book, I got in my non-robot car and drove over. I looked on the shelf in Science Fiction. It wasn’t there. I looked in General Fiction (because human error, right?). It wasn’t there. I looked in the new books. Nope. Staff Recs? Nuh-uh. I looked on every endcap and display table. Not present. I started to feel more depressed than usual- what to do? Leave the library and deal with my real life? No way, son. So then I did something crazy; I asked the human librarian for help. I said I’m looking for a book called Fugitive Telemetry and it’s not there! She said, “I can’t spell that. Who’s the author?” Happily, she could spell “Wells” and also “Martha.” After asking me if I had looked all of the places I had already looked (yes, lady, I’m taking this very seriously. I love Murderbot.), she found it in the back! And that’s how great the character of Murderbot is. I just finished Fugitive Telemetry and I’m wondering what next? Maybe drive to Martha Wells’ house and ask if she has any chapters finished for the next book and see if she would like for me to come in and proof-read them for her?


Murderbot, aka SecUnit, whom we all came to know first in All Systems Red, is still on Preservation. This time it is working in Preservation Station, and while still providing security for Dr. Mensah, SecUnit is contracting with Station Security to help solve a murder (aka an unusual breach of station security). The plot is not as complex or interesting as usual, and there is less fighting than usual, but all of the most important elements are there:  the paranoia about GrayCris agents seeking revenge and imperiling Mensah and friends, the seriousness and ultra-competence of Murderbot when handling all things security, the angst about human emotions. Murderbot fans will enjoy it, non- Murderbot fans will do whatever the heck it is they waste their lives doing, and there it is.


Other helpful reviews:

By Jason Sheehan Review: 'Fugitive Telemetry,' By Martha Wells : NPR

By Kibby Robinson Review: Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells | The Nerd Daily


Q&A with Martha Wells:

By Jeff Spry Exclusive Q&A: Sci-fi author Martha Wells talks about her latest Murderbot novella, 'Fugitive Telemetry' | Space


Avid reader.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Review of Moneyball: the art of winning an unfair game by Michael Lewis

By
I’m an American;  so even though Moneyball was published in 2003, I was totally unaware of it until 2011, when the movie of the same name was released (yes, I read books sometimes, but I’m still pretty ignorant). Moneyball is one of my favorite movies. It’s about math (which isn’t my absolute favorite) and baseball (which I’m not all of that interested in, except as a way to spend time outdoors with friends, beer, and snacks), but I don’t even care. It’s also about one (or two, or a few) smart human trying to do something intelligent while surrounded by dumb humans who desperately want to thwart them.  It doesn’t get any more real or any more dramatic than that. In Moneyball (the book) we learn, of course, many things which were not revealed to us onscreen, but the most interesting facets of Michael Lewis’s book are the revelations about the people involved. Bill James, who was portrayed on the big screen as a caricature- security guard at a pork and beans factory who is also a genius
Read more

A Review of Ernest Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa

By
I’m not sure how important, in the modern world, killing animals is, when trying to prove your manhood to anyone else. B’wana Hemingway clearly has his own ideas on the subject. Green Hills of Africa , originally published in 1935, is a brutal slog of an oddly defined thought experiment. The author implies, in a brief foreword, that it is a novel, but claims that “Unlike many novels, none of the characters or incidents in this book is imaginary.” This is a good example of the dry and incisive Hemingway sense of humor (clearly he thinks that some novels contain characters and incidents which are, while purporting to be fictional, in fact real. And he seems to disapprove). Hemingway states that he (he refers to himself as “the writer”) has tried “to write an absolutely true book” in order to see if the product can “compete with a work of fiction.” Emphasis on compete .  Because while the ostensible subject of the book (the “story”?) is how Hemingway, his wife, and some friends went on a
Read more

A Review of Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

By
“Who would have thought saving the world would be so boring?” thinks Dr. Ryland Grace, the protagonist of Andy Weir’s newest novel. Nobody who reads Project Hail Mary would think so. Employing the same strategem of interspersing scenes from space with scenes from Earth (in this case they are flashbacks)  that he did to such marvelous effect in The Martian , Weir has created another New York Times bestseller (as I write, it is currently number fifteen on the Hardcover Fiction list after fifteen weeks). The sun, as in the 2007 Danny Boyle film Sunshine , is losing energy. If this goes unchecked, of course, ecological disaster and mass extinction are not far behind. And this time just nuking the sun isn’t going to solve anything. In fact, the solution needs to be discovered outside of the solar system, and it needs to be discovered fast. The clock is running out and so the quarterbacks of Earth have this one last chance to heave a pass towards the end-zone. And far away from the Earth, so
Read more