It’s not that often that a Prometheus-award-recognized novel or story is adapted to the large or small screen.
So it’s newsworthy, as well as something of a relief, to report that the Apple TV+ new streaming series of Murderbot is pretty entertaining.
Martha Wells’ Murderbot stories and novels have won Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards, and have been nominated for the Prometheus Award, where her first set of novellas was recognized as a Best Novel finalist. So hopes were high for the TV series, which began streaming in May.
Based on the suspenseful and intelligent half-hour episodes of its first season, Apple TV’s series seems faithful to Well’s acclaimed series of novellas and novels about a rogue security robot who secretly gains free will.
HIGH HOPES FOR WELL’S AWARD-WINNING BOOKS
In fact, many science fiction fans have been looking forward to the TV series, following the extraordinary success and recognition that Wells has achieved.
All Systems Red won the 2018 Nebula Award for Best Novella and the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Novella. The three following novellas had enough votes for the 2019 Hugo Award final ballot but Wells declined all nominations except for Artificial Condition, which won.
Network Effect won the 2021 Nebula Award for Best Novel, the 2021 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and the 2021 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. The Murderbot Diaries won the 2021 Hugo Award for Best Series.
Wells was first recognized within the Prometheus Awards when The Murderbot Diaries – combined into one nomination from the four novellas All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol and Exit Strategy – became a 2019 Best Novel finalist. (Wells noted in 2017 that the four novellas have “an overarching story, with the fourth one bringing the arc to a conclusion.)
The tightly linked series of four fast-paced novellas charts the emergence of humanity, empathy, self-awareness and free will in an android, whose origins are partly biological and partly cybernetic. The android, who guiltily dubs themself “Murderbot” because of their past acts of violence while enslaved, fights for their independence but also is motivated to save lives by growing awareness of the value of human life and human rights in an interstellar future of social cooperation through free markets driven by contracts, insurance-bond penalties, and competing corporations.
Wells was recognized again when Network Effect: A Murderbot Novel was nominated in 2021 for the Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
PERSONHOOD, BODILY AUTONOMY AND ESCAPING SLAVERY
Several interwoven libertarian themes – about personhood, escaping slavery and achieving bodily autonomy – are dramatized to different degrees and in somewhat different ways in all of the Murderbot stories.
Happily, such themes are made explicit in Murderbot’s private thoughts in the very first TV episode of the series, as Murderbot finishes hacking his programming to free himself.
The Murderbot series deftly balances action, suspense, drama and humor in charting the metaphorical coming of age and awareness of its distinctive central character.
The series wouldn’t be anywhere as fascinating or compelling if we couldn’t hear the private thoughts of Murderbot, a media-obsessed private security cyborg who must tackle dangerous assignments while hiding its newly acquired autonomy.
Their real thoughts contrast ironically, and often amusingly, with their functional and highly restrained dialogue with the humans that Murderbot is assigned to protect in the Preservation Alliance science team, led by the caring Dr. Mensah (Noma Dumezweni.)
Simultaneously fascinated by human beings and appalled at their weakness, Murderbot struggles to figure out his niche in this future interstellar world, where many human colonies have been established on different planets – some lost but recently rediscovered – and a mega-corporation with government-like powers often crosses the line between the legitimate voluntary and social behavior of free enterprise and the evils of coercion.
ALEXANDER SKARSGARD POIGNANT AS MURDERBOT
Alexander Skarsgard stars as Murderbot in the TV series, which he executive produces, with Wells as a consulting producer.
Skarsgard (whose breakthrough role was vampire Eric Northman in the TV series True Blood) fits his titular role in Murderbot convincingly and with poignant resonance. His articulated voice captures the sense of a cyborg while subtly evoking the loneliness and confusion of a self-aware being who’s only recently been “born.”
Meanwhile, Skarsgard’s laconic, methodical and forceful movements make you believe you’re watching a cyborg, not a human actor.
While Murderbot is an “it” that transcends gender, Skarsgard’s performance conveys hints of the stoical masculinity that stretches back to the era of Gary Cooper and John Wayne. It’s a sympathetic and strangely tender performance, too, revealing the protective aspects of heroes who follow a strict code of honor.
As Murderbot struggles with his new self-awareness while trying to do his job and learn how to relate with a hapless crew of well-meaning humans, the TV series intriguingly blends human qualities with the strangeness of a well-imagined and visually convincing science fiction future.
Murderbot’s private thoughts add much to the episodes, especially humor, along a deepening psychological drama and mystery. Will Murderbot figure out his place as a stranger in this strange new land? Will he decide to exercise his free will in a dark direction, and kill innocent humans?
Even so, the TV series falls a bit short of the inherent interiority of Wells’ stories and novels. That’s not surprising. After all, movies, on the big or small screen, tend to do best when they move – with concrete images and propulsive actions. Those the Murderbot series offers in abundance.
Yet, Murderbot readers may find themselves missing the greater and deeper streams of consciousness that Wells achieves in print. In particular, one aspect of the stories – Murderbot’s ongoing struggles to continue hacking his code covertly – seem to be in short shrift in much of the first season, perhaps because that’s set up early on as a fait accompli.
Still, overall, the TV series offers ample pleasures for Murderbot fans.
Besides Murderbot’s social ineptitude, one of the funniest aspects of the series are its show-within-a-show glimpses of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, the streaming sf soap opera that is Murderbot’s all-consuming favorite series to watch on his internal monitors.
Styled as a hammy, cliched and over-the-top retro TV series in the color-saturated style of the original Star Trek series, Sanctuary Moon is cast with such comedy stalwarts as John Cho (as actor Eknie Jef Chem, playing lovestruck Captain Hossein), Jack McBrayer (as actor Breillor MocJac, playing Navigation Officer HoHordööp-Sklanch) and Clark Gregg (as actor Arletty, laying Lieutenant Kulleruu).
It’s a hoot.
It will be interesting to see how Murderbot continues to struggle and grow along with this Apple TV+ series – which promises to become one of the better science fiction series of recent years. Personally, I look forward to season two.
Here’s an amusing Youtube preview advertising the Murderbot series.
So far, within the 46 years of the Prometheus Award, only one TV series has been recognized: Patrick McGoohan’s surreal 1960s classic The Prisoner, inducted in 2002 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame.
(Serenity, another TV series beloved by freedom-loving sf fans and individualists, was recognized indirectly, via writer/director Joss Whedon’s subsequent film version, which received a Special Prometheus Award in 2006.)
It’s probably a bit too early to tell whether Murderbot will ever approach that level of imagination, visual artistry and libertarian theme. But this is a TV series to watch – and continue watching.
ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS AND THE LFS
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, join the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
Libertarian futurists understand that culture matters. We believe that literature and the arts can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future. In some ways, culture can be even more influential and powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other’s rights, human dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.
* Prometheus winners: For a full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including in the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website. This page includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of more than 100 past winners since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.
* Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies, Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,” an essay in the international magazine Quillette that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.
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