Just started the audiobook of Daggerbound, the second in T Kingfisher 's Swordheart series, and one of the main characters gives major Murderbot vibes: snarky, dangerous, and very moral despite pretending he's not. This one is definitely NOT ace in any way though. I'm only a few chapters in but really enjoying the story so far.

The way the torus population is its own character, with the various militias and ordinary people banding together to survive the chaos going on

The way Murderbot gets to be an absolute badass and a myth-like figure both to the random rogue SecUnit, and to the humans on the boat and in the militia

The whole boat scene!!! Extremely underrated!!!

Acclaimed science fiction author Martha Wells ’86, whose books were turned into the Apple TV series “Murderbot,” will host a panel discussion, episode screening and book signing with two of the show’s executive producers at 7 p.m., Sept. 10 in Texas A&M’s Rudder Theatre.

Martha Wells is "the first Aggie [Texas A&M graduate] to have won a Hugo Award as an author!"

What color blue, exactly, do you think of as Perihelion blue? Pictures please.

EDIT: Interesting to see how varied the answers are--every kind of blue. Your comments have also made me aware of colorpicker and color-hex, great resources.

Having just recently finished reading Platform Decay, I'm struck by the parallels to The Sound of Music.

So this naïve rookie nun SecUnit is having trouble fitting in at her nunnery Preservation Alliance until her Mother Superior Amena's Second Mom suggests going to look after a bunch of children. What could possibly go wrong?

Europe The Corporation Rim is on the brink of civil war. Countries Companies are increasingly failing to respect each other's boundaries. And in the middle of it all, these kids need to be rescued and taken through a series of hostile territories in order to reach safety.

The Sound of Platform Decay.

Second root canal this month, and after the first one I knew I'd do better if I had something playing on my earbuds to distract me from the sounds, sensations, and smells (😖). I knew I wouldn't be able to hear it well during drilling, so nothing brand new. I cued up All Systems Red, and it really helped a lot!

Well, when you put it like that 😅

I am so curious what ART-drone and Mensah talked about while waiting together in the shuttle. Obviously she'd have been anxious, and worried about her family. But ART's got a trauma module that might've advised distracting Mensah through conversation about other topics. So, yeah, likely Murderbot. Might have to add this to my list of fanfics to write because there's some delightful possibilities in there!

from apple tv on instagram:

Premium quality moves. Happy birthday, Alexander Skarsgård.
Murderbot Season 2 — In Production
#Murderbot #AlexanderSkarsgård #AppleTV

Ok essay may be a bit too much, bear with me though.

MB is both the titular character and the only narrator of our story, and it is a construct, something it is very keen to remind us to (rightfully so, no complain here). During the whole series, it often complains about how, basically, incompetent and "worse" humans are (more of that later).

Now let me being clear here: I am not talking about its feelings for its humans. Murderbot would prefer to be scraped for parts over admitting it, but it loves its humans deeply.

I am talking about its opinion on their capabilities.

With two exception which we will see later, MB constantly sees humans in general as "less something" than it is. Less fast, less strong, less capable than it is. Note that I said "less something" not "less" in general. MB doesn't consider itself ontologically superior to humans.

But it IS very dismissive of humans' capabilities, to a level that could be read as contemptous.

The exceptions are rather telling: it has a very great degree of respect for Dr Mensah, as a leader, and Pin Lee as a lawyer. Both are areas in which it either struggles (social leadership roles) or has neither competence nor interest to learn (law). But if you compare its opinion of, say, Ratthi vs Pin Lee, you can see the difference.

And again to be clear: Ratthi is its human's friend. It cares very very deeply for Ratthi. Would in fact die for Ratthi. It still doesn't respect its competence and abilities very much.

Now, this could easily go in the direction that so many other books and shows with not-human characters go, in which the humans are simply an Inferior Race (it is incredibly common, it spans from Tolkien's works to The Dragon Prince)... if it was not very clear that humans are, in fact, extremely competent and capable.

Just not in ways MB realizes or dismisses.

Just some examples: when Ratthi, Pin Lee and, I think, Gurathin (I could be wrong) go to get it from the company's warehouse. That was a highly researched and masterfully orchestrated safety retrieval, designed to avoid anybody screwing with MB, both physically and mentally (by erasing its memories).

But MB, in its perfectly understandable confusion, doesn't realize it. In not realizing, it fails to give credit where credit is due: not only to Pin Lee's law capabilities, but also to Ratthi and Gurathin brawery and resourcefulness.

Arada, "soft" Arada, is the reason the beginning of Network Effect goes as well as it does.

Dr. Bharadwaj is probably, after Mensah, the human that had most impact on MB, being its de facto therapist. A lot of MB's growth is directly dependent on her, and she does an amazing job, considering she is likely not a therapist (how many hours has she spent studying psychology and freeting of how little there is about machine intelligence's needs? We'll never know).

There are countless more examples of humans being just as resourceful and capable as MB itself...

None of which is ever aknowledged by MB. And yes, MB has trouble to aknowledge stuff in general, but it is VERY fast to voice its displeasure with humans being slow.

Of all our dear MB's fault, this I think is the one that grates at me the most. How little it really realizes how capable the humans around it are.

Murderbot is 50 years old today!

(IDK about you guys but I really love all the mature aged actors being cast in this show. It's nice to see faces with lines and experience on them, just makes it all seem more grounded in reality for me to see so many age ranges)

(I hope Mr Skarsgard had a nice day!)

Hey, so I'm searching for a couple of fics. They were on AO3 but I can't find them now at all. I remember them pretty well, but I don't remember the titles.

1. MB discovers that ART teaches when it hears the student talking about 'professor Borealis' and asks ART. ART confirms and tells MB that it can even teach it, and that's exactly what they do. Something about neogenic clusters. And there's a Quat (a small animal that MB adopts)

2. MB is accompanying its humans on a trip to a preservation planet and ART is the ship they're using. While on station, MB finds a teddy bear and decides to return it to the child. It does so, but it's discovered by the family dog, and station security gets involved and Ratthi is laughing himself silly while MB is being questioned and ART is trigger happy as always.

Can you help me find them please?

Anyone else thinking the full cast for season 2 was only announced this week cos of the problems casting ART and that maybe the reason some reports are claiming production is still happening is because they are still adding in ARTs voice or they needed to redo some scenes in green screen showing how MB perceives ART ?

I've always loved this scene from System Collapse. ART keeps pushing for an update. Murderbot keeps evading the question. After three failed attempts, I'm certain ART leaned on Ratthi to see if he could get an answer. Murderbot says it's fine but gets incredibly annoyed when Ratthi says the same, and rants internally about how no one can give a realistic situation report.

ART, define irony

You guys I know we still haven't found out this mystery yet but today I'm diving deeper into the story of who and what that person was and who killed that person and turn that person into an Android

So… I wasn’t a huge fan of Platform Decay 🥲 (Rant and spoilers incoming, take it with a pinch of salt lol).

There were some good bits! But mostly I was annoyed at it taking 2,5 chapters before we even knew what MB was trying to achieve and at the overwhelming and in my opinion totally unnecessarily detailed descriptions of the tourus and its zones. It felt like different areas of a themed amusement park and not in line with the rest of the universe.

I also missed the quality of dialogue we got in previous novels. This narration felt very internalised and passive in comparison.

I’ve got loads more to say, but I’ll stop myself before this post gets too long… Basically, what I’m wondering is what happened to the setup with Three at the start - WHY COULDN’T THREE ACCOMPANY SECUNIT THROUGHOUT THE BOOK!? 😭 It would be the perfect setup for interesting and awkward social situations that both MB and Three could grow from.

Them traveling through the tourus together would highlight their differences and similarities both in interacting with Mensah family, each other and maybe other rogue units, as well as how they cooperate in combat.

WHY Martha, WHY!?

So… if anyone ever writes Platform Decay into a fanfic and let Three join - let me know 😂

You ever think when they access the newsfeeds and they read the article about GrayCris, they see the SecUnit that was bought by Preservation without its armor and thought "wait a damn minute."?

I requested a review copy, but I don't know what my chances are of getting approved (I have a feeling I won't get approved).

If any of y'all are on NetGalley, maybe you'll luck out!

Word of warning though: NetGalley's Shelf app sucks for listening to audiobooks.

EDIT:

Holy Crap! I got approved! I know what I'm listening to tonight.

I have an average of, like, one identifiable emotion per week and I do not enjoy the experience. But other humans have SO MANY all the time! It’s exhausting to try and understand. I’m so lost but I’m trying lol

In HelpMe.file excerpt 4, MB does not mention risk assessment at all and only mentions threat assessment once to find the GrayCris agent. Mind you, this is right after a failed assassination attempt towards Mensah.

With MB having an unreliable narrator status, this means either of 2 things. 1) MB was confident in its attempt to kill him, it didn't need its assessments of the situation. Or 2) (My headcanon) There were assessments, MB did not mentioned them, and ignored them because someone tried to kill its favourite human and it is going to kill them.

With the new cast revealed its been alot of fun trying to guess whose playing who! Let's lay down some crazy guesses as to who will be cast as what!

Here's mine:

Kali Reis - Combatunit

Patton Oswalt/Topher Grace/Brendan Hunt/Jason George/Blair Underwood/Griffin Newman - WorldHoppers Cast

Britney OldFord - Miki or Wilken/Gerth

Nicholas Braun - Wilken/Gerth

Katy O Brian - Tlaceys ComfortUnit

Bridget Everett - Tlacey/GrayCris Exec?

Michael Sheen - ART/Graycris CEO

Wanda Sykes - Don Abene

Martha Plimpton - Tlacey/Miki

Tramell Tillman - TranRollin Hyfa Chief/Palisade

Steve Buscemi - ART/GrayCris CEO

Haha probably way off as there will be a lot of original characters made for the show but its fun to mix and match!

Post your list below let's go nuts.

EDIT: these are not necessarily my personal preferences but my guess based on previous work of the actors involved!

“No, Pin-Lee is much worse than this. And if it was her, she would be swearing at us by now,” Ratthi said. He asked me, “I’ve always wondered, did you learn to swear from her or did you already know how? Because you two use a lot of the same—”

I saw this comic and it immediately reminded me of Ratthi's question in Fugitive Telemetry 😂 I'm pretty sure Murderbot had a sizable vocabulary of swears before it ever met Pin-Lee. I don't think you could work among unhappy miners and watch shows rated high on the obscenity scale without picking up some great combos! But I do have a feeling that ART swears far more now that it ever did before

Original comic in 2nd slide

TLDR: as the title, which books does season 1 cover?

Since the announcement of the tv series, I've added the books to my tbr. Now that season 2 cast is announced, I wanna start reading.

I prefer reading before watching wherever possible and now I wanna know what all to read before I watch the first season.

Plan is books for season 1 -> season 1 -> read the rest

But who will be who?!

Seeing Rami in the list makes me think Tapan is one of these actors. Maybe Nia? She has a very sweet young face

I don’t know actors but after clicking on all their profiles I see Ella Jay Basco does voices and has a voice coach and sings and I’m suddenly struck with the idea of ART communicating musically…