All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Are we all really a little bit Murderbot?

1. What is All Systems Red?

All Systems Red is a soft sci-fi novella by Martha Wells, published in 2017 by Tor. The book centres on Murderbot - a self-actualised cyborg partly composed of cloned human material- that narrates in first person.[8]The text is explicitly anti-corporate (this extends to its publisher; the book is DRM-free), and touches briefly on the medico-legal ethics of cloning and (corporate) slavery. All Systems Red is critically acclaimed, winning  multiple high-profile awards, with particular praise given to the narrative voice of Murderbot itself. The book  is told entirely from Murderbot’s first-person (first-Cyborg?) perspective.  This voice, as well as the character’s  difficulties in relating to humans and understanding human behaviour, has been widely interpreted as an allusion to Autism (including by Tor)[9]. Murderbot as an analogue for neurodiversity is worthy of further exploration, especially as  depictions of Autism in media are often reductionist (Rainman- as a white man who is very good at Maths-is the obvious go-to here). Whilst Murderbot is clearly drawn as a positive depiction of neurodivergence, it also skirts well-trodden Autistic tropes such as savantism and ‘sociopathy’.  This review attempts to diagnose Murderbot with Autism, with the hope of  establishing whether it is usefully conceptualised as a neurodivergent protagonist.  

Murderbot describes itself as "good at murdering"- it also "doesn't care". It informs the reader at the outset that it has hacked its governor module and (briefly) considered exterminating humanity, but now prefers to spend its time consuming “unrealistic” sitcoms. It is contracted to a research group- PreservationAux- to provide security as they catalogue biological data on an unnamed planet. Wells quickly establishes characters and setting, beginning the novel a couple of weeks after the touchdown on the planet, and so leaving the reader to intuit their pre-existing relationships. Needless to say, the apparently safe planet is deemed unsafe by around page 3, as two of the crew- Bharadwaj and Volescu- are half-eaten by a hostile alien. At the outset, Murderbot - which the crew know only as a ‘SecUnit’ is treated explicitly as ‘inhuman’. However, Volescu's (off-book) conversation with Murderbot as he is carried to safety triggers the crew to treat it differently: as more human.

Whilst the team update their view of Murderbot, for instance insisting that it travel with them as a passenger rather than as cargo, the threat increases. The team: Mensah (leader), Ratthi (biologist), Volescu (chemist?), Bharadwaj (enviro tech), Overse (medic), Pin Lee (pilot), and Gurathain (systems),  notice strange errors in their data packets. These  include missing map data and the erasure of pertinent information, such as the existence of the dangerous fauna that nearly ate two of them. Following this discovery, their comms are brought down and they find  they cannot contact DeltFall- a nearby friendly research team. At DeltFall's site, Murderbot finds that the contracted SecUnits have gone rogue and killed everybody. Murderbot subdues them, but one of the rogue Units infects Murderbot with the same killer programming and badly injures it. As PreservationAux works to save it, they inadvertently discover its self-conceptualisation as ‘Murderbot’, as well as the reasons why: it’s so “good at murdering” because it went rogue and killed 47 people in a mining colony. The crew are torn, but decide to trust Murderbot as it has always acted in their best interest, and because without it they are mostly likely going to get murdered anyway.  The team eventually escapes the planet, mostly due to the actions of Murderbot: it manages to trick the evil company (GrayCris, if you were wondering) by offering to betray PreservationAux, giving the team time to activate GrayCris’ emergency beacon. Once returned safely to civilization, Mensah launches a legal challenge against GrayCris. Murderbot provides  unassailable testimony; it has logged and captured everything that had happened in its storage banks. Mensah asks Murderbot if it will return with them and become a sponsored citizen in the PreservationAux colony, which it initially appears to agree to. However, believing that being sponsored by her is the same as having a corporate owner, it leaves without telling anyone to investigate its past as a "real" Murderbot.

2. What is Murderbot?

Murderbot is an extremely relatable protagonist despite/ because of its acerbic personality. Well's writing is terse, short, and clipped throughout: there is minimal description or emotion; Murderbot prefers to give an almost bird’s-eye view of the action as it occurs. It is also very interior; the reader comes to understand how Murderbot processes and interprets the world and itself. Murderbot is always explicit about which feed it is reading, which comms channels it is broadcasting to, and which programming it is relying on (for instance, its MedSystem is rubbish, as it is supposed to focus on dismemberment instead). As such, the PreservationAux crew are narrowly drawn: they are perhaps easiest distinguished by their views on Murderbot/ SecUnits. Mensah respects Murderbot as an individual and mostly abides by its wishes.  Ratthi, by contrast, believes Murderbot is a “slave” and pushes it to express emotion- its response is to immediately exit the conversation and forward a recording to Mensah. Meanwhile, Gurathain appears to strongly dislike Murderbot despite/ because of their similarities- he is also plugged into a metaverse network and is technologically augmented. The others mostly agree with Mensah, are injured, or both.

PreservationAux as a whole is positioned as anti-corporatist. The group becomes a stand in for the reader- they have never worked with a SecUnit before because of their small size and moral objections. Murderbot can exploit their lack of knowledge, acting in ways which would usually draw suspicion, such as voicing opinions which are contrary to its owner's objectives.  DeltFall represents their opposite-  they are killed  because of their trust in corporate governance. Whilst Murderbot auto-deletes GrayCris’s killware, DeltFall  are pointedly killed by their own SecUnits. As a villain, GrayCris embodies the evils of capitalism- their goal in attempting to kill the survey teams was to illegally mine profitable alien remnants present on the planet.

Perhaps unsurprisingly- ‘Autistic people are robots’ remains a grimly pervasive trope- many have argued that Murderbot is - implicitly or explicitly -  Autistic. Autistic people are often regarded (both by the public and in scientific literature[10]) as somehow inhuman, unable to experience emotion or understand humour. Murderbot in some ways embodies this understanding: it is indifferent to humans, unable to process their emotional states and uninterested in doing so, and it believes that caring is a distraction. Murderbot is also depicted as unusually gifted, with hyper-quick reactions and  superhuman speed, which echoes another popular myth: savantism. The Autistic savant is similarly brilliantly skilled in one area- think Shaun Murphy in The Good Doctor or Christopher Boone in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time,  but otherwise unable to function typically. Murderbot’s “jagged profile” is probably better explained by its programming- it was made by humans to serve a specific role, providing security. Murderbot does not eat, drink,  or require companionship- it only needs a battery charge if its reliability drops below a certain percentage, and it survives injuries that would kill a human many times over. Beyond the most superficial allusion, interpreting an inorganic life-form, which is literally programmed to murder humans, as the same as a human with Autism is not necessarily helpful.

This is not to say that there is no value to Murderbot as a potentially neurodivergent protagonist. Many neurodiverse people relate to it because it reflects their own experience, including Wells herself (although she expresses here[11] that she did not intend for Murderbot to be Autistic), fellow authors[12], and people on Reddit[13]. Murderbot's behaviours are analogous  to parts of the Autistic experience, for instance  with regard to its sense of humour, general annoyance at other humans, literally losing performance reliability when overwhelmed, and covering its face with a covering (think Halo’s MasterChief)  to avoid making eye contact. Where this falls down is that both Murderbot’s experiences are contextual to Well’s world building, and that the Autistic experience is anything but universal. For what it's worth, arguably a lot of neurotypical people could relate to Murderbot’s relational difficulties. The difficulty comes when making this analogy explicit, as it gets closer and closer to an unhelpful caricature.

3. Is Murderbot Autistic?

That being said, let's establish if  Murderbot would meet the DSM criteria for Autism Spectrum disorder (ASD): difficulties in social communication and behaviour and repetitive and restrictive interests which are present in early childhood and impair everyday functioning.

In terms of social communication and behaviour, Murderbot is clear in disliking engaging with humans. It prefers travelling in the cargo hold to avoid interactions, communicating via comms rather than in person, and hides its organic face with a helmet. Murderbot and the humans have distinct points of view that are often in direct opposition. For example, Murderbot makes bland conversation with Volescu as they return to the ship. To Murderbot, the entire conversation was generated by its MedSystem instructing him that calm small talk was beneficial to humans experiencing shock. The conversation is therefore irrelevant and dictated by a sub-processing cognitive routine- the conversation is not even transcribed within the novella. To the humans, Murderbot appears to have had a deep and meaningful conversation, asking about Volescu’s many children and polycule. Murderbot spends a lot of the novel by itself, which is its preference; it does not enjoy talking to the humans as they simply do not interest it. It also makes clear that it usually cannot do this, as on many jobs it is expected to be present at all times in case it is needed. Murderbot is used to be talked and interacted with as a tool, and is taken aback when the humans attempt to  relate to it as human. It takes offence when asked about its feelings or described as a slave, to the point that it experiences battery drain. However, when asked about things within its occupational parameters- mission objectives, security detail, or how best to protect the team- it excels. It's difficult to argue that Murderbot's misgivings about interacting with humans are specific or pervasive difficulties, as they reflect both its personal preferences and learnt experiences; it excels in social situations it wishes to engage in. It also establishes Murderbot wishes to differentiate itself from humans; it sees itself as a non-human entity and acts as such.

Repetitive and restrictive areas of interest are perhaps easier to establish: Murderbot is obsessed with media consumption. This is repeatedly established as its reason for existence, after rejecting taking over the world. It is impressively able to consume media whilst simultaneously monitoring security feeds and maintaining conversation, only really ceasing on recharge or if it identifies a threat. Murderbot is drawn to shows about humans that are "unrealistic", avoiding shows which purport to depict situations that would reflect its own experience. For instance, it reports that SecUnits are dimly portrayed in media- they are usually introduced only to 'unexpectedly' go rogue and kill everyone- which causes it to avoid procedurals. Its favourite show The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon- an (un)intentional reference to Sailor Moon?- is a kind of sitcom set on a spaceship. Murderbot is deliberate in picking episodes, choosing particular favourites to consume as a comfort watch. It also tends to re-watch well-known episodes when it is supposed to be performing some other duty simultaneously, as these take less processing power. The only scenes it skips are sex scenes- Murderbot is aromantic, sex-repulsed, and lacks sexual organs. It also doesn't appear interested in the series' depiction of platonic human relationships, to it,  these are as fantastical as the scripted plots. It would have been easy to frame Murderbot's hyper-fixation as a way for it to understand, interpret and mimic human behaviours; it is important to Murderbot that not only is it not human, but also finds humans innately idiotic because of their sub-par organic coding. Conversely, Murderbot's media consumption habits work to humanise and ground the character, and are possibly where it reflects the neurodivergent experience the most. Comfort-watching is certainly ubiquitous, but many neurodivergent people are specifically soothed by rewatching a beloved series- it is certain to play out in exactly the same way each time. Murderbot's behaviour is also evocative of the Autistic “special interest”. It is harder to establish whether the behaviour is truly restrictive, however: Murderbot's existence is already highly monitored and restricted because of its prescribed role and function. SecUnits are programmed and designed to fulfil coded objectives- an intact governor module will harm a SecUnit if it criticises its corporate owner, for example. Murderbot believes (likely correctly) that if it is discovered to be free of corporate control, it will be killed. As such, it is impossible for it to explore any interests that could not be fulfilled at the same time as its occupational functions. As much as Murderbot enjoys consuming media, to the point it puts itself at genuine risk every time it seeks more to download, it’s difficult to imagine many pastimes it could safely take up.

4. Does Murderbot matter?

Envisioning Murderbot as a 1:1 match for Autism fails- although superficially similar, Murderbot does not appear to embody any Autistic or neurodivergent traits directly. Instead, Murderbot's behaviours and cognitions directly correlate to its programming as a SecUnit; the rest from its past experiences. The reader assumes Murderbot is unique as it has achieved self-actualisation in hacking its governor module; however, as no other SecUnits (aside from those Murderbot kills) appear in the novel, it is possible that other, or even most, SecUnits would have the same narrative voice, or preoccupation with media. Murderbot works best as an analogue for itself: it is most relatable to All Systems Red's readership whenever it displays human traits or behaviour such as avoiding hard conversations, or using sarcasm as a defence mechanism. Murderbot is neurodivergent within the narrative- the way it interprets the world is markedly different from the human characters, and Murderbot is clear to delineate itself from them. This is an important distinction, because it circumvents the potential pitfalls of using a cantankerous cyborg who happens to both be a serial killer and a deadly weapon in of itself (its body has multiple gun ports) to explore the humanity of Autistic people.

It is easy to see why various people relate to Murderbot- anyone who has ever felt different from others is likely to empathise with a protagonist who feels similarly, and there is no harm in this. Sci-fi and fantasy universes are often used to explore and dissect pertinent issues- race, abortion, gender, sex, global warming, imperialism, and disability. The difficulty in analogy is that it cannot capture everything- it is simply a reference. Claiming Murderbot as Autistic is a disservice to literature which features actual Autistic characters;  Murderbot's portrayal is in some ways so vague as to suggest immigrant, trans, and disability narratives. Wells has deliberately set out to devise a protagonist that would usually be the villain- Murderbot itself alludes to this- and make the reader nevertheless root for it. Murderbot's voice is strong, and highlighting or claiming a trait as directly representative of a specific human experience takes something away- it works as a character as it is universally representative.

5. Should you Read All Systems Red?

No matter your take on the literary representation of neurodivergence,  All Systems Red is highly recommended. The novella is very readable, Murderbot’s acerbic commentary is excellent, and there is always lots going on in its almost action-movie style plot. Things that would be weaknesses in other books, such as the minimal descriptions of characters and scenery, and the characters being all but indistinguishable, all work here as they ground and cement Murderbot’s perspective as an aloof cyborg. As a bonus, if you end up (as so many have)  falling in love with Murderbot, there are another 7 books of its adventures to enjoy!