2018/51: Exit Strategy -- Martha Wells

'Mensah said I could learn to do anything I wanted. I learned to leave.' [p. 64]

The fourth and final Murderbot novella, which pulls together threads from All Systems Red, Articial Condition and -- especially -- Rogue Protocol.

Murderbot's personhood is, for me, the theme of Exit Strategy. It debates free will, dips further into bothood than before, and strenuously resists being defined as, or passing as, human. When Doctor Mensah suggests that "we tend to think that because a bot or a construct looks human, its ultimate goal would be to become human," Murderbot responds "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." [p. 152]

Ewwww, humans.

Right from the outset, Exit Strategy is about Murderbot acknowledging and accepting itself as cyborg -- neither bot nor human, but a melding of organic and inorganic parts, each with benefits and drawbacks. Human neural tissue, for instance, retains memories when data storage is wiped: it's Murderbot's organic parts that resist Company-mandated memory purges, and that hold the memories of its past. After disaster, the connections forged and reforged by the human parts of Murderbot (especially when it remembers soap opera Sanctuary Moon) are vital to the recovery, or reintegration, of its sense of self. Murderbot's love of trashy soap opera is not only a cheering example of the curative powers of lowbrow entertainment: it becomes clear that Sanctuary Moon has had an immense influence on the development of Murderbot's personality.

"It made me feel like a person." ... It gave me context for the emotions I was feeling, I managed not to say. "It kept me company without ..."
"Without making you interact?" she suggested. [p. 114]

It's good to see Murderbot interacting with its original team -- the clients from All Systems Red -- again, and being accepted by them, not as a weapon, but as a person. ('An angry person,' adds Pin-Lee.) And there is a great deal of plot wrapped around the core theme of self-actualisation: which is good, because one of the other things I like about Murderbot is its sheer competence. (You can be competent without confidence.)

This volume mentions, in passing, the history of cyborgs in this universe: I'd like to read more about that, and about the gradual redefinition of cyborgs from Augmented Reality people to ... well, machines. Murderbot has more personality than a lot of humans. I'm really looking forward to Wells' forthcoming Murderbot novel.