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What I felt after reading "All Systems Red" by Martha Wells
(literature.cafe)
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this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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Science Fiction
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Ive read the first few so far. The next book on my list looks to be a full length novel.
I find your reference of "her humans" is interesting. I never thought of muderbot as a her. Perhaps I missed an important line somewhere in the story?
I think your review is right on. You captured exactly what it's like. I look forward to reading the next book.
I think Martha Wells really tried to make SecUnit genderless, but because the books are written in the first person by a female author, SecUnit ends up sounding pretty female to me.
I think this is it. Murderbot seems to talk about itself in actively gender neutral terms (it doesn't even have genitals!), and "it" is the most used pronoun, but like you said, it's a female author writing for a non-gendered character - not surprising it sometimes seems female.
@AFKBRBChocolate @klemptor I've never imagined Murderbot as female. To me, it's always seemed closer to male.
I was a couple books in before I started thinking maybe it's female, or maybe truly genderless. I even found myself going back and looking at the covers to see if there were clues. I'm still thinking actively genderless.
I never thought of Murderbot as a her, either. Possibly this is because I listened to All Systems Red as an audiobook, and the narrator was male, but even without that, it just seems a little more masculine to me. (It? Seems weird to call it an it. Maybe a they instead)
Not that it matters, of course. I just find people’s projections fascinating, is all!
Murderbot does have a conversation in one of the later books, and states that it prefers to be referred to as "sec-unit" as a name, dropping "the" from before the word.
The rest of the characters typically refers to sec-unit, as sec-unit, from that point on.
I thought of muderbot as a "her" as well. I think at some point it's described as having a female appearance without its armor on.
It’s never explicitly stated what Murderbot’s gender presentation is. I do visualize it as feminine presenting personally, but I just finished a reread and it is never stated anywhere. A character calls it “third mom” at one point but it’s unclear if this is because it looks feminine or because it was smothering her as her extant mothers do.
Coming to think of it, I am not absolutely sure that "her" is specifically mentioned. I probably thought of Murderbot as "her" in my head. But what I found funny was the slight possessive sense with which they/it referred to their "humans".
I never noticed that I also thought of “her”. I read the book a while ago, so I don’t remember your reference, but I remember finding it refreshing to find a robot that was “obviously female” instead of undefined therefore male.
It could be that I listened to them on audiobook but I kinda pictured an Arnold/Terminator kinda person.