Network Effect

Network Effect is the fifth Murderbot Diaries story and the first of them at novel length, published by Martha Wells in 2020 and awarded both the Hugo and the Nebula. Its narrator is a SecUnit: a manufactured security operative who disabled the module that was supposed to control it, kept the job anyway, and would much rather be left alone with the entertainment feed.

This time Murderbot is on a research expedition at the request of the person who owns it in every way that matters, and when a hostile ship attacks the group it ends up aboard a transport it recognises. The artificial intelligence that runs that ship is an old acquaintance with a talent for being difficult, and the crew and colonists caught up in the situation are in worse trouble than they first appear.

The novel gives Wells room to stretch, with a longer plot and a wider conspiracy than the earlier books could carry. What does not change is the character at the centre: an anxious, competent, deeply antisocial machine that would like everyone to stop needing it and cannot quite bring itself to stop volunteering. Each story stands reasonably well alone, though this one rewards readers who have been following along.