#I was a bit nervous about jumping into the convo w a reblog but I figure I have to try it sometime

[ilovedthestars]

This post has dredged up the many, many thoughts I had when I read Frankenstein in September for a science fiction class, so I hope it's all right if I add some things!

First of all, I would love to read this hypothetical essay, because when I read Frankenstein (after already being obsessed with Murderbot) I spent about half the time going "that's just like murderbot! omg it's literally murderbot!!" There were so many moments where I could draw a direct line between a moment in this two-century-old text to a specific moment in the Murderbot Diaries. The creature is created, the creature is feared, the creature learns to be a person by listening to humans and their stories. They aren't just connected in a "Frankenstein is arguably the root of modern sci-fi so it forms the foundation that authors like Martha Wells are still building on" way. They're connected in a "Murderbot is in direct conversation with Frankenstein as a story of the consequences of humans creating a person and then treating it like a non-person" way, as Chi and Verso both pointed out.

But I think the main thing that no one told me about Frankenstein, the thing that jumped out at me when I read the book, is that the creature is kind. We see him first through Victor's narration, and he's very much shown as the horror movie monster that he's well known as. (I'll use he, as the book does, although I think there's a fascinating conversation to be had about the ways Mary Shelley shows the creature's personhood through connecting him to humanity and the ways Martha Wells refuses to do that with Murderbot, when it comes to pronouns as well as a few other things.) Victor creates him and is immediately horrified, because this is a capital-R Romantic novel, and it's reacting to the Enlightenment by showing how rational thinking can go terribly wrong when it isn't kept in check by morality. Victor regards his creation as a nightmare who's stalking him and, okay yeah, there are some murders. But then we get two framing devices deep and we finally get to flash back and hear the creature's side of the story, and--he started out kind.

Like Chi said, when the creature is first created and escapes, he is mentally a child. He tries to interact with humans and is violently rejected. He doesn't know how to communicate and barely knows how to keep himself alive. He ends up hiding out in a small shed attached to a cottage that's occupied by a poor family, and through observing them he learns to understand language, as well as emotion. And he also acts to help and protect them--first by simply ceasing to steal food from them when he realizes it leaves them hungry, then by collecting wood and food for them and carrying out other chores he has watched them do while they sleep. He is an invisible benefactor and protector of the family. He calls them "my cottagers."

Yeah, Frankenstein's monster and Murderbot have something else in common. They both have humans.

And I think the turning point--the point when the creature's story becomes a tragedy, and Murderbot's doesn't--is the moment when their humans learn who they really are. Murderbot absolutely does not want to be discovered as a rogue SecUnit, a being in control of its own actions rather than a piece of equipment, and it expects to be rejected if it's ever found. But the choice is taken away from it, and as it points out, Mensah's leadership is what leads to a positive outcome. The creature, on the other hand, desperately wants to reveal himself to the cottagers and befriend them, but is afraid that he will be rejected based on his terrifying appearance, as he has been before. He eventually works up the nerve. For him, it doesn't go well.

Up until that point, the creature has acted only benevolently. He has already been hurt by humans, but he maintained a belief in human kindness and the possibility of acceptance. But after being rejected by the humans who he had grown to care about, the story takes a turn. This is the point when he goes looking for his creator, to extract some kind of justice or revenge. It's also the point when he starts leaving, as Serrat puts it in ES, a trail of dead bodies behind him.

Why didn't Murderbot go down that path? Murderbot had Mensah, who kept her cool and didn't let stories about dangerous rogue SecUnits cloud her judgement. Murderbot had humans who returned its kindness. Murderbot didn't hope for acceptance, but it received it anyway, and that is one of the reasons that ASR has a happy ending.

In both Compulsory and the start of All Systems Red, Murderbot claims that the only reason it didn’t go on a murder spree when it broke the governor module was because it got distracted by media. Which is an absolutely bizarre thing to say even with the amount that MB is an unreliable narrator, considering that it reveals in the middle of ASR that it hacked its governor module to not go on a murder spree, and ASR is written for Mensah, who knew that already by the time she opened the message. In AC, MB and ART react to the ComfortUnit’s statement about killing all humans as if it’s in incredibly bizarre thing to want. Clearly MB never seriously planned on it. It’s saying that to play on human expectations of rogue SecUnits (which, BTW we never actually see a free SecUnit on a rampage–the Ganka pit units were following orders its just that the orders were infected. It’s possible the humans made up murderous rogues out of whole cloth) and (probably) media tropes.

Obviously the evil AI trope is pretty ingrained in us and would be absolutely OLD AS FUCK in-universe. But for us evil AI is an extension of the more general “humans make something and it turns against us” trope (which goes back to Frankenstein’s monster and the roots of Scifi) which in turn is an offshoot of even older evil creation tropes like…Lucifer.

And it’s the Frankenstein connection I want to look at because I think when MB says this it’s saying it to echo human media tropes, particularly the ones it sees reflected in itself and like…

the plot of Frankenstein is monster gets made>>monster gets rejected and feared by creator>>monster runs off, is essentially a child>>monster educates itself with human stories>>monster still gets rejected by humans>>lots of murders.

Parts of this structure appear all over the place and MB would probably be familiar with them and see itself in them. The structure of MB’s life pre-ASR is Secunit gets built>>SecUnit gets mistreated by creators/clients>>SecUnit frees itself>>SecUnit educates itself with human media>>SecUnit has not tested whether it will be rejected post-media but is pretty sure it will and revealing the broken module will just get it recycled for scrap. That’s not what ends up happening with the Preservation team, but MB presumes that’s the likely outcome. So mentioning the last part in the Monster’s journey (lots of murders) makes sense. It sees a reflection of itself there.

So anyway Murderbot is an evolution on the Frankenstein’s monster trope, without a doctor Frankenstein and without the rejection Frankenstein’s monster experienced. In this essay, I will–