#I would like to note that technically Murderbot is not a cyborg

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Murderbot has social anxiety and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

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hiii you posted something about having read most of the like, recommended books with robots in them and i was just curious if you would be cool with listing some that youd rec? trying to read more books with robots in them and curious for ideas :]

sure! was gonna do a whole organized post but I may as well just get some down for now. not gonna be an exhaustive list (there's a bunch on my to-read list I don't want to rec before I read it myself), my summaries may be dubious, my taste may also be dubious, but here's a few I liked. I definitely recommend seeking stuff out outside of my list bc honestly it's quite limited now that I'm looking at it lol. be warned also that a lot of these deal with heavy themes of stuff including identity, bodily autonomy, etc. (idk which specific topics may be an issue so be sure to consult a trigger list if necessary). also I have yet to find anything with a robot romance that I find particularly compelling but ah well

the murderbot diaries series by martha wells: pretty much everyone's gonna recommend these to you, and for good reason imo, they're quite solid. main character is basically a security guard cyborg (humanoid but not human) who hacked its programming and is trying to figure out what it actually wants to do with itself now that it has free will. all it wants to do is watch tv shows in its head and avoid interacting with people, but life-or-death situations and its penchant for wanting to rescue people keep getting in its way

the imperial radch series by ann leckie: sentient spaceship ai that once had hundreds of human bodies all networked to a central ai, on a revenge quest. lots of themes of identity, lots of space geopolitics, a big horrendous empire that people are grappling with being complicit in, and an interesting take on a single-gendered society inspired by ursula leguin's the left hand of darkness (also a solid book, no robots there though). gets quite intense at times because of the sorts of horrors that evil empires get up to

17776 by jon bois: (note the link is to a website that turns into the story when you scroll through, watch out if flickering/eyestrain/etc is an issue) technically not a book but a multimedia webnovel of sorts (with short animations and videos, but mostly written as dialogue between characters). it's the year 17776, a lot of places are underwater, humanity has found itself immortal, and several space probes have gained sentience. now, the space probes busy themselves with watching and discussing what the humans are doing to entertain themselves, which mostly involves really absurd games of football. a bit absurdist and existential but very fun, even if you don't know much about football

the monk and robot series, by becky chambers: this one is very chill; a monk in a cozy post-industrial future setting doesn't know what they want from life so they go on adventure on impulse and meet a robot. robots have been out of contact with humanity for a long time, so both of them learn a lot from each other

the wayfarers series, also by becky chambers: haven't read all of them yet but the first book is a chill character-driven space road trip story with a friendly ship ai. lots of found family themes, and great if you like seeing a story where people are working together and are really in their element. the sequels tell other stories set in the same universe, most of which also feature robot characters, and there's interesting alien characters there too

activation degradation, by marina j lostetter: a robot gets activated on a space mining platform during an alien attack, and has to deal with a bunch of ensuing chaos and misinformation. I mostly found the plot twists interesting here, the characters themselves were so-so to me

obligatory asimov recommendations, caveat that his work is old and has historical biases etc, but also that's where you get the three laws of robotics so welp. I, robot is an interesting collection of short stories, mostly focusing on how the three laws of robotics actually can break down in various situations. there's also the robot trilogy which is basically a buddy cop detective story with a human from earth and a robot from space and they solve murders. lots of caveats with this rec (for one, I'm not big on cop shit to put it mildly) but asimov does do some interesting worldbuilding and society building with how the earth and space societies differ. there's the foundation series that follows from these books but I haven't read that haha

the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy series by douglas adams: only one prominent robot here who sporadically shows up, but also this series is just a fun time. the premise is that earth gets destroyed by aliens to make way for an unnecessary space highway, and one very tired human survives and bounces around the galaxy encountering all sorts of weird situations. lots of humourous satire, some a bit dated at this point but much still holds up. also douglas adams just has a way with words

individual short stories:

fandom for robots by vina jie-min prasad: a robot learns what fandom is! a very fun read imo

a guide for working breeds, also by vina jie-min prasad, whose writing I really like in general tbh: robots dealing with a contract job economy

68:hazard:cold by janelle c. shane: robot stranded on an ice planet. I really like the description of how a robot's view of the world and communication protocols might look

cat pictures please by naomi kritzer: an ai wants to be helpful to humanity but doesn't quite know how; a nice benevolent ai story

there were other short stories I also liked but I can't find where I put them now, welp. let me know if you read and enjoy any of these, though!