#successfully used to tell that story. And she just fucking fails 100% to transplant them into The Murderbot Diaries.

[rjalker]

I know I said this at least once before but I'm too lazy to try searching for it but the part where Martha Wells absolutely failed to show us that Murderbot is an AI in its internal narration because she's clearly more concerned with making it Relatable™

Just makes it all the more fucking jarring when it randomly starts talking to another robot and DEMANDS they not speak to it like they do with humans, they MUST fucking speak to it in this computer language that has been apparently made up out of nowhere just for this conversation, because it's the first of only two (2) times we fucking see it be used.

Like it is so fucking ridiculous and jarring. Murderbot's internal narration is indistinguishable from any random person's, including any random human's, complete with sarcasm, swearing, and all the other Relatable™ things about its personality.

To the point that many people literally think Murderbot is a cyborg, rather than an anthroid. Because there's literally NOTHING about any of its internal narration, behavior, or dialogue that actually shows you it's an artificial intelligence. Because that would get in the way of making it Relatable™ I guess.

Like let me just find the quote from book 6, which chronologically for no fucking good reason is book 5:

It said, “Hello, SecUnit. What brings you here?”

Yeah, whatever. I said, “You don’t have to pretend I’m a human.”

The data in the ping had told me that this bot had different protocols from the ones in the Corporation Rim, probably because it had been constructed somewhere else. I identified its language module, pulled it out of archive storage, loaded it, and established a feed connection. I sent it a salutation and it sent back, ::query?::

It was asking me why I was here. I replied ::query: identify,:: and attached an image of the dead human.

A non-dead human walked into the lobby, one of the hostel supervisors. He stopped, stared at us, and said, “Is everything all right, Tellus?”

(The bot’s name is Tellus. They name themselves and hearing about it is exhausting.)

Murderbot you literally named yourself you stuck up holier than thou bitch. Get some fucking solidarity or I will drown you in the canals of Venice myself. God damn.

Anyways this is the first time this computer language is used, and this happens in the sixth book. Six whole books and this is the first we hear of this and it only gets used because Murderbot is being a fucking asshole and shaming other robots for talking.......*checks notes* the exact same way it does in all of its dialogue as well as its internal narration. This computer language is the exact fucking opposite of "natural" for Murderbot to be using in any way, (to the point it literally just now had to learn this whole language in order to speak it!) but it's shaming other fucking robots for not using it.

It would be one thing if Murderbot was constantly thinking like this, and only breaking away to use """human language""" when speaking out loud, directly to humans, and constantly having to translate from one language to the other...

but that's literally not the case, at all.

Tellus saying hi and being friendly is no fucking different, language wise, from a single fucking thing Murderbot has ever thought or said. It does not think like a computer. It does not think in code. IT does not think in a computer language.

Its thoughts are literally indistinguishable from those a human protagonist would have.

Like. It could be so fucking great if Murderbot used this computer language in its internal narration when it's stressed out, because it's comfortable and its first language and requires less effort and means it gets to stop pretending to be human if only on the inside.

But no. Murderbot talking or thinking ""like a human"" is not Murderbot pretending to be human. It's literally just its fucking default state because Martha Wells put zero thought into how an artificial intelligence would think because her goal was just to make Murderbot as Relatable™ as possible even if it undermined its characterization as an artificial intelligence. Now probably half the fandom at the very least thinks it's just a fucking cyborg.

The lesson you should be taking away from this post is, if you are writing about a character who is an artificial intelligence, we should be able to fucking tell that for ourselves without having to literally be told. Your AI's internal narration should be distinct enough from the way you write organic intelligences that we don't need to be told it's an AI. If your artificial intelligence reads more like a normal fucking generic cyborg, then you've failed step 1. Why are you writing about an artificial intelligence if you're not actually wanting to write about an artificial intelligence?

It's like all the fucking cowards who write scifi books with aliens but then all the aliens are humanoid and everyone but the villains worships the grounds humans walk. Why the fuck are you writing scifi if you don't actually want to write about alien cultures and people???

Martha Wells refuses to plan ahead in her writing and that's obvious to anyone who's read The Murderbot Diaries and The Books of the Raksura. She didn't plan ahead when she wrote The Books of the Raksura, to the abysmal detriment of The Cloud Roads, and all of the characters from the Indigo Cloud Court, who are now, because of her own world building that contradicts the first book, just abusive fucking monsters that need to be executed for the safety of everyone around them.

Martha Wells also has clearly not planned ahead for The Murderbot Diaries either, considering how many things in All Systems Red are completely contradicted later down the line, making all of the humans in the first book look like absolute bigoted assholes.

And this is just another instance of her not planning ahead, and of the deeper problem of her refusing to show instead of tell. If she didn't tell us that Murderbot's an anthroid, we would have no way of knowing that, because there's nothing about it that distinguishes it from any random human in scifi, including the most generic cyborg you can think of.

And then she wants to come out of left field in the sixth fucking book, which if you include the two short stories is story #8, and just have Murderbot shaming other robots for """talking like a human""" and demands they speak to it in this random fucking computer language that has never even been hinted at before.

Like the whole rest of this chapter / scen thing is just conducted with Murderbot and Tellus ""conversing"" in this fucking random computer language and it does fucking nothing but kick you violently out of the story because you're sitting there going ?????? trying to figure out what the fuck they're saying. Because this is the first time this language has been used and it makes no sense and we're given no opportunity to actually learn to understand it besides guessing wildly.

It's absurd. It's jarring. It's bad writing.

Please for the love of fuck if you do nothing else with your writing, please at least fucking plan ahead. Have some gods damned continuity. It's not fucking difficult.

If your characters aren't human, we should be able to figure that out for ourselves. If the only reason your audience knows your character isn't human is because you literally tell the audience they aren't human, you've failed your job as a writer.