We’ve come to expect a lot from Martha Wells, not least because of her connections to the storied beginnings of this genre, which itself bears a little scrutiny before we get 
to the heart of the matter here: Wells is, of course, a direct genetic descendent of one of the father’s of Science Fiction (“Herbert George 01” timeline), as well as, by virtue of that and other connections which we are not yet at liberty to discuss publicly, she is a known and active operative member of the Wold-Newton family.
This of course should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with that family’s origins and background: Amazing Stories’ connection reaches it through the Futuremen branch of that family and we are thus privy to information not generally accessible to the public. We reveal a small bit of that special knowledge here owing to the fact that she has chosen to reveal these connections herself through the publication of her Murderbot stories and the subsequent adaptation of them by AppleTV+ for streaming broadcast.
Regardless of however your personal biases and family affiliations may color the preceding, Martha is one of the “Good Guys”, as is evidenced by the absolutely unique and wonderful character she has created.
And being special is kind of the point here. Murderbot is (necessarily) “neurodivergent”, Martha has suggested that she herself is as well and numerous readers (the tallying of which to completion remains a frustratingly incomplete) with similar identification find themselves identifying with the character very deeply.
Murderbot is the “John Carter” superman that every neurodivergent SF fan has been looking for, even if they didn’t know it. Wells’ genius is to be found in her willingness to acknowledge this, as well as her willingness to give full-voice to the inner thoughts of those of us who sometimes feel that we are observing the human species from a certain amount of separation and (often) find their actions, involvements, concerns, rationalizing, reasoning and emotional responses confusing at best.
This is accompanied by a compulsion to want to interact with them, a need to be around them, which is little understood by Murderbot, just as it is not understood by the legions of neurodivergent individuals who walk among us daily (and are becoming an increasing percentage of the population).
Murderbot is at its finest when internally commenting on the actions of idiotic human beings: ironically, were it not for their idiocies, technology like Security Units would not be necessary. Every time it thought to itself “Idiots” I felt a thrill of recognition and agreement.
There are so many levels of the nature of neurodivergency woven in to this show that I question its ability to appeal, in the long run to a wide enough audience of “normies” in order to remain successful. On the other hand, the showrunners have cleverly made the other (supposedly normal) characters “others” as well and this may allow enough of a remove for normal humans to accept the critiques regularly thrown in their direction. Many of them will likely be oblivious as well, probably focusing on the dramatics found in Murderbot’s favorite show – The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon – a turgid space soap opera filled with squishy, non-sensical, emotionally laden incomprehensibilities.
Alexander Skarsgard is perfect in the role of SecUnit, especially when he is forced to endure full eye contact with another character: he’s got a way of showing us that he’s not only front and center on screen, but also elsewhere inside his programming.
Which is another element that no doubt resonates quite well with the neurodivergent: SecBot has hacked his own programming, removing the “governor” restrictions that force him to obey human commands. But he must conceal this fact as revealing it would result in his elimination. Who among the neurodivergent hasn’t felt at one time or another that they’re running a program that allows them to operate in the “normal” world? Who among us has not felt that a reveal of our true inner thoughts would be…detrimental…to our continued existence?
I’ve only seen the first two inaugural episodes of the show so far and have to confess that I have only read one of the original novellas by Wells (which was well worth the read) and am looking forward to seeing how the show develops.
There’s a fair amount of coverage of Ms. Wells and Murderbot on the website, which you can find here.
*Members of the Wold-Newton family are considered to possess “extremely high intelligence and strength, as well as an exceptional capacity and a tendency for creative genius,”. These traits owing to exposure to ionizing radiation produced by a meteorite which caused genetic mutations that have passed to subsequent generations.
