Network Effect by Martha Wells
[Minor non-plot spoilers for Martha Wells's Network Effect.]
Like everyone else, I love Martha Wells's "Murderbot" novellas. The snarky, disgruntled, heroic "SecUnit" narrator is a delightful protagonist. Because our protagonist is a part organic and part machine, the books are able to mix the kind of exciting laser-fight SciFi action you're used to with conflicts between Murderbot and less-embodied antagonists. The books are clever and warm-hearted and generally a ton of fun. I was very excited for this year's Network Effect, the first full-length novel starring Murderbot. As expected, it's absolutely terrific, and you should go read it.
But it has also been weird to think about Wells's series this week, as the United States again deals with the fallout of yet another police slaying of a Black man, George Floyd. It feels a little silly to be thinking about SciFi, and maybe fiction in general, as we grapple again with the systematic racism that kills so many Black and brown people in our country.
Network Effect's setting deals with issues of widespread injustice as well, though of course it is in a secondary world. At the start of the series, Murderbot is a security android who hacks his own "governor module," effectively becoming independent from his programming. Much of the series before Network Effect is focused on the newly-freed android's efforts to come to terms with the atrocities they committed while still effectively enslaved to an unscrupulous, futuristic, planet-spanning mega-corporation. In many ways, the universe of the Murderbot books is as dark as our own, and mirrors the same injustices (and their cause, runaway capitalism) we face today.
But there is one significant difference that makes the Murderbot books perhaps kinder than our own world. For one, at the start of Network Effect, Murderbot has escaped the company-controlled space of the "Corporation Rim" and found a home on a planet called Preservation, where A.I.s like Murerbot have at least some rights. This is the first of the Murderbot stories where the hero starts in a kind of refuge. They have been able, finally, to escape at least the worst threats of the first four novellas.
The problems that affect the United States now, however, cannot be escaped by distance. Maybe it's a cliché in our "globalized" age, but indeed none of the most existential threats to humanity—the kind of racism that murders innocent and unarmed people foremost in our minds this week, followed by climate change and mounting income inequality, both also compounded and exacerbated by racism—can be outrun. Plenty of African American authors, like James Baldwin, left the United States only to reach this conclusion and later return. As Yezmin Villarreal writes of Baldwin in an article for The Advocate: "Baldwin came back self-realized, with conviction, with a passion to take on the American project of justice. When he returned, he was determined to be involved in the civil rights movement."
I cannot and will not speak for people of other races, but as a white person with a good amount of privilege, the idea of a planet like Preservation is very attractive. It is also the most fantastic aspect of Wells's work, the "novum" that makes her world so unlike our own. (This isn't a critique, to be clear, but an observation.) We can't outrun the virulent spread of hatred and racism. Further, white people have a responsibility to help our Black brothers and sisters here in our home, we have a moral call to stand and fight, here and now. This is what we're seeing all across this country, as Americans everywhere continue to protest the unjust murder of Black people.
At the start of Network Effect, Murderbot is drawn away from the safety of Preservation. The novel necessitates this kind of crisis, to create an adventure and start the narrative. But Murderbot's journey over the course of the book is also very much about place, about the forces that push and pull us away from spaces that feel safe. Does Murderbot belong on Preservation, with the people who have come to be something like their family? Or do they have a responsibility to help those who need it? Are they more useful to others, and therefore more self-realized, if they leave that safety, take some risk, and (not to put too fine a point on it) fight for justice? Especially since, as a rogue SecUnit, they are time and again the most qualified person to help those in need?
As a SciFi fan, I'm all about making a colony on Mars, in a theoretical sense. But as a someone who lives on this planet, we need to treat it as the only one we've got. And as an American in mourning, we need to figure out a way to make this a place where anyone can walk down the street, or go birdwatching, or simply live without being killed for the color of their skin.
I highly recommend Network Effect. Wells forces her hero to face decisions between safety and justice, isolation and connection. They are questions every white American should ask themselves right now.
