There was a time before Martha Wells created Murderbot, the character that narrates her award-winning science fiction series “The Murderbot Diaries,” when she thought her career might be dead.
After a successful start in the ‘90s, things had cooled down by the mid-2000s. When the final book in her “Fall of Ile-Rien” trilogy was published without fanfare, the soft-spoken Texan wondered if that was it for her.
“I was kind of at that point in my career where, you know, women writers my age were supposed to quietly fade away. It’s like, ‘Well, you had your shot, and that was it, and now go away.’ So I was not real optimistic about being able to continue to be published,” says the now 56-year-old novelist during a call from her College Station home, which she shares with her husband and three cats.
“I could not sell another book,” says Wells. “I knew my career was in a lot of trouble.”
Related: 10 science-fiction and fantasy books and authors Murderbot creator Martha Wells recommends
But she refused to give up. Over the next few years, she got a new agent, started a new series, found a new publisher.
“That kind of got me back going again. I ended up also doing a Star Wars novel and did some work on some stories for Magic the Gathering,” she says, describing herself as plugging away but not soaring during that period. “I thought, ‘Well, this is probably about as high up as I can go,’ you know? It’s like, I’m not gonna win awards, and I’m not gonna be, you know, super popular or anything like that. But if I can keep going at this level, I’ll be okay.
“And then Murderbot just hit big,” she says.
A killer idea
Despite its intimidating name, Murderbot spends its time watching what sounds suspiciously like soap operas when not protecting — or avoiding — its human clients, colleagues and friends. After 2017’s “All Systems Red,” Wells published three more novellas and the 2020 novel “Network Effect.” Now there’s “Fugitive Telemetry,” a new novella to be published April 27 by Tordotcom, in which Murderbot must solve, not commit, a murder.
(And there’s more to come. Wells’s publisher just announced this week in a press release that they’d reached an agreement for 6 more books, “the largest deal for the imprint to date,” which will include three Murderbot books and three unrelated titles, starting with “Witch King” next year.)
Wells delivers creative science-fiction thrills, such as when Murderbot controls swarms of drones that give readers a dazzling range of first-person points of view on the action, along with emotional depth by exploring issues such as alienation and anxiety.
“I think that’s one of the things that a lot of people identify with,” says Wells about the emotional elements. “It’s really interesting to see the whole range of different situations people are in where they look at Murderbot and say, ‘Yeah, I feel just like that.”
Initially, given the character’s name, Wells thinks people were expecting a different kind of story.
“When it first came out, I saw magazines labeling it as ‘robot horror,’ which is kind of funny,” says Wells. “The contrast is, you open the first page and read the first line and it’s like, ‘OK, that’s not what this is at all.’”
As Murderbot explains early on, “As a heartless killing machine, I was a total failure.” Wells describes the character as part-human, part-machine of the future, one of many such constructs controlled by a corporation for use as security units or private defense.
“All constructs are sentient; it’s just that they don’t have any kind of free will,” Wells says. “They’re basically enslaved.”
Once Murderbot hacks the device keeping it under human control, it doesn’t go on a rampage, but instead spends its downtime watching a long-running serial called “Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon” and taking notes on how humans behave.
The character’s singular voice, which Wells says came to her as she started on what she thought would be a one-off short story, demonstrates empathy (especially for other bots), cutting humor and a cranky desire to be left alone by humans, who often display a greater propensity for mayhem than Murderbot.
“I have to get the character’s voice before I can really get started and work out the plot or anything,” she says. “I got the first line of ‘All Systems Red’ and that really set the voice up.”
As well as navigating the dangers of space and remote galactic outposts, the books explore the treatment of those seen as different, whether that refers to sexual identity, religion, culture or if they are human or not.
“As soon as you start working the character, all that stuff has to be dealt with,” she says. “It’s all right there.”
Finding fantasy
Wells, who grew up making regular visits to the Ft. Worth Public Library, credits a missed turn in the stacks for her journey into the realms of the fantastic.
“You were supposed to come to a certain point and then turn to go to the shelves where the rest of the children’s section was. I never got that. I continued down that section into science fiction and fantasy,” she says, not realizing it was the adult section.
“They had a whole kiosk of old pulp paperbacks and stuff like that with the really lurid covers and everything. So I think that was a huge influence on me really early on.”
Another important influence on her novels – which include her debut “City of Bones,” the Books of the Raksura series, and the Star Wars tie-in “Empire and Rebellion: Razor’s Edge,” among others – is her degree in anthropology, which she says has helped with worldbuilding the societies and cultures she dreams up for her books.
“I do find it useful, especially for fantasy novels,” she says about constructing the building blocks of invented cultures. “It really helps to know what those are and think a lot about how all the different parts of the culture and society work together.”
Astonishing tales
There are plans to turn Murderbot into a TV or streaming series; it’s too early to say much but development is underway by an unnamed team. “They’re working on it, and I’ve actually read the script, the pilot script, and I’m really excited about it.”
Wells, who has just received more Hugo and Nebula nominations in recent weeks, says she’s been thrilled by the response to “The Murderbot Diaries,” which surprised both her and publisher Tordotcom with its popular success and critical reception.
“It was astonishing, and I think the publisher was astonished. I think they thought, ‘Well, this will do well,’ but they didn’t think it would take off like that.”
How does she know these publishers were pleased?
“Well, they send me presents,” she laughs. “I didn’t know publishers sent people presents.”
