But I've gotten into the work of Martha Wells in the past year, specifically her Murderbot Diaries and the series is really great. I even wrote a one-act play based on it, but I couldn't get permission to perform it from Wells' literary rep. Supposedly Murderbot has been optioned for a TV series, so maybe that's what the problem is.
The protagonist, Murderbot is:
...a security unit, or SecUnit, in a future where corporations dominate space exploration. Companies lease SecUnits as bodyguards. But even though SecUnits are self-aware and have emotions, they’re not trusted. Instead they’re considered dangerous and companies install “governor modules” to punish or kill them if they step out of line.But Murderbot has a secret. It can step out of line if it wants to. Having hacked its governor module, it could go on a murder spree without punishment.Fortunately for humanity, Murderbot would much rather watch entertainment. In the over 35,000 hours since it hacked its module, it’s partaken of a little under 35,000 hours of movies, plays, books and music.
To be honest, I haven't read Murderbot so much as listened to it on Audible. The actor/narrator, Kevin R. Free, is really great. You can listen to an excerpt here.
In addition to liking her work, Wells is close to my age, and I relate to her career-wise, in that she struggled along as a writer for many years without having a lot of success, but finally she broke through with Murderbot. I haven't had a career breakthrough but I appreciate Wells continuing on even when she considered giving up.
Wells, like all forward-thinking people, has quit Twitter and joined Mastodon at @marthawells@wandering.shop.
This is an advantage to her fans, like me, because she doesn't have nearly so many followers on Mastodon as she did on Twitter - it takes time to build up followers on any social medium - and so she's more likely to give her new Mastodon followers attention.
Which is what happened today when she liked my toot. I'm so proud!
