But I am very excited to read, in a recent interview with author Martha Wells that the next Murderbot book will feature the Preservation system:
I had an idea for a long time of wanting to do a big story centered around Preservation, the planet, or in the Preservation system, with something happening there. I would like to be able to do that. Usually, I come up with ideas and think, ‘Oh, I’ll do this book,’ and then it barely touches on that or there’s just not enough room in the book to get everything done. But that’s really something I’m hoping to do in the next book, if I can come up with a good idea.
"Fugitive Telemetry" has come to be my favorite book in the whole series, largely because it is set on the Preservation planet and is about the problems Murderbot experiences with fitting into that society. Which causes Murderbot's friends from the Preservation Aux team to come in conflict with their own society, as in the excellent scene where the head of security on Preservation, Senior Indah, has a meeting with Murderbot, Mensah and Pin Lee, who is acting as Murderbot's lawyer. During the meeting Murderbot discovers that Pin Lee is building a legal case against Indah because Pin-Lee doesn't like Indah's attitude towards Murderbot.
This was also the last time we saw Pin-Lee, one of my favorite characters in the series. Which is now three books ago in the Murderbot Universe timeline. But that's one of my gripes with the series - Wells creates these great characters and then leaves them behind to write about new characters. I mean, what happened with Ratthi and Tarik?
THE REST OF THIS BLOG POST CONTAINS SPOILERS ABOUT PLATFORM DECAY
The main reason for my dislike of Platform Decay is the death of Supervisor Leonide.
The moral universe of the Murderbot series tends towards the black and white: Murderbot's human friends are all to some degree kind and competent and morally upright, especially the people from the Preservation Aux team. And even people who Murderbot clashes with, like Gurathan and Senior Indah, eventually find a grudging respect for Murderbot and vice versa.
One welcome addition to the Murderbot universe in the TV series was that the Preservation Aux team were fallible. They were still very much the good guys, but they had little quirks, like Bharadwadj hoards soap, and Gurathan is obsessed with Mensah. And Mensah herself, practically the zen goddess of chill incarnate in the books, has an anxiety disorder.
Meanwhile the people from the Corporation Rim, a society based on indentured slavery, were uniformly portrayed as heartless and awful. And you can understand why - that way you don't feel so bad when Murderbot is obliged to kick their asses.
And that made Supervisor Leonide such an unusual character in the series. Starting with the fact that she's the only character from the Corporation Rim who appears in more than one book. When we first meet her, in Network Effect, she is a typical member of the Corporation Rim - untrustworthy, conniving and vicious. If she had died in Network Effect, it would not have bothered me at all.
But when she appears in System Collapse, we see other aspects of her character. Especially the fact that the other members of her team, trying to indenture inhabitants of a planet (finally given a name of sorts in Platform Decay, "Hell Plague Planet, ") try to kill her because they are mad at her for making them lose their bonuses for failing to indenture anybody. Murderbot saves Leonide's life, and Leonide becomes, briefly, an auxiliary member of Murderbot's team. And she's good at cursing, which is a positive character trait in the series. When Leonide snipes at Murderbot and friends: "you can all fuck off into the abyss" I figured she was one book away from joining Perservation Aux.
And then in Platform Decay, she turns out to have a family, even, like a real person.
I recognize that part of my disappointment is due to my head cannon - that's geekspeak for a fan's imaginings that are an addition to, or even at variance with facts established within a story universe. The most famous of all head cannons is the slash fiction trope that makes Star Trek's Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk romantic partners. I wrote a play about slash fiction writers many years ago, called "The Slash."
Murderbot has almost nothing to say about Leonide's death. Clearly Leonide meant more to me than she did to Wells, but I think Leonide would have made Platform Decay much more interesting.
Also I had a head cannon that involved a three-way between Ratthi, Tarik and Leonide, which I figured could be part of her rehabilitation arc.
To a certain extent I think Wells has been spinning her wheels since Network Effect. At the end of Network Effect, Murderbot must decide whether to return to Preservation or stay with ART, and decides to go with ART. That would have been a natural place to end the entire series - Murderbot has found its soulmate, an entity even more powerful than Murderbot itself. That would have been a perfectly satisfying dramatic arc. Although I do like System Collapse and some aspects of Platform Decay. And a so-so Murderbot book is better than no Murderbot book at all.
Wells has mentioned that the next Murderbot book (which I assume we won't see until 2028 at the earliest) might be the last. I would be very disappointed if it was, although at least the last one will be set on Preservation, not some random freaking torus like Platform Decay.
But also my head cannon demands to learn more about the University of Mihira and New Tideland and whatever planet on which that scholarly establishment is located.
And what about Ratthi and Tarik!?