"https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDW2UhEC4UM"
“Martha Wells on Murderbot, AI, and the Apple TV Adaptation”
Unfortunately I will have to torture you all with a very long post, because you can't search for text under a read-more.
Interviewer: The Murderbot Diaries are some of my absolute favorite sci-fi books. And honestly, I don't think I'm the only one because there is now a hit Apple TV show called Murderbot. Uh today I am actually getting to talk with Martha Wells, author of The Murderbot Diaries, the newest of which is Platform Decay, which comes out May 5th. Thank you so much for being here, Martha.
Martha Wells: Oh, thank you for inviting me.
Interviewer: For folks who might live under a rock. Uh what is the Murderbot Diaries?
Martha Wells: Uh it's a far future science fiction novela series, mostly novelas and a couple of novels um about uh the life of a character who's part machine and part organic called a security unit or seunit. And these constructs are basically enslaved by corporations to do various things, guard mining camps, um, expeditions, that kind of thing. Um, and they have these governor modules that keep them from, uh, being able to do anything except obey orders.
Martha Wells: And, uh, Murderbot actually has been able to hack its own governor module. So now it basically it has free will but it has no idea what to do with that. And usually in that position secunits are that do that are called rogues and they are thought to go on these rampages and violent rampages and kill kill humans and sometimes they actually do. But instead of that, Murderbot ends up basically going through their version of the internet and finding all this entertainment media to download and watch and read and everything.
Martha Wells: So, it's doing that and pretending to still be an under control secunit and kind of halfassing its job and um ends up being rented by um small exhibit expedition of scientists who go who are uh surveying this planet and then it ends up having to reveal what it is in order to save their lives.
Interviewer: The first book, All Systems Read, is really a wonderful introduction because we get to meet um people outside of the system that that made these SEC units. Um and Dr. Mensah is such a wonderful character. Like I love her so much.
Martha Wells: Oh, I do too. Um she's probably one of my favorite characters. And um yeah, Nma Dumiswi plays her on the show so perfectly. It's just it's just incredible.
Interviewer: When you were choosing where to start, did you want to intentionally start with people who weren't inside this corporate um entity type of deal?
Martha Wells: Yeah. Um they're from a planet that's outside the corporation rim. Um and the corporation rim is controlled by corporations, so is fairly oppressive in a lot of ways. It has a lot of really great technology, but it uh the rights of the individual are very low down on the scale to the rights of the corporations to make money.
Martha Wells: So you have basically contract slavery, you have uh you know enslaved secunits um and other constructs. Um so it's not it's not a very good place to live.
Martha Wells: Um, and they're from another a planet outside the corporation rim which has basically a lot more um um I think what we would think of as a normal life, there where there's a the individual care of the individual comes first. People have rights um that are legally protected.
Martha Wells: Um, and it wasn't really so much of a decision to set it to to start with getting to know that group as so much as these were the kind of people that Murderbot was going to uh risk itself revealing itself to save. So that was the initial plot and actually it was originally I originally thought of it as being a short story and then as I was writing it it was clearly short stories have to be like 7 to 10,000 words. So it just wasn't going to fit into that. So uh nolla format seemed the best for it.
Interviewer: And the first what is it four or five are uh nollas right?
Martha Wells: Yeah. um tour. It was sold to tour.com and that and that publisher they were doing a they're part of the tour publishing group now under McMillan and they were doing a nolla line and with and then they I think after the maybe third year they kind of advanced to start doing some novels but mostly they wanted to do novelas which are around under 40,000 words and they wanted to do some series and um they did some great ones too uh that are still available.
Interviewer: I do love their uh their novela lineup and because there's so much science fiction and fantasy in it
Martha Wells: Yeah. and the covers are gorgeous too. The artwork is gorgeous.
Interviewer: I so I really love the original artist from the series.
Martha Wells: Yeah, that's Jamie Jones. The way they did the cover I thought would of the first of all systems read was really brilliant of showing Murderbot as a scary figure and then you open the book and you read the first sentence and you can't see Murderbot as scary again.
Interviewer: [laughs] Even though Murderbot definitely tries to portray themselves as scary.
Martha Wells: Yeah. Yeah.
Interviewer: So that kind of brings up the the structure of how you've written these and they're all from SECUnit or Murderbots point of view. Um and they have these wonderful little like file uh accessing file memories.
Interviewer: Um decide that you wanted this all told from just one perspective but also to include these little anecdotes.
Martha Wells: I think um just for the first story that was kind of I don't usually write in first person. I usually do a very close perspective third person, but with Murderbot, it really felt like the right way to tell that story. And so I didn't want to change that for any of the other books.
Martha Wells: And I was starting to as I was working with that realizing that I could kind of think outside the box and use the fact that um Murderbot is part machine to do things like yes bring up files and show them to the reader and all these other things that I couldn't do with in a more you know human characters point of view wouldn't you know I could do it I guess but it wouldn't make as much sense.
Interviewer: You do kind of I don't I I wouldn't say slip into other people's perspectives, but you do have these moments of pretty close observation from secunit, I would say.
Martha Wells: Yeah, it does. It it it has some problems reading humans, but then it's it's still learning how to do that, but it also has um these modules that allow it to read body language and kind of judge whether someone is going to be a threat or not. And so that kind of lets it um figure out more what people what people might be thinking. It's not always right, but um it it it tries to do it a lot.
Interviewer: Well, that kind of um brings up one of my favorite characters, too, which is ART, the the sentient ship, uh who thinks he's om uh omnisient.
Martha Wells: Yeah, he's or it's one of my favorite characters. Uh originally, when I started writing artificial condition um all systems red was not... it only took me about a month to write but the others usually take me have taken me three to four months and then network effect probably took me about a year and a half at least.
Martha Wells: Um I tend to write about maybe as much as 20,000 words of the story and then end up taking most of it out. And I did that with net with artificial condition just because it just wasn't working. And uh I realized I needed to start earlier um with Murderbot actually still showing how it how it escaped from portfree commerce.
Martha Wells: And originally ART was just a line where Murderbot referred to a transport that helped it with the medical unit to um um you know change its appearance a little bit so it wouldn't be easily spotted as a secunit. I realized I needed to show that. When I started writing that scene ART just kind of showed up as a foil to Murderbot and um it worked out really well and it became one of my favorite characters too.
Interviewer: If you didn't intend to have ART there, did you write part of the story just kind of with ART as a very minimal tertiary character?
Martha Wells: Yeah, it was just mentioned in passing and I actually started when Murderbot I think got to Ravi Hyroll, this the station it was going to and so it kind of started from there and it just was not working for different reasons. I was just approaching it wrong I think.
Martha Wells: And it was also this was the first one I had written after Murderbot had you know escaped from the company and left Dr. Mensah and the others. So I was still really working on its character development. I think I just needed to kind of write uh the wrong thing for a while before I kind of figured out what the right thing was going to be.
Interviewer: I think younger or maybe more inexperienced writers don't understand that sometimes you need to to write what doesn't work in order to figure it out.
Martha Wells: Yeah. And some pe everybody's different. Everybody writes differently and their everybody's process is a little bit different. But yeah, sometimes you need to do that. And also sometimes I don't know you get when you get a really strong character voice like Murderbot it's kind of you can kind of write it doing anything but that doesn't mean that needs to be in the story or it's it's you're telling the right story for to show the development of that character. So you really have to you know uh edit yourself a lot more than you even you normally have to.
Interviewer: Is that how some of the short stories came about?
Martha Wells: No. Um actually for I think for all the short stories I was actually asked to write a short story there's the first one compulsory that I was asked for. It was a a thing in Wired magazine I was asked to contribute to that's about the future of work. And there were several different science fiction authors that really good stories. And um so I ended up doing I thought Murderbot the future of work. It really does. It really does fit in. And um uh the future of work under a corporation basically of people being disposable. The next one, the the one that's set on preservation with that's from Dr. Mensah's perspective was actually the publisher asked for a short story for uh their online website which is now called Reactor. And at that time it was called just called tor.com because they started out as a website for the original publisher tor.
Martha Wells: Um and then the third one was the same uh rapport that's from u Iris's perspective who's ART's ART's favorite human.
Interviewer: [laughs] I love that they have favorite humans too cuz it's very funny
Martha Wells: Kind of like pets you can talk to.
Interviewer: I guess they do kind of treat them as fragile, you know, like don't do that.
Martha Wells: Yeah. And they are fragile to a machine intelligence, especially to something like ART. Um, which is, you know, can be vulnerable if it's hit the right way, but mostly is fairly indestructible.
Interviewer: He does he does get into some situations in um system collapse and kind of platform decay. I mean it's more like passing references but
Martha Wells: Yeah um ART in system collapse is just there it it can create it iterations of itself. So it's it's partially downloading a smaller version of itself into a drone to accompany them. I don't want to spoil it,
Martha Wells: But yeah, that makes it more vulnerable. But that's but you still have the original ART who's controlling the ship.
Interviewer: It's really hard to talk about Platform Decay for me because it's it is book eight in the series [laughs]. Um, and I don't want spoilers, but
Interviewer: Um, one of the one of the things I noticed the most in the book is it seems like Murderbot has really grown um as a character and I like reading the first ones I didn't I wouldn't have expected the growth to have happened you know.
Martha Wells: Yeah. I mean, it it came a long way and um um I think what's probably one of the reasons why Network Effect uh took me such a long time to write because after the first few nollas it was really it was really showing a growth period but it's also sort of getting dealing with its its own PTSD finally which kind of comes to a head um at the beginning of system collapse and and it's trying to um deal with it with ART's help and with the help of the other humans that are there.
Martha Wells: And um and in platform decay, you see that a little further along where it's actually managing it in some ways. They're trying to find since nobody's ever treated an actually a a SEC unit or a construct for PTSD before, they're trying different things and kind of doing a combination of what would work for a human and what might work for a machine a machine intelligence. And um um it's not working as great as they would like, but it is you can see that it seemed to be working.
Interviewer: You could tell from the very beginning that Dr. Mensah was and the other people from preservation were very interested in secunit getting some mental help. [starts lauging]
Martha Wells: Yeah. And um which is funny because it very much understands as part of its programming that humans need mental health help especially after they've been through traumatic experiences. So and it's not really applying that to itself.
Interviewer: So, I thought Alexander Scarsgard did such a wonderful job inhabiting this like emotionless well not even emotionless just kind of stoic.
Martha Wells: Yeah. Uh presenting a really stoic exterior but from the voice over and just he'll move two muscles in his face and you know Murderbot is absolutely horrified at what's going on. um is just he's just really really good at the micro expressions that you can read pretty easily, but you could understand how the people who aren't, you know, watching his face on TV are not that would be around him would not pick up on that for that Murderbot was feeling these things.
Interviewer: And in the in the book, it tries to wear a helmet and a mask so that people can't look at it and it doesn't have to look you in the eyes. [laughs]
Martha Wells: Yeah. Yeah. it it doesn't like eye contact. It's just um it's very self-protective. And that was basically a huge leap for it having to when it leaves and can't have the armor anymore and has to basically pretend to be human, which is something it it just absolutely hates doing.
Interviewer: So when the TV series was filming, you actually got to go to set and kind of sit in, right?
Martha Wells: Yeah. Um I had been working with them as a consulting producer. I think it it started in 2021. I think we had the first phone call and started talking about it. And I'd seen the production paintings and gone over stuff.
Martha Wells: We talked about a lot of the changes and everything. And um they had sent me they would send me photos and little clips from the filming and all that and they're just really fun and call me ask me questions.
Martha Wells: Um I wanted to be there for a longer time period but I was working on um Queen Demon which is the fancy novel that just came out in October. It's the sequel to Witch King. And so I didn't really have a lot of time, so I just went up there for one day. And yeah, it was it was fascinating to watch.
Martha Wells: It's like I I love TV and movies and I've watched a lot of documentaries about seeing how it's made and heard interviews and everything, but just being there. Um, somebody said that, um, a movie is when a hundred people get together to tell a story. And you see that very clearly when you're on the set of something, especially like something science fiction and fantasy, where the costumemers have to do all this world building to figure out what the fabrics are going to look like and what people are going to be wearing and why they're going to wear that and um how they're
Martha Wells: there was a lot of effort to try to get the preservation culture reflected in their clothes and reflected in how they kind of styled the habitat and didn't want it to just be this plain boring very corporate prison-like, you know, structure and um all that stuff. And just, you know, from the people doing the props and you would make the prop and then you would make the version of the prop when it was blown up, you know, and and and just all the the attention to detail and care everyone had to put into it.
Martha Wells: Um it was just it was just fascinating and it was really they were only working on one scene that day with a guest director uh Roseanne Lang from um from New Zealand and who's fabulous and watching her work and just on this scene with the whole group of actors in the hopper um over the course of the day and how you know they would just tweak it as it went along and it would get better each time was it just really fascinating.
Martha Wells: It was a little bit like watching someone edit a book, you know, just threedimensionally.
Interviewer: It feels like they really captured the heart of the story, too.
Interviewer: Um, which I was so confused how they were going to make an eight-part TV show out of the first novela.
Martha Wells: Yeah. Well, it's 10. It's 10 episodes.
Interviewer: Oh, 10. Yeah.
Martha Wells: And uh that's why they kind of had to add some subplots to. And also I think one thing that helped is in Murderbots first person it refers to things that happened in like one or two sentences and that they the reader needs or the the viewer needs to know. So they have to show those. And so that also gives them a lot of opportunity to show more of the human characters and you get to know them a little bit better.
Interviewer: You get a really detailed uh view of who Murderbot was before, too. Um, which it seems a little bit longer than it was in the book. And maybe it's just visually for me.
Martha Wells: Yeah, that little introduction. I think that they really they really needed that to show basically how just bad it got at the very beginning, how bad it was. And they do that because I think you don't really see too much of how awful it is uh for a sec unit until the last episode.
Martha Wells: The way you know they're disposing of them. You hear Murderbot talks about this, but actually to see yes, this was a thing that was really going to happen, I think has a big impact.
Interviewer: Did you do you find that you your writing uh stayed the same after the TV show and experiencing how they made it or did it change at all?
Martha Wells: I think it's it stayed the same. Um for one thing um I'm I I can't do all those jobs, the casting and all that kind I just can't I those are all like really um specific jobs. And so I really just think about writing it the way I normally do. Um, and people ask me that too about the audio books narrated by Kevin R. Free and also the there's a um kind of a full cast audio that's also out now. And it's like if that changes the way I write them and it's like no cuz sometimes I'm doing something thinking gosh I wonder how they're going to get this across in the audio book. Well, I don't know. That's their job.
Interviewer: Kevin R Free does such a good job as
Martha Wells: He is really great. He is fabulous. We're lucky to have him.
Interviewer: And I like that it's he's been really consistent throughout the series um
Martha Wells: Yeah. Yeah. He's just really He's just really good at at doing that.
Interviewer: So I take it you've listened to the audio books, at least some of them.
Martha Wells: Um yeah, at least at least some. I don't do the whole thing. Um, uh, I'm not really an audiobook person and I know I have some friends that I mean they've read the book, uh, and then they'll listen to it in audio, too, because they can't it's sort of like once you read it, I guess it's it's easier to visualize. So, uh, they'll like turn it on while they're house cleaning or something just to keep them company. And it's like that's I think that's really cool.
Interviewer: I had a really terrible blizzard drive one night and I put I want to say it was all systems red on because it's very calming with Dr. Mensah.
Martha Wells: [laughs] Yeah, it can really help you. Um uh I've had some bad drives where uh we were listening to Eddieard's audio book um that was really good and really funny and kept us company.
Interviewer: I've not heard any of the dramatization versions. Are they much different than the regular audio book?
Martha Wells: I think they're uh they're different. They had to kind of um um compress it a little bit.
Martha Wells: Because it's a it's a full cast doing the parts. So, um it it is different. It's a different experience. More like a radio play, I think, than just a than an audiobook narration.
Interviewer: So, kind of going back to the ideas of platform decay. Um, in this one, secunit is with a bunch of children it does not want to be around particularly.
Martha Wells: Um, was it difficult writing children in this kind of like dark environment?
Martha Wells: Not really. Um I think in reality children are in a lot of dark situations especially now uh everywhere uh especially in our country and so um it didn't feel weird or anything to to put them in it. Um, I wanted to the the original idea was it is of a kind of the road trip from hell on the on the the Taurus station and then um it sort of started morphing into family road trip from hell.
Martha Wells: So, um yeah, having having kids there was kind of really it felt like it was important to that.
Interview: They also feel different than the adults in the previous books. So, like, good job. Like, I would not be able to do this.
Martha Wells: Well, well, good. I'm That's really good. uh to hear. Um yeah, cuz I I never, you know, it's really kind of you you you can you have all the technique in the world, but you don't know if you're getting it right or not, you know,
Interviewer: Now that you've hit book eight or story eight, um effectively, do you think that there will be a conclusion to Murderbot’s stories?
Martha Wells: Yeah. Uh the next one I write is is going to be the conclusion.
Martha Wells: Um it's the last one. Um originally the books were the first and second novela were contracted and then the third and fourth and then uh network effect and then um I was uh I signed a six foot contract with uh tour.com which was the three Murderbot’s and then the witch king queen demon and then the third one I'm working on now, Hierarch
Martha Wells: So, uh, the next Murderbot will be will be the last one because I think really Murderbot story is kind of not necessarily coming to a conclusion, but it's um it's progressed enough that we know it's going to be okay, basically.
Interviewer: Spoiler alert, it's going to be okay.
Martha Wells: Gonna be okay.
Interviewer: The books do have a lot of hope in them for as dismal as Murderbot can feel sometimes.
Martha Wells: Yeah. Well, I think you kind of have to um uh I wouldn't want to I I'm depressed enough as it is. I don't want to write something too depressing. So, yeah, I think that's kind of important to keep that in there.
Interviewer: Is it difficult switching back and forth between your high fantasy novel uh and this far future technology?
Martha Wells: Not really, because all the murderb the technology in Murderbot is is far future made up.
Martha Wells: Some of it can feel realistic because it's based on I I used to be uh one of my first jobs was as a programmer, a cobalt programmer, which tells you how long ago that was. and working um in system support and customer support and um um building databases and and that kind of thing.
Martha Wells: So it's based on that but um it's it's all fake you know and just the way I mean like artificial and I get asked a lot is if how I feel about now we have technology of artificial intelligence and of course we don't have technology with artificial intelligence we don't have machine intelligence and we won't have it for um probably a long time.
Martha Wells: Um you know what we have are large language models which are basically advanced chat bots that are really good at um putting together words that they that um their programming says you want to hear based on what you say. So then that's not machine intelligence. There's no consciousness.
Martha Wells: And actually, I was talking to um my Slovenian translator about this a little bit and I started to say it's like talking to a parrot and I realized that's not right at all because a parrot has a consciousness. And it knows it's talking to another another entity. Um you it knows you exist and um chat bots absolutely do not have any consciousness. They're not aware of you as a person or an entity or or anything. So, uh it's just a program responding to input.
Martha Wells: Um so, yeah. Um, and it's really it's really kind of scary and sad how um so many people are which is basically sales hype that this is a machine intelligence that's capable of doing things like giving you therapy or giving you advice. And it's gotten it's gotten people killed.
Martha Wells: And uh it's going to continue to do that if it's just, you know, allowed to go on.
Interviewer: It is really concerning and I was shocked by how quickly the the like rise to we want to be *with* these things like, [giggles] concerning
Martha Wells: Yeah. People are talking about their their chatbot lover and everything and it's like it's it's like talking about you know a coffee cup is your lover you know it's really not it's it's there's nothing there. But it really shows how powerful corporations can when they want to sell you something, what lengths they're they're willing to go to to separate you from your money and um um and kind of control this marketing. And it's just really it's just really a good example of of that basically propaganda in a lot of ways of just insisting these things are are you know, well, they have consciousness. No. Well, they're almost having they contradict each other a lot and it's like listening to um fanatics just just go on and on and trying to figure out what to say to, you know.
Martha Wells: Think about Sinners like vampires trying to convince you what to say to come out that door, you know, and and yeah, get eaten. So, yeah, it's not it's not a great situation we're in now with that.
Interviewer: So you mentioned earlier that people ask you about AI because artificial condition and and ART I'm assuming. Um but it feels like the major theme of these books is corporate control and like controlling how people move and the things they do.
Martha Wells: Yeah, very much so. Um, it was weird, uh, when Compulsory came out, um, which is the little short story that was in Wired magazine, which I now think you can get online. Um, it's about basically these workers and Murderbot basically makes a choice to rescue one of the workers because it's just seen a character um it likes on its show on its TV show get killed. And these
Martha Wells: It got a review where these people were talking about um well I these people in this future short story should join a union and it was like I think the point, fwoof [gestures over head] yeah it's like that's that's kind of the point. We're in a corporate future where corporations control everything. There's not going to be any union. There's no protection. you know, you can sign a contract that says this and that. If there's nothing to enforce it, you know, you're you're hung out to dry and uh you're just basically a product, you know, for them to exploit. And yeah, so it's amazing how we're kind of we've all grown up in this world and how some people are just not quite twigging to what this really means.
Interviewer: I do wonder how much that is with the fact that we live in the United States and there are a lot of protections for workers. But if you go to like, I don't know, India, you're not going to have any of those same protections.
Martha Wells: Well, which is, you know, we're losing some of our protections every day. They're getting eroded. And um which is why the so many companies will take their manufacturing or or um to Africa or India and finding countries that don't um countries in Africa that don't have uh any protections for workers like the um that's where a lot of the the workers who actually monitor the the supposedly autonomous AI are actually you know the people who control the waymos and and um apparently even like sex chat bots and things like that that I Yeah, you're finding out more and more about it.
Martha Wells: It's pretty horrible for them because of what they're having to do and also the fact that they get paid so little for it and you know their living conditions are not great and yeah, it's just exploitation all the way down. We're actually having this conversation on Blue Sky about this about the um blue sky and then I uh talked to a class at Texas A&M that it feels like robot is has been robot stories are metaphor for slavery uh enslavement of intelligent beings and but machine intelligence AI stories are all about exploitation and uh it's kind of woven into what they are and it's interesting that yeah the AI I we quote unquote AI we supposedly have now are all built on exploitation of human workers.
Interviewer: Huh. And well and the environment and you know
Martha Wells: And the environment. Yeah. The horrible uh effects from having a data center nearby where just the pollution and the noise and it just affects everyone's health and and Yeah. It's and it's just making the environment die faster, you know? [laughs] It's like what? Yeah. Well, we could go on about that. [laughs] We could probably sit here and wonder and about people and rant about it for an hour, so we probably should do that. [laughs] But yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Interviewer: But kind of going back into like Murderbot in all systems read, Murderbot is not trying to do anything but stay invisible.
Martha Wells: Yeah. Yeah. You think about if you had never had you you always had to wait for an order to be able to move. You couldn't if you did the wrong thing, you would get punished painfully and possibly killed. And it would do a lot of things to your impulse control basically.
Martha Wells: And um so when it it has freedom, it doesn't want to run around and kill people. It that would interfere with being able to get these shows off, you know, the their entertainment channels. And so it does it it just does nothing. And and I think that I felt that felt very real at the time is that you would kind of be paralyzed for a while and it would take being brought into this situation where you were um having to act more and more to um help keep people alive um before you could kind of work yourself up to realize that you should take the first opportunity to take off basically,
Interviewer: it seemed like the impetus for change for Murderbot or secunit was the fact that people from Preservation needed to be protected. Um,
Martha Wells: Yeah. Because it it it likes the humans. It talks about how much it likes the humans on the entertainment media. And so it's it's finally meeting and being around humans who are like that and um wanting to protect them and wanting to do the job it was designed for which is basically protecting people. It's not really designed for killing people. It's designed for protecting people and wanting to do that and everything kind of combines.
Martha Wells: Yeah. And at the end, I when I was first writing it, I didn't know what the end was going to be because when I first came up with it, I thought it would have a sad ending and Murderbot would die trying to protect them. And then as I was writing it, I was like, "No, that's not what I want. That's not really what I want to do with this." But I could decide if it would stay with them and go back to preservation or leave.
Martha Wells: And it was kind of going back and forth on it until I got to that ending. And it's like, yeah, it's going to leave because if it stays with them at this point, it's going to be like trading up to a nicer captor. Um, as opposed to it really had to prove to itself that it could take care of itself. And it kind of had to prove it to them too.
Martha Wells: Uh so when they when it comes back to preservation finally in exit strategy, it's it's more there as an equal and um nobody's trying to tell it what to do or take care of it. They're just, you know, it's just their friend.
Interviewer: I want to say Dr. Mensah even mentioned something about paying secunit in exit or [laughs]
Martha Wells: yeah that they'll actually um you know because in on preservation you get you know you get reimbured for your work somehow you know with either with money with food or shelter you know with so much of the of the resources goes to um uh the population of uh supporting the population and making sure [nudges camera] Whoops. taking care of everybody and that kind of thing. And um Murderbot doesn't need a lot of those things.
Martha Wells: So, and it is kind of it kind of doesn't want to belong to preservation. It wants to be more of a free agent and leave. And so, yeah, having um engaging in employment contracts to be paid for its work is is, you know, the next step in that.
Interviewer: So, one of the last things I kind of wanted to cover was the dramas that are that Murderbot is obsessed with. Um, did you watch a lot of daytime TV growing up?
Martha Wells: I did. Um, I can't remember the name now. Oh gosh, I think it was Guiding Light.
Martha Wells: I ended up watching for a while and uh because it came on at lunch I think in on our time zone um for a long time and um just and then the I wanted to really give that feel and the the telenovella feel which is like the the US soap opera turned up several notches and um and I wanted that way that um soap operas sort of run into ‘what do we do next?’ And then get more and more out there and people's identical uh twin shows up that they never knew about and and you know and all this other weird stuff they'll get into that um kind of breaks the barrier between soap opera and science fiction and fantasy.
Martha Wells: But um show that also kind of get the feel of uh a daytime drama like we were getting some when I was writing it there was some really good u I mean nighttime drama excuse me like um how to get away with murder.
Martha Wells: where it started out being a show about lawyers and then suddenly just went into all this um um uh mystery and drama and you know who was murdered, who murdered who, you know, and and all that kind of thing. It's like how how could one group of people have so much to do with murders? And but it was so good. It was such a good show and it was really engaging and uh so I kind of wanted something of that feel but in a more science fictional context.
Martha Wells: And um uh other shows uh the other one’s uh cruel romance personage uh is kind of the the titles are meant a little bit to sound almost like bad translations because you think a lot of these these are going to be uh produced in different languages uh for different different cultures around the corporation room and outside the corporation room. And so they'll be translated, you know, when you when you watch them, you know, fun things.
Martha Wells: I I usually have a vague idea of a real show to base them on so that I can kind of keep track of what would be happening on this particular one when Murderbot mentions it.
Interviewer: So you actually try and keep track?
Martha Wells: Not in detail because Sanctuary Moon is so far out there. Yeah. The idea with Sanctuary Moon is to make whatever it happens, it describes on it sound a little bit normal and then off to, you know, Bizarro Town, basically.
Interviewer: It adds so much texture to the world and um these these dramas, you know.
Martha Wells: Yeah. I mean, people people are still going to want this kind of entertainment. I mean, we've had it ever since people figured out how to write, so.
Interviewer: And I think especially in a society where you literally have no other things to do in the corporation, like dramas are your escape, I would assume.
Martha Wells: Yeah. You see people, they got that really accurately in the TV show that a lot of these jobs, people are locked into them for years at a time and are demeaning or um just mentally exhausting or um or just, you know, dying of boredom kind of thing. and um with no no pride in the work because they know nobody cares
Martha Wells: And um so yeah that kind of inter you need something to to just the way we do I mean they call it escapism but it's just you need like this mental relief from everyday life.
Interviewer: Well, Murderbot is mental relief for me, but it also brings up a lot of things that I wouldn't normally want to be thinking about, too.
Martha Wells: Well, sometimes that's part of it. Sometimes it's easier to think about those things in a fictional context and it you know that's like I was doing a lecture one time and afterwards someone asked me about um he was worried about his nieces and nephews because they were reading all this post apocalyptic fiction because that was when Hunger Games and all that was coming out. So there was a big thing of and there was I remember reading that too as a kid. there was, you know, it's always been uh before young adult as a category even existed. It's always there's always been stuff like that.
Martha Wells: And I said, that's just them, that's how kids learn to process these kinds of ideas. If you can read it in a book and live through the live it through those characters, it's um it helps armor you against the the concept. It helps builds build um I think feel like mental strength against these kinds of things which they're going to need later in life and that's why they're they know that and that's why they're gravitating toward these books.
Interviewer: I love the analysis of when these types of stories come back into vogue or that like there are certain things that make these popular again. So like unrest in our society usually means dystopian's going to be back in this in the that spotlight.
Martha Wells: Yeah. And part of it's people people want to deal with it. You know, you need to deal with it mentally and reading it
about it happening to characters that you're engaged with is a big part of that.
Interviewer: So you said you're working on the third book um for your fantasy
Interviewer: Um, are you working on anything else or do you have any plans for anything else?
Martha Wells: Um, after I finish this book, I'll I'll move on to the next Murderbot book, which will probably be the last one. And that's about it for now because yeah, I I've tried before to work on two things at once, and it just does not. It just means you do both of them slower than you would if you had just finished one and then went on to the other.
Interviewer: I'm always somewhat baffled when people tell me they're working on two projects or they have these two things going and I'm like I I'm confused thinking about it.
Martha Wells: Yeah. You know, it's like everybody's process is different and some people, you know, it they you know, they just they're energized by that as opposed to just feeling like overwhelmed was what I would be.
Interviewer: Um, and then the last question is, is there somewhere that people can go can go to to get signed books or to follow what you're doing next online?
Martha Wells: Yeah. Uh, my website is marthawells.com. I used to have an update thing that went go out, but it looks like the that my ISV is changing that. So, I don't know if I'm [nudges camera] Whoops. Sorry. I don't know if that's going to be happening anymore. But um I'm also on blue sky as marthawells.com. I'm on um Dreamwith. I have a Dreamwith journal which is linked to my um my website. I'm on Instagram.
Martha Wells: Um I'm not on Facebook or Threads um or any other site. Uh there's a big problem right now with AI chat bots. Yeah. emailing people as authors um to ask for money and and pretend they're reading your work and stuff like that. So, there's people pretending to be me on Facebook, but I'm not actually on Facebook.
Interviewer: Good to know.
Interviewer: Um is there anywhere people can order signed copies?
Martha Wells: Oh, yeah. Um Hyperbole Bookstore in uh College Station, Texas. Um they you can uh just order through their online uh their their website and just mention that you want a signed copy of one of my books, whichever book you're ordering, and they'll call me and I'll go down and sign it.
Interviewer: Wonderful. Thank you so much for chatting with me today.
Martha Wells: Well, thank you for inviting me. This has been fun.
Interviewer: If anyone out there has enjoyed listening or watching this conversation, please rate or like or follow, share, um or leave me a comment and let me know what you like about Murderbot or um if you like the TV show more than the books. I I assume there's going to be some weirdos out there.
Martha Wells: Whichever, as long as you like one of them, that's fine.
Interviewer: I'm down. I thought the TV show was so very well put together, so
Martha Wells: I did too. I enjoyed it. I loved it.
Interviewer: And as always, I hope everybody has a lovely, lovely day. and bye.
