I’ve just finished reading the last of the books, and I’m pretty excited to see what they do with the series.
“Already, there’s been some controversy surrounding the casting of Skarsgård, a cis man, as Murderbot, an android with no sexual characteristics (because, in Murderbot’s words, why would it need them, it’s not a sex bot).”
I really hope this is a joke that’s going over my head. Was the casting department supposed to rely on the wide pool of openly asexual actors?
Well obviously they should have looked at all available robot/cyborgs first. Lol
I am envisioning one of those mock audition skits now. C3PO, Marvin the depressed robot, Christoper Walkin for some reason, etc… All reading Murderbot lines.
In one of the other discussions here, there were a number of people who pictured Murderbot as female, a number male, and some who truly pictured it genderless. For the people who pictured it female, I’m sure a male actor doesn’t sit right. To me, casting seems difficult because it’s supposed to be somewhat physically imposing, shouldn’t have obvious breasts, but also shouldn’t be overtly masculine. I’ll be curious to see what they do with the actor.
It’s a tough role to cast, since the books never describe what Murderbot looks like at all, beyond “has a face” and “has short hair but no body hair” and “some organic parts on arms but not on legs”. And Murderbot can pass as human if someone doesn’t know what SecUnits look like. No indication of height, build, complexion, features, nothing. So anyone they cast is going to look wrong to a bunch of readers because their mental pictures can vary so widely.
Mine is somewhere between Gwendolyn Christie and Robocop. But I like Alexander Skarsgard and I’ll definitely watch this. He has a good “I am 100% done with everyone’s nonsense” expression, which is vital.
He has a good “I am 100% done with everyone’s
nonsense” expression, which is vital. Honestly, that’s the key quality for me: someone who can pull off the social anxiety and the disgust with humans while also clearly caring for at least some of them.
Look at the source. This is their schtick.
Being asexual is an orientation, not a gender. Signed, an asexual cis male.
I’m sure Ezra Miller is free. Hardy har bar
I guarantee there is some androgynous trans actor out there who could have torn this role up.
You know what “acting” is, right? If we limit actors to only play what they are, asexual actors will be out of a job and I really fear the next actor that has to play Hitler.
This IS a situation though (action scifi genre) where cishet men are already MASSIVELY over represented. Casting an attractive cishet man as Murderbot IS a missed opportunity. You don’t have to LIKE that people are noticing and complaining, but it’s STILL a missed opportunity.
Name one that would REMOTELY fit the role
SecUnit does not have a digestive system, so they need to find an actor with no digestive system, and be willing to have 2 inches cut off their legs.
AND has gun ports in arms. They’re lining up outside of the audition room.
What percent of male presenting men are cishet men? Over representation would require relatively more roles go to them than they represent in the population.
Androgynous or trans wouldn’t reflect the character though. The robot has no sex characteristics and isn’t even human. So it really should be played by an AI.
P.S. I meant this sarcastically. But the more I think about it, the more interesting it sounds. Having a robot character voiced by an AI actually seems kind of inevitable really.
The article said 3 times that Murderbot is an android; Murderbot is not an android, it’s a cyborg or construct (with both organic and inorganic parts). Geez.
Author watched too much DBZ
I wonder how they will get the inner monologue and communication between systems on screen. Murderbot talking about his stories or how stupid humans are is the best part
My guess would be narration by Murderbot’s actor for the inner monologue.
The systems communication might partially be handled like how most things handle text messages, with the word bubbles.
I wonder if they’ll commit to hiding the actor’s face most of the time.
Maybe they’ll do a Dune and have the characters whisper to themselves half the time.
That brings up a really good point. A lot of the story is Murderbot describing how they are hacking this or that. It could be really tricky handling that on tv in a way that is entertaining.
So this is being developed by the people responsible for - variously - The Creator, American Pie, and Foundation?
Not exactly inspiring huge confidence in their ability to create thoughtful science fiction that respects and understands the core themes of the source material.
I’ve read the Murderbot books and enjoyed them, but I wouldn’t call them deep.
Sure, but Foundation isn’t exactly deeply layered either. It expresses its themes (theme, really) very directly. And despite that Goyer still managed to adapt a series of books about how no one person really influences history in meaningful ways, it’s the power of social movements that matters, into a TV show about how the whole of history can turn on the actions of one person in the right place at the right time. There’s “trashy” and then there’s “Managing to somehow miss the core theme of a book where characters frequently turn to the audience and literally state the core theme outright.”
Each one’s a novella at best, going for full price, too.
I bought the audiobook for the most recent book. 3.4hours for the whole thing.
The mental health journey of murderbot is pretty subtle. That would be a pretty easy thing to screw-up.
look, I’m bored. I just want to watch my tv, okay?
Me too, but the stupid humans keep doing stupid stuff.
I haven’t read this series yet but it’s on my TBR. Is there some kind of actual justification for the price of these books? The combined total word count of all the books is ~350k, which is 50k words shorter than a few books I’ve recently read that cost $7-8 each. Meanwhile the entire Murderbot series costs $76 to purchase, most of them being 30k words for $12.
I’m lethargic on both getting around to reading it and not letting those hefty prices color my opinion if I were to read it, so I’m not sure if I ever will.
If you’re worried about the cost, have you looked into getting it through your library? That’s how I did it.
Yeah there’s a few ways they could be acquired. I don’t do Amazon or Kindle but they appear to be on Kindle Unlimited. They’ve also apparently been sent out for free a few times. I feel like it puts a bad taste in my mouth either way; even if I could sidestep the cost, by reading them it would still be supporting the books and therefore the gouging of others, in an indirect sense.
I don’t think they’re all on KU. I ended up reading them all as ebooks through the library. Had to wait for a couple of them, so just read other stuff in between.
The first 6 are on KU but not the most recent. I just added the first one to my reading queue.
It’s a pretty fun read, I hope you enjoy it.
Except one, all of them are very short indeed. Tho when I discovered the series, All Systems Red was cheap, probably to get you hooked. I liked them a lot, tho after a while it tends to repeat itself a bit. I’d say buy them one at a time and decide how far you’ll go?
I truly enjoyed them.
Looking on Amazon, the first one is still half the price of the others.
Check the first one out of a library, perhaps, to see if you like it.
The justification is in murderbot itself. I’d get my hands on one of them and see if you like it. If you don’t, then don’t bother because the murderbot sure won’t bother.
I so want to finish the books before this comes out. I just can’t remember how far I got in the series :(
I really like the books, but the names are so generic. I have to look up the order every time I read them.
The audiobooks are fantastic btw.
The problem is they’re priced as a full book for what are mostly novellas, and I still think “maybe it’s worth it…”
There are seven books, but five of them are novellas, and only two are novels, so you can read them pretty quickly. The Wikipedia page has them all listed with a synopsis of each, so you could probably figure out where you left off.
I read them in publishing order, but the sixth one is a prequel to the fifth one. Here’s the publishing order:
- All Systems Red (2017)
- Artificial Condition (2018)
- Rogue Protocol (2018)
- Exit Strategy (2018)
- Network Effect (2020)
- Fugitive Telemetry (2021)
- System Collapse (2023)
There are also three short stories that I haven’t read yet.
It also calls all of them Novels.
They’re under a section called “novels,” but the text makes it pretty clear:
The first book of the series, All Systems Red, was published in May 2017. A sequel, Artificial Condition, was released on May 8, 2018,[1] followed by Rogue Protocol on August 7, 2018.[2][3] The next installment, Exit Strategy, was released on October 2, 2018.[4] Wells noted in 2017 that the four novellas “do have an overarching story, with the fourth one bringing the arc to a conclusion.”[1] A full-length Murderbot novel , Network Effect, was released on May 5, 2020.[5][6][7]
Thanks. Missed that. I can read, promise!
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