Network Effect

I finished reading Martha Wells' new Murderbot novel Network Effect this morning.  The previous books in the series, the Murderbot Diaries, are four... novellas is what they were called when as a voracious reader of science-fiction I made my way through all the early Nebula award winners.  And in terms of the criteria for awards in science-fiction, that is what they are, all under 40,000 words.  The earlier Murderbot stories were however all published as individual books, so it might be more accurate to refer to them as short novels, without any of the embellishments that once implied not only a shorter word count, but also a particular kind of dramatic form peculiarly its own.

The Nebula awards, and the Hugo awards as well, set out a continuum of short story, then novelette, then novella, then novel.  Novellas were defined as being between 15,000 and 40,000 words, not enough to amount to a novel as defined by science-fiction publishers, but far in excess of the tautness of the short story format.  In mathematical terms, a novella occupies a finite interval of possible narrative length whereas the novel can be infinitely long; hence a novella must partake of the finitude of the short story even as it stretches.  Commonly, a novella used to serve as a kind of trial run for a full-length novel (and the novelette, when not just a long short story, could similarly serve as a kind of outline).  In the case of the Murderbot Diaries, however, the stories are each fully realized and contribute to the development of the protagonist, which culminates in Network Effect.

Thus another way to approach the Murderbot books is as a single serial work, and for those interested in reading them, it's pretty important to do so in their intended order.  Martha Wells is a marvelous author of serial works -- I can make that assertion based on the complete arc to date of the Murderbot books, as well as based on another book of hers I've read, The Wizard Hunters, first in her series "The Fall of Ile-Rien."  Wells takes full advantage of the ability to refer to events offstage, which have a resonance whether one has read the original source or not, in adding dimension to events and characters who would otherwise require too much space or not move the story along at just the right pace.  In the Murderbot stories the pace is almost always hell-bent, but the Ile-Rien book used the same devices in a much more leisurely and intricate way.

But the greatest strength and pleasure of the Murderbot stories is, as I suggested, the realization of the central character, both human and not, one of the best usages of the artificially intelligent superhero trope you'll ever encounter.  Depending on your tolerance or need for science-fictional escapism, you should definitely put them on your list.