On Fugitive Telemetry

Fugitive Telemetry is the sixth Murderbot book, and the first to fall out of chronological order — rather than following the previous one, it sits between Exit Strategy and Network Effect. The whole thing takes place on Preservation Station, an outpost beyond the Corporate Rim where, in theory, everyone is treated equally. In practice many of the characters struggle to see the protagonist, SecUnit, as a person; they treat their own bots well enough, but SecUnit is different, caught in an odd liminal space between human and robot.

The story is well written and follows the classic detective model. It opens with an unexplained murder, something nearly unheard of on Preservation. The assumption is that GrayCris, the corporation targeting Preservation’s leader, Mensah, is behind it — though that turns out not to be the case, and what the story really plays with is the reach of corporate malfeasance. I’m not sure how well the plot works for me. Part of the charm of Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie is that a reader who thinks through the clues can solve the crime; I don’t see how that’s possible here, and I’d never have guessed the truth of it. Instead we follow SecUnit and his companions like a camera on rails. It makes for an interesting story, but there are missteps a stronger mystery writer might have avoided.

Then again, the book is short. Like the others apart from Network Effect, it’s a novella, and the brevity makes it quick to read and digest; to lay all the pieces out so a reader could solve the murder, Wells would have needed a full-length book, and the series has always pushed against that kind of verbosity. What Wells does so well, here and elsewhere, is render what a galactic, capitalist humanity might actually look like. Rather than visions of hope and wonder, she gives us interplanetary slavery and the attempts to flee it, proprietary software that humans pay enormous sums for, and a claustrophobic political system that makes little sense to anyone in it. The stakes are high and the world is cut-throat. Preservation works as a foil to the Corporate Rim; in earlier books it looked increasingly like a hopepunk space Eden, but Wells shatters that image here. Things are better there than in much of the galaxy, but the people remain flawed and carry their prejudices, and it takes real work to get past them — we watch a few characters overcome their first impressions of SecUnit.

Wells began the series as a run of entertaining action novellas, but Network Effect and Fugitive Telemetry are real achievements in turning those stories into a living, breathing world. They’re especially rewarding if you’ve read the earlier ones, since things start to fit together in new ways. They’re for science fiction fans — don’t expect too much realism — and for anyone after a fast-paced mystery.