Regular price: £13.19
A power-driven young woman has just one chance to secure the status she craves and regain priceless lost artefacts prized by her people. She must free their thief from a prison planet from which no one has ever returned. Ingray and her charge will return to their home world to find their planet in political turmoil, at the heart of an escalating interstellar conflict. Together they must make a new plan to salvage Ingray's future, her family and her world before they are lost to her for good.
Featuring Inspector Dreyfus - one of Alastair Reynolds' most popular characters - this is a fast-paced SF crime story, combining a futuristic setting with a gripping tale of technology, revolution and revenge. One citizen died a fortnight ago. Two a week ago. Four died yesterday...and unless the cause can be found - and stopped - within the next four months, everyone will be dead. For the Prefects, the hunt for a silent, hidden killer is on....
Earth, 2144. Jack is an anti-patent scientist turned drug pirate, traversing the world in a submarine as a pharmaceutical Robin Hood, fabricating cheap medicines for those who can't otherwise afford them. But her latest drug hack has left a trail of lethal overdoses as people become addicted to their work, doing repetitive tasks until they become unsafe or insane. Hot on her trail is an unlikely pair: Eliasz, a brooding military agent, and his indentured robotic partner, Paladin.
In 2088 humankind is at last ready to explore beyond Earth's solar system, and astrophysicist Reggie Straifer knows where we should go. He's discovered a distant anomalous star that appears to defy the laws of physics. It could be a weird natural phenomenon, or it could be alien. Convoy 7's mission to discern the nature of the star's strange qualities will use vast resources and take centuries, so in order to maintain the genetic talent of the first crew, clones will be used for the expedition.
Summoned to the home planet of her family's business empire, space-fleet commander Kylara Vatta is told to expect a hero's welcome. But instead she is thrown into danger unlike any other she has faced and finds herself isolated, unable to communicate with the outside world, commanding a motley group of unfamiliar troops, and struggling day by day to survive in a deadly environment with sabotaged gear. Only her undeniable talent for command can give her ragtag band a fighting chance.
To win an impossible war, Captain Kel Cheris must awaken an ancient weapon and a despised traitor general.
Captain Kel Cheris of the Hexarchate is disgraced for using unconventional methods in a battle against heretics. Kel Command gives her the opportunity to redeem herself by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles, a star fortress that has recently been captured by heretics. Cheris' career isn't the only thing at stake. If the fortress falls, the Hexarchate itself might be next.
A power-driven young woman has just one chance to secure the status she craves and regain priceless lost artefacts prized by her people. She must free their thief from a prison planet from which no one has ever returned. Ingray and her charge will return to their home world to find their planet in political turmoil, at the heart of an escalating interstellar conflict. Together they must make a new plan to salvage Ingray's future, her family and her world before they are lost to her for good.
Featuring Inspector Dreyfus - one of Alastair Reynolds' most popular characters - this is a fast-paced SF crime story, combining a futuristic setting with a gripping tale of technology, revolution and revenge. One citizen died a fortnight ago. Two a week ago. Four died yesterday...and unless the cause can be found - and stopped - within the next four months, everyone will be dead. For the Prefects, the hunt for a silent, hidden killer is on....
Earth, 2144. Jack is an anti-patent scientist turned drug pirate, traversing the world in a submarine as a pharmaceutical Robin Hood, fabricating cheap medicines for those who can't otherwise afford them. But her latest drug hack has left a trail of lethal overdoses as people become addicted to their work, doing repetitive tasks until they become unsafe or insane. Hot on her trail is an unlikely pair: Eliasz, a brooding military agent, and his indentured robotic partner, Paladin.
In 2088 humankind is at last ready to explore beyond Earth's solar system, and astrophysicist Reggie Straifer knows where we should go. He's discovered a distant anomalous star that appears to defy the laws of physics. It could be a weird natural phenomenon, or it could be alien. Convoy 7's mission to discern the nature of the star's strange qualities will use vast resources and take centuries, so in order to maintain the genetic talent of the first crew, clones will be used for the expedition.
Summoned to the home planet of her family's business empire, space-fleet commander Kylara Vatta is told to expect a hero's welcome. But instead she is thrown into danger unlike any other she has faced and finds herself isolated, unable to communicate with the outside world, commanding a motley group of unfamiliar troops, and struggling day by day to survive in a deadly environment with sabotaged gear. Only her undeniable talent for command can give her ragtag band a fighting chance.
To win an impossible war, Captain Kel Cheris must awaken an ancient weapon and a despised traitor general.
Captain Kel Cheris of the Hexarchate is disgraced for using unconventional methods in a battle against heretics. Kel Command gives her the opportunity to redeem herself by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles, a star fortress that has recently been captured by heretics. Cheris' career isn't the only thing at stake. If the fortress falls, the Hexarchate itself might be next.
Somewhere on the outer rim of the universe, a mass of decaying world-ships known as the Legion is traveling in the seams between the stars. For generations, a war for control of the Legion has been waged, with no clear resolution. As worlds continue to die, a desperate plan is put into motion. Zan wakes with no memory, prisoner of a people who say they are her family.
Chris Faulkner has just landed the job of his dreams. But Shorn Associates are market leaders in Conflict Investment. They expect results; they expect the best. Chris has one very high-profile kill to his name already, but he will have to drive hard and go for kill after kill if he's to keep his bosses happy. All he has to do in the meantime is stay alive....
Not too long from today, a new, highly contagious virus makes its way across the globe. Most who get sick experience nothing worse than flu, fever, and headaches. But for the unlucky one percent - and nearly five million souls in the United States alone - the disease causes "Lock In": Victims fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus. The disease affects young, old, rich, poor, people of every color and creed. The world changes to meet the challenge.
The spectacular debut novel nominated for every major science fiction award in 2014, Ancillary Justice is the story of a warship trapped in a human body and her search for revenge. Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Nebula Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, a James Tiptree Jr. honour and a Kitschie. Currently shortlisted for the Hugo Awards. They made me kill thousands, but I only have one target now.
Mild-mannered headmaster Thomas Senlin prefers his adventures to be safely contained within the pages of a book. So when he loses his new bride shortly after embarking on the honeymoon of their dreams, he is ill-prepared for the trouble that follows. To find her, Senlin must enter the Tower of Babel - a world of geniuses and tyrants, of menace and wonder, of unusual animals and mysterious machines.
The moon smells like gunpowder. Every lunar walker since Apollo 11 has noticed it: a burnt-metal scent that reminds them of war. Caden Dechert, the chief of the US mining operation on the edge of the Sea of Serenity, thinks the smell is just a trick of the mind - a reminder of his harrowing days as a marine in the war-torn Middle East back on Earth. It's 2072, and lunar helium-3 mining is powering the fusion reactors that are bringing Earth back from environmental disaster.
Thorvald Spear wakes in hospital, where he finds he's been brought back from the dead. What's more, he died in a human vs. alien war which ended a whole century ago. But when he relives his traumatic final moments, he finds the spark to keep on living. That spark is vengeance. Trapped and desperate on a world surrounded by alien Prador forces, Spear had seen a rescue ship arriving. But instead of providing backup, Penny Royal, the AI within the destroyer, turned rogue. It annihilated friendly forces in a frenzy of destruction, and years later it's still free.
Forced to land on a planet they aren't prepared for, human colonists rely on their limited resources to survive. The planet provides a lush but inexplicable landscape - trees offer edible, addictive fruit one day and poison the next, while the ruins of an alien race are found entwined in the roots of a strange plant. Conflicts between generations arise as they struggle to understand one another and grapple with an unknowable alien intellect.
This is the way the world ends. Again. Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, masquerading as an ordinary schoolteacher in a quiet, small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Mighty Sanze, the empire whose innovations have been civilisation's bedrock for a thousand years, collapses as its greatest city is destroyed by a madman's vengeance.
Adda and Iridian are newly minted engineers, but aren't able to find any work in a solar system ruined by economic collapse after an interplanetary war. Desperate for employment, they hijack a colony ship and plan to join a famed pirate crew living in luxury at Barbary Station, an abandoned shipbreaking station in deep space. But when they arrive there, nothing is as expected. The pirates aren't living in luxury - they're hiding in a makeshift base welded onto the station's exterior hull.
Our universe is ruled by physics, and faster-than-light travel is not possible - until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transports us to other worlds, around other stars. Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It's a hedge against interstellar war - and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.
At 75 years old, John Perry is after a fresh start - so, naturally, he joins the army. Earth's military machine can transform elderly recruits, restoring their lost youth. But in return, its Colonial Defence Force demands two years of hazardous service in space. This is how Perry finds himself in a new body crafted from his original DNA. A genetically enhanced and upgraded new body, ready for battle. But upgrades alone won't keep Perry safe. He'll be fighting for his life on the front line as he defends humanity's colonies.
All Systems Red is the tense first science fiction adventure novella in Martha Wells' series The Murderbot Diaries. For fans of Westworld, Ex Machina, Ann Leckie's Imperial Raadch series, or Iain M. Banks' Culture novels.
All Systems Red tackles questions of the ethics of sentient robotics. The main character is a deadly security droid that has bucked its restrictive programming and is balanced between contemplative self-discovery and an idle instinct to kill all humans.
In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.
But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn't a primary concern.
On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied 'droid - a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as "Murderbot."
Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is. But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.
I started this expecting a fun listen with a silly plot, well it's fun alright but the plot was so much better than I expected. Murderbot has hacked it's controls and finds itself stranded on a remote planet with terrible things happening all around it and now to top it all off, the latest group of humans it has been assigned to guard, actually want to interact with it. People throw big names around like custard pies sticking to a wall when they are trying to explain (or sell) books like this and they often have very little to do with the actual author or story beyond the genre it's in. Since they've really overdone it with this one I will say that in my opinion the story is most like something I would expect from John Scalzi (the less crude stories like The Dispatcher and Old Man's War - note this is not a judgment, I love most of Scalzi's books, this is for comparison only) with a touch of Ann Leckie. I'm not going to tell you much about the actual story beyond this because I don't see any point in spoiling the plot. 5* story, will be listening to again and can't wait for the next.
Narration is harder to mark. My problem is that I love this narrator's work. I listen to a lot of different stuff and he does one of my favorite series the Holmes and Moriarity books by Josh Lanyon (fun and sarcastic murder mystery/romance, between two men, one of whom has been a previously top selling writer of a long running series/sometimes amateur detective and the other of whom is an ex cop/ current incredibly successful author who thinks things should be left with the police. The point being that Kevin R. Free is very good at over the top and funny, while still managing to make the best of a great plot, so I was surprised that his performance here was a little flat in comparison, particularly when voicing Murderbots' thoughts as opposed to voice (perhaps the editor directed him to do it that way). The narrator has a beautiful voice in my opinion and while it's not immediately apparent he can soften his tone enough for a real range of emotion to come through. This also helps with managing to do distinct voices for the main characters without putting on silly characters for the women, which I always appreciate. 3 1/2* but going up to 4 nearer the end. I hope they keep him for subsequent stories where he can really come into his own.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
A fast-paced shoot up, who done it, with no philosophical ramifications unless you have been living under a rock for the past fifty years.
Fun fast read that will not stay in the long-term memory circuitry.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Martha Wells's fantastic sci-fi novella All Systems Red was one of my favourite finds of all 2017. It was everything an AI sci-fi story should be and then some! It was thought provoking but also entertaining and engaging.
The world building and plot were both good but it was the lead character, Murderbot, who stole the show. Murderbot was a great lead character and was very easy to root for. Its mission was to keep the humans on its team safe but that did not mean this socially anxious security android had to like them or want to spend any more time with them than it absolutely had to.
All in all I loved this novella and will definitely be trying more of Martha Wells books in the future. The only flaw in this whole story was that it was only a novella rather than a full novel. I wanted more of Murderbot and this fascinating world!
Rating: 5 stars.
Keven Free was nothing special but he did do an acceptable job with the audio.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
there are two more books coming according to the author whom I emailed. Nice woman. I thought halfway through that it would be more testing for humans if the murderbot was not humanoid. I am a sucker for an android or gynoid, but what about a sentient machine that looks like a mini cooper for instance would we want that to be our friend?
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
This book was just what I needed to get my out of a recent listening rut. I had been pouring through longer literary fiction type stuff that was really heady and then I started this on a whim and it was a sheer delight.
The world-building is immaculate, the plot is solid and well-paced, but most importantly MURDERBOT. S/HE is the man. I'm assuming he's a man because of the narrator's voice, but I think he's just an asexual SEC Unit that is supposed to be a killing machine but just wants to watch movies.
So relateable. And I just really love how Martha Wells crafts the environment kind of secondarily, you don't even notice that she is describing and explaining details about the world because it all takes a back seat to Murderbot's sardonic, sarcastic observations.
I had only two issues with this story.
1. It is too short
2. The ending is abrupt! It could have been flushed out a lot more, but just kind of cut off.
Now I'm left hoping for a sequel, hopefully one that has a little more meat, because this stuff is delicious.
45 of 46 people found this review helpful
All Systems Red is the first Murderbot Diary, the adventures of a cyborg security unit who hacked its governor module, named itself “Murderbot” and promptly got addicted to streaming media.
This is its account of its adventures trying to keep a group of human scientists alive on a hostile and unknown world without them figuring out it has free will and leaving itself enough time to watch its soaps. The novella is sharp and witty, with a wry sense of humor and a sharp eye for what makes someone sentient and how freedom doesn’t always mean the same thing to different beings.
Kevin R Free as the narrator does a decent job, but somehow seems to miss the point of Murderbot. Murderbot sounds like a human in its own head, it’s a cyborg, it only pretends to be a robot for the humans. Free has it acting robotic all the time and I thought that made the wry humor a little harder to enjoy. Still it’s a great story with well-rounded characters and I recommend the print and audible versions highly.
42 of 45 people found this review helpful
I rarely write a negative review. This book has earned it. The plot was uninteresting and the characters were completely undeveloped and lacking personality. The robot behaved completely human like a brooding teenager from a YA novella.
The narrator appears as uninspired as the book and lacks the energy to bring these anorexic characters to life.
The positive criticism I can provide is that I am glad it was such a short book because I was agonizingly aware of the passage of time. Very disappointed with this purchase.
23 of 26 people found this review helpful
A cute little novella, with an interesting central idea and fun, if slightly unpolished- and awkward-feeling writing. Not the best book ever, but definitely worth the read. I look forward to more, especially if the author's writing becomes a little more practiced, as often occurs.
The narrator was okay. Character voices were a little inconsistent, and the wasn't always clear what dialogue was spoken and what was part of the main character's extensive internal monologue - though to be fair, that seems like a tough task for any narrator.
9 of 10 people found this review helpful
This is a fabulous, stand alone sci-fi about AI, kind off, including a mystery. The mystery was not that engaging, but the characters carried the story. Very comfortable narrator, a perfect choice for the story. The ending was a surprise. All around great listen. I hope this author has more.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful
If you could sum up All Systems Red in three words, what would they be?
Surprisingly little murder.
What other book might you compare All Systems Red to and why?
I don’t know if I can compare it to anything else
What does Kevin R. Free bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Few people can pull off dry humor, but Kevin nails it.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The ending. The whole book rides a line of humanizing a machine, and it ends in a way that pulls it to one side.
Any additional comments?
Not at this time.
5 of 8 people found this review helpful
I liked the story, even though it's not anything new. It's tightly written, never menages to get boring or redundant. What I like a lot is how it was read: almost dryly, without any voice fluctuations.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful
This story just grabbed me. And how could you just not love Murderbot even if it didn't love you.
3 of 5 people found this review helpful
I really enjoyed this book. Only downside was that it ended too soon, I wish it was longer! I really hope there will be more of Murderbot's adventures to come.
3 of 5 people found this review helpful
Would you listen to All Systems Red again? Why?
Left me wanting so much more. The best scifi I've read in a long time. It's not more YA drivel which has invaded scifi to unacceptable levels. I want another 100 books in this series :) Thank you SO MUCH for writing this. Performance was without fault. No technical glitches in the playback either. It's just damn good writing from an interesting protagonist point of view.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Murderbot for obvious reasons
Which scene was your favorite?
spoiler, spoiler, spoiler, it was a big scene near the end.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
Where does the meat stop and the circuits start?
Any additional comments?
Novella so good, this deserves a series of novels but I'll take whatever I can get.