I didn’t decide to do the other two novellas until after it was finished, though there were some discarded plot elements in Artificial Condition that I later used in Exit Strategy. I thought it would be a stand-alone, but when Tor.com bought it, they asked for a second novella and I decided to write Artificial Condition. I realized it was going to need to be longer to really tell the story, so I decided on novella length, but I didn’t really know how I was going to end it until I got there.

“When I started working on All Systems Red, I thought it was going to be a short story with a sad ending. Q: How did The Murderbot series happen for you? What was the initial inspiration, how did it develop, and from All Systems Red to Exit Strategy, did the story go as planned from the beginning, or were important changes made along the way? Monster Complex uses Amazon affiliate links. Note: The entries below are listed in order of publication. I would hope for people to think about how the corporations in the story decide who gets to be human and who doesn’t, and how their society got to that point, and realize how that happens here in our world.”

“The original idea that I started with in All Systems Red (Murderbot Diaries #1) was about an enslaved security person,” the author said at Tor.com, “and a sentient AI fit the best with what I wanted to do. Her New York Times and USA Today-bestselling Murderbot Diaries series has won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Alex Awards. Wells has written many fantasy novels, including The Wizard Hunters, Wheel of the Infinite, the Books of the Raksura series (beginning with The Cloud Roads and ending with The Harbors of the Sun), and the Nebula-nominated The Death of the Necromancer, as well as YA fantasy novels, short stories, and nonfiction. “I love Murderbot!”- New York Times bestselling author Ann Leckie. The series stars a human-like android who keeps getting sucked back into adventure after adventure, though it just wants to be left alone, away from humanity and small talk.

The Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells concerns a violent, self-hacking cyborg searching for the meaning of life. “The original idea that I started with in All Systems Red was about an enslaved security person.”

Murderbot 2