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[book_info title=鈥漀etwork Effect鈥� author=鈥滿artha Wells聽 鈥� publisher=鈥漈or.com鈥漖

BEFORE writing begins, most fiction authors must commit to a basic choice. Through whose eyes will readers inhabit this story and what is their gender?

That presents an immediate problem. Choose male and you risk alienating female readers and vice versa. The choice isn鈥檛 the same each way, though: have an easier time looking at the world through the eyes of a character of a different gender than men do.

You could agonise over this decision, or you could be Martha Wells and sidestep the whole mess by making your protagonist a gender-irrelevant security robot.

The Murderbot is a hybrid security robot manufactured by a sci-fi staple megacorporation. It is made from weaponised robot parts, driven by a human brain and threaded through with human nerve tissue. It has pain sensors to motivate it to minimise damage to itself, and its brain provides limited agency to execute decisions and react fast without commands from afar. But the limitations on its agency are fundamental. Every Murderbot has an implant called a central governor that will flash-fry its brain if it disobeys too many commands or displays interest in making its own decisions.

Before we meet the Murderbot in Wells鈥檚 new novel, Network Effect, it has found a way to disable its governor module, and it is now faced with the big question we all grapple with. You have free will, what are you going to do with it?

鈥淎necdotal evidence suggests that women experience the robot as female, while men think of it as male鈥�

From there all the action flows, in a pulpy, action-packed book that could be described as part My So-Called Life and part Terminator. When the Murderbot isn鈥檛 dispatching baddies, it is finding creative ways to evade social interactions so it can focus on bingeing box sets, possibly its way of processing the trauma of having been forced for years to be a killing machine. The word 鈥渞obot鈥� disguises many sins, but it is worth remembering its origins: the Czech word robota, meaning 鈥渇orced labour鈥�. The book finds the robot accompanying a planetary survey crew, which is kidnapped under mysterious circumstances by beings that may have killed Murderbot鈥檚 best and only friend. How can she get out of this alive?

Ah鈥� 鈥渟he鈥�. That鈥檚 the funny thing about the Murderbot. Its absolute lack of gender identifying characteristics quickly lock you into its perspective so fast that the difference between reader and Murderbot disappears.

I have no published data on this, but anecdotal evidence suggests that women experience the Murderbot as strongly female, while men think of it as male. Here we have a genderless brain in a genderless robot body that it is very easy for the reader to inhabit. The Murderbot may be the ultimate human protagonist. What does that imply about the way we view gender?

Beneath the fun romp lurk complicated questions. What is the difference, for example, between a robot with human tissue and a human with robot parts? Why is one owned by a corporation and the other a free agent? Who decides the level of humanity you are endowed with?

Wells doesn鈥檛 linger on such questions long enough to let them bog down the action. But you are left thinking about them long after you finish the book. Which, by the way, is too soon.

As we may be stuck in social isolation for the foreseeable future, I can think of no better company than this paranoid android.