The Fandom Apprentice

The last Murderbot book episode and we struggled a bit here keeping up with the action, but we still love it! Murderbot is having, as per usual, a bad time, and Ryn and Sam are having an excellent one, and would love for you to join us!

Topics of discussion include: the paradox of free will, putting on your own oxygen mask before helping others, and how none of us are immune to propaganda!

Covers chapters 6-end of The Murderbot Diaries: System Collapse (2023) by Martha Wells

We're back! Took an unexpected break, but we're back with a new episode, which is great for us, and Murderbot is back on the planet, which is terrible for it! Ryn and Sam discuss the first half (minus 4%) of System Collapse, delving into such important topics as whales, petty data analysis, how bananas relate to far-right death squads, PTSD, and the paradox of free will!

Covers chapters 1-5 of The Murderbot Diaries: System Collapse (2023) by Martha Wells

Ryn and Sam finish out Network Effect and boy howdy is Murderbot having a Bad Time! And so are the other SecUnits. Wait, other SecUnits? We have commentary on such topics as naming conventions, queer generations, suspension bondage, ART's total and complete lack of chill, and the ethics of murdering your digital baby. Is it murder if the digital baby was essentially a bomb in the first place?

Covers chapters 14-end of The Murderbot Diaries: Network Effect by Martha Wells (2020)

ART is alive and Murderbot gets to stop running through the stages of grief! Problem is it stopped on Anger, which it has every right to tbh. Ryn and Sam talk ART and Murderbot's relationship (and relationships in general), trusting kids to handle difficult topics, modern "AI" vs sci-fi AI, and statistics!  

Covers chapters 8-13 of The Murderbot Diaries: Networt Effect by Martha Wells (2020)

Step inside (your best friend's corpse), it's a fucked up ride (through the wormhole)! Amena wishes this was a normal field trip, but with SecUnit? No way! Take your second right past Mars and join us while we talk about knees, gravity, faster than light travel, anxiety, and potential future cinematic choices for the show!

Covers Chapters 4-7 of The Murderbot Diaries: Network Effect by Martha Wells (2020)

Not all is well with Murderbot, but when is it ever? Ryn and Sam follow our favorite rogue SecUnit through the first three chapters of Network Effect, the first novel in the Murderbot Diaries! Topics include the gender politics of aunts, cis discomfort with trans presentation, intense feelings in platonic relationships, puppy eyes as a weapon of war, and Murderbot murdering on a murderboat. 

Covers Chapters 1-3 of The Murderbot Diaries: Network Effect (2020) by Martha Wells, winner of the 2021 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the  2020 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the 2021 Locus Award for Best  Science Fiction Novel

here's been a murder! And despite what you might expect, it wasn't Murderbot's fault. It promises. And we promise topics including sleeper agents, queer assimilation, translation, and things that go blorp in the night.  

Covers The Murderbot Diaries: Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells (2021)

So, as it turns out, there are there are also some short stories in the Murderbot Universe! We get to dig into the minds of some side characters, learn more about the origins of constructs, and talk about queerplatonic relationships, coming out, and non-human personhood! 

If our audio quality is a wee bit sharper on this one, it's because we had some issues with our primary recordings and were working from our backups, and Sam worked her wizardry as best she could. Bear with us. 

Timestamps for potential/light Network Effect spoilers: 0:40:04-1:04:08

This can be listened to in any order with the Fugitive Telemetry episode that you will see right above this in your feed! Your fate is your own! Choose your own adventure! Although I recommend this one first. 

Covers the following short stories/novelettes in the following timeline order, all of which are available for free online:

1. "Obsolescence", written for the anthology Take Us To A Better Place (2020)

2. "The Future of Work: Compulsory" written for Wired magazine (2018)

3. "Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory" released in Reactor magazine (2021)

4. "Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy" written for Reactor magazine (2025)

Murderbot has to go find some old friends! We're entirely normal about it acknowledging PresAux as friends. Other topics include consent, gender presentation/human-passing, the self and the body as separate but connected entities, and finally, as all folks hitchhiking on bot-driven transports across the galaxy must, we grapple with towels.   


Covers The Murderbot Diaries Vol IV: Exit Strategy by Martha Wells

Ryn and Sam are wildly unfocused, probably because we are simultaneously monitoring two dozen intel drones, HubSystem, and Episode 372 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon! And also being slightly horny on main, giving mini-reviews of horror movies and a romance novel, discussing Murderbot's D&D class, and once again providing evidence that capitalism is the worst villain! All before we get betrayed by our mysterious augmented human security team or before the terraforming station breaks up and falls out of orbit, whichever happens first... Anyway, come join us!

Covers The Murderbot Diaries Vol. 3: Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells