43 pages • 1 hour read
Martha WellsArtificial Condition
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Representation Versus Reality
Itself a work of science fiction, Artificial Condition displays a keen awareness of the relationship between fiction and real life. Several of the story’s characters—Murderbot, ART, and Tapan—compulsively watch television serials. The novella expands this relationship to include its own readership. The narrative’s intermingling of fiction and reality suggests that stories, including The Murderbot Diaries, have value in people’s lives whether they are aware of it or not.
Murderbot is obsessed with human-created fictional media to the point that it spends every moment it can tuned into serials, especially its favorite: Sanctuary Moon. Artificial Condition begins and ends with Murderbot downloading hours of these programs to pass the time during its interstellar journeys.
For Murderbot, these shows serve two purposes. First, they provide an escape from the hardships of everyday life. Murderbot is in hiding, isolated, and facing a universe that is regularly described as hostile and intimidating, especially for non-humans. Murderbot appears to benefit psychologically from mentally escaping these hardships through the fictional serials. This need for escape is why Murderbot appreciates Worldhoppers for being “very unrealistic and inaccurate” (27). The further the stories are from real life, the better escape they provide. This escapism appears to work for Tapan as well, who watches the shows with Murderbot during their dangerous night on RaviHyral.
Second, Murderbot uses the serials to interact with the human world without the stress of in-person encounters. It can observe human activities without participating in them, something it appreciates given its introverted nature. The fact that ART and other robots are interested in Murderbot’s media indicates that the desire for escape and passive human contact is widespread. Artificial Condition demonstrates that fiction can also inform real-world decisions and behavior. ART uses a strategy lifted from Sanctuary Moon to save Murderbot and the research team while covering up their involvement in the deaths on RaviHyral. In doing so, ART shows the practical lessons that fiction, even escapist fiction, can teach.
Murderbot and ART’s use of the serials mirrors the reader’s experience with the science fiction series. The reader may experience their world as hostile at times, so just as Murderbot enjoys Worldhoppers, the reader may enjoy the book’s tale of “extragalactic exploration, action, and mysteries” (21). It can provide an escape from their troubles. Beyond escapism, the lessons that ART and Murderbot take from the serials about human thought and behavior show that fiction can change the way viewers/readers understand reality. The novella reveals that the distinction between fiction and reality is not clear-cut and that truths may lie just under the novel’s veneer of fantastical technologies and characters.
The Line Between Human and Machine
In the science fiction setting of Artificial Condition, machines have advanced to the point that their intelligence rivals or surpasses that of humans, while some humans have become more robotic (uncaring and predictable) through their associations with vast corporate interests. The novella explores the blurry line between human and machine, contrasting humane robots with the unfeeling humans to question what makes a person a person in the first place.
Murderbot, as its name suggests, was built to be a robotic killing machine. But it is also a person in the sense that it has nuanced thoughts, emotions, and prejudices; it is capable of curiosity, self-reflection, and self-criticism. Wells’s choice to tell the story from Murderbot’s perspective allows direct insight into its humanity, rejecting science fiction stereotypes of machines like SecUnits as “faceless and terrifying” (13). Murderbot reflects that “you can’t tell a story from the point of view of something that you don’t think has a point of view” (31); conversely, telling the story from Murderbot’s point of view underlines its rich subjectivity.
As a counterpoint to Murderbot’s personhood, many of the humans in Artificial Condition appear headed in the direction of becoming machines. The antagonist Tlacey is brutal and heartless; in her murderous dealings with the research team she acts with the uncaring logic of a robot. Her unclear motivation for wanting to keep the team’s research results accentuates her appearance as a mindless killer. And despite their otherwise empathetic portrayal, the research team also find themselves acting like machines, forced to perform a function for a mega-corporation that treats them as a disposable resource. Though never outright stated, the novella hints that its capitalistic economic setting contributes to the dehumanizing of the people caught up in it.
ART and the ComfortUnit further complicate the human-machine binary. Unlike Murderbot, ART doesn’t have a physical body apart from the spaceship it controls, but it still displays empathy and friendliness: traits often considered intrinsically human. The ComfortUnit has a body as does Murderbot, but it is more machine-like in that its governor module is still active. It acts under the will of another. However, at the end of the story, it escapes human control suggesting that it will further blur the line between human and machine by developing its own thoughts and emotions.
By giving positive human psychological traits to non-humans, and stripping the humans of those same traits, Artificial Condition suggests that being human is not the same as being a good person. Humans are capable of the same carelessness, single-mindedness, and potential violence that they associate with machines, while increasingly intelligent machines are capable of warmth, empathy, kindness, and reciprocity.
The Quest for Purpose
Artificial Condition keeps the reader guessing about many of its characters’ motivations and goals. Murderbot’s initial destination is unclear; ART’s reasons for helping Murderbot are largely unsaid; and Tlacey’s motives for stealing the research team’s data are never disclosed. The ambiguity of these motivations, along with the novella’s depiction of the negative results of some ambitions, indicates that it is the quest for purpose, rather than the purpose itself, that gives meaning to life for both humans and intelligent machines.
The early part of the narrative explores what Murderbot will do after hacking its governor module and setting itself free. During its previous life as a SecUnit, Murderbot had a simple and direct purpose: to protect its human clients. Freed now from its former obligations, Murderbot’s “anxiety and depression” derive from no longer having a purpose (19). Its journey to Ganaka Pit (See: Symbols & Motifs) is a quest to find a purpose, or at least to see if it is capable of choosing a life without violence and destruction. Though Murderbot learns it wasn’t at fault for the Ganaka Pit massacre, the randomness of the incident suggests to Murderbot that events are guided by chance and the universe may lack any purpose at all.
While Murderbot struggles to identify its purpose, it also sees the negative consequences of having a purpose that is too narrow. Rami, Tapan, and Maro want to retrieve their stolen data, but their single-minded drive to achieve that purpose puts their lives in danger. Tlacey’s obsession with the data goes even further, leading to many deaths, including her own. Murderbot understands that their narrowness of focus is destructive, telling Tlacey that all she had to do was “give them the fucking files” (147), and none of the killing would have been necessary.
The narrative’s exploration of both human and non-human motivations suggests that the quest for purpose is an inherent part of identity. But the seeking matters more than the fulfillment. Murderbot thought it would find purpose by learning about the events at Ganaka Pit that had been wiped from its memory, but instead it found meaning in saving the lives of innocent people and forming relationships with ART and the research team. Murderbot begins to accept that there is no easy path to fulfillment, but the journey is itself valuable.
