Martha Wells

"Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory" is a short story set in the world of Martha Well's Murderbot Diaries. This story was originally given free to readers who pre-ordered Network Effect, the fifth entry in the series. The events of "Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory" occur just after the fourth novella, Exit Strategy. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A Tor.com Original

Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory

Sabrina D. 

The Corporation Rim has always been a slave state, though it calls its institutionalized slavery “contract labor.” The production of human/bot constructs is just a more horrific twist, a mental slavery as well as a physical one. At least victims of contract labor are free to think their own thoughts. But we tell ourselves that constructs aren’t aware of their predicament. What SecUnit makes us realize is that this is not true; they are all aware of what they are and what’s been done to them. But the only choice they are ever offered is obedience or pain and death.

Ephraim is a good person and he won’t make the argument that SecUnit is not a person, not qualified as a refugee under Preservation law. Because they are all refugees in the Preservation Alliance, descended from people who were left to die because rescue was deemed not cost-effective. Because they stand on this station built from the ship that saved their grandparents’ lives, that helped them for no other reason than because it was there and it could. Instead Ephraim asks her, “Can you separate that person from the purpose they were created for?”

"It’s about being treated as a thing, isn’t it. Whether that thing is a hostage of conditional value, or a very expensively designed and equipped enslaved machine/organic intelligence. You’re a thing, and there is no safety."

A very short and sweet little snippet from Ayda Mensah's perspective as she grapples with life after being rescued from TranRollinHyfa in 

. It was fun and interesting to see this story from a different perspective than Murderbot's, aside from it, Mensah is definitely my favourite character, so was really cool to get inside her head for a little bit. She's dealing with some PTSD from being held hostage and the way she relates that to how Murderbot must've felt being essentially held hostage by its governor module, forced into slavery and seen as a thing to be ordered around, a commodity for transaction rather than a person. The way Mensah shows empathy for Murderbot and sees it as a person worthy of making its own choices is so beautiful. This little snippest gave us an outside look at Murderbot and we get to see the way Mensah humanises, respects and tries her hardest to understand it, and we get to have a little laugh over how she responds to and feels about its sense of humour too. Overall, this snippet was incredibly short and as always with this series I would've liked just a little bit more, but it was great to get that added bit of depth and understanding from a different POV.

Genevieve 

"It’s about being treated as a thing, isn’t it. Whether that thing is a hostage of conditional value, or a very expensively designed and equipped enslaved machine/organic intelligence. You’re a thing, and there is no safety."

4⭐

A very short and sweet little snippet from Ayda Mensah's perspective as she grapples with life after being rescued from TranRollinHyfa in Exit Strategy. It was fun and interesting to see this story from a different perspective than Murderbot's, aside from it, Mensah is definitely my favourite character, so was really cool to get inside her head for a little bit. She's dealing with some PTSD from being held hostage and the way she relates that to how Murderbot must've felt being essentially held hostage by its governor module, forced into slavery and seen as a thing to be ordered around, a commodity for transaction rather than a person. The way Mensah shows empathy for Murderbot and sees it as a person worthy of making its own choices is so beautiful. This little snippest gave us an outside look at Murderbot and we get to see the way Mensah humanises, respects and tries her hardest to understand it, and we get to have a little laugh over how she responds to and feels about its sense of humour too. Overall, this snippet was incredibly short and as always with this series I would've liked just a little bit more, but it was great to get that added bit of depth and understanding from a different POV.

Vilde

Simon Harrison

Short and different - interesting to lose the first person perspective, without losing the humour of the murderbot, but I'm not sure I buy the motivation of all these humans, trying to win rights for constructs. I guess I've never been saved by a part human SecUnit

Juliana Matias

This is a very short story told from the POV of Dr. Mensah. I guess it was alright, but it was the first book I didn’t particularly care for.

I think it’d be completely okay to skip this one.

But I still gave it 3 stars, it was Murderbot adjacent, and that was fine by me, I guess.

Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory A Tor.com Original

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