Books Martha Wells Book Club Martha Wells Book Club: System Collapse Murderbot faces its biggest challenge yet: its own organic tissue. By Alex Brown | Published on February 26, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share And we’re back to Murderbot, Barish-Estranza, Perihelion, and the lost colony on a planet contaminated by alien remnants. System Collapse jumps over Fugitive Telemetry to right after Network Effect (we’ve gone back in terms of publication order but forward in terms of chronology). In this book, Murderbot faces its biggest challenge yet: its own organic tissue. “Planets where you have to investigate the probably-not-empty, possibly-alient-contaminated Pre-Corporation Rim occupation site while wearing an environmental suit instead of armor are especially not boring in the bad way, maybe the worst way.” Murderbot hasn’t had good luck on planets, and after the events of Network Effect, I don’t think its dislike of being planetside will change anytime soon. The Perihelion and Preservation Alliance crews are still trying to get the colonists from Network Effect to sign a contract that gives them planetary settlement rights and control over their future before Barish-Estranza activates their corporate takeover plan and turns the colonists into slave labor.  Unluckily for everyone, Barish-Estranza has several SecUnits with them as they “evaluate” the planet. The colonists aren’t united, politically or physically. If anything, they’re more divided now that there are two extraterrestrial invaders than they were when they were alone and bickering amongst themselves. Worse, the main base of colonists may not be the only humans on the planet. Decades ago, a group splintered off. No one knows where they settled or if they’re even alive; they haven’t been heard from them in years. They might be dead or undead and infected with alien remnants, but if they’re alive and healthy they must be included in the charter the University of Mihara and New Tideland team and Pin-Lee are working on. Which brings us back to Murderbot going down to the planet. With humans. And without armor or most of its drones (those it’s leaving with Three as it plays bodyguard for Karime, the pansystem university negotiator trying to convince the colonists to reject B-E). “So I’m here now and it’s fine, everyone shut up about it, okay.” Murderbot, Ratthi, and a few folks from ART’s crew—Tarik, who is Peri’s Gurathin in that he used to work for in the Corporation Rim (as a mercenary) before escaping, and Iris, who is the daughter of Seth and Martyn and also ART’s favorite human—take a ship to the most likely location where the separatists might be…and hope they get there before B-E does. Once they get to the other installation, in typical Murderbot Diaries fashion, things go immediately and spectacularly sideways. Tech left behind by Adamantine when they were dissolved by a corporate takeover makes scanning for life and sending communications to the main base or ART Prime impossible. So, much like how they made a mini duplicate of SecUnit in Network Effect, they make a version of ART and put it into a drone to take with them. Once at the potential occupation site, Murderbot has to confront its fear. “And I realized I really didn’t want to go down there… I had to go down there. It was stupid not to go down there… If I couldn’t do this, I couldn’t do my job.” Its fear is directly correlated with these moments we keep hitting that it is redacting from the story. “I’m a SecUnit who was panicking about getting murdered or whatever by panicking humans.” None of that panic is unfounded, not given what we’ve seen of Murderbot’s story and what we know of their pre-hacked-governor-module life. Before it was forced to do dangerous, terrifying things, but now it has to make the choice each time. That choice is loaded with the weight of caring for humans and itself, activities it’s still learning how to do. Not until much later do we learn what SecUnit is redacting and why that thing happened, and yeah, it should really take Mensah up on that whole trauma therapy thing sooner rather than later. Or ART, who apparently has an advanced trauma protocol ready and waiting.  Stuff goes down in the habitation site between Murderbot’s team, the separatist colonists, and B-E. Where this book zigs where other installments have zagged is in how the solution to their B-E problem is resolved. In the past, SecUnit would’ve tried blasting its way through the problem, and if that didn’t work then it would make a last stand and sacrifice itself to save its clients. It would make that decision partly because that’s what its training told it to do and partly because it genuinely wants to protect people it cares about, even if it can’t admit that it cares. However, this time dying wouldn’t solve anything. In the first book, PresAux worked together to extract Murderbot from the company’s clutches, and in this one Murderbot works together with ART, Tarik, Iris, and Ratthi to do something similar for the colonists. It asks for help, puts its media storage to good use, and trusts the humans enough to contribute and collaborate. Only took 7 books to get there! Speaking of humans, Ratthi has long been one of my favorite humans in this series, and System Collapse is a great example of why. He’s a walking ray of sunshine but he isn’t naive or silly. He gets Murderbot as much as Mensah does. Here he acts almost like its interpreter, able to translate its behavior and subtext for Peri’s humans and to anticipate its needs and wants. He doesn’t claim guardianship over it, he hasn’t hired it, he isn’t working with it because ART is, and he never tells it what to do. He defends its boundaries and ensures it has options even more than Murderbot itself does. He is a peer, a colleague, and, even though Murderbot doesn’t realize it, a friend. One of my favorite moments in this book is when SecUnit hesitates at a hatch opening and Ratthi jokes about “round hatches [being] more frightening than square ones” as a way to diffuse the tension and give it time to work through its concerns. SecUnit then diverts some processing power to running a query of media in its storage to prove that 80% of the time “hazardous fauna, raiders, human and/or bot murderers, and/or magical fauna, unidentified by terrifying dark presences, and straight up monsters [are] associated with round hatches.” In the TV show, Ratthi is briefly in a throuple with Pin-Lee and Arada, but in the books he saves his sexual melodrama for Tarik (the two of them have a fling before Ratthi discovers Tarik and Matteo are together). Every time he appears in the books, my heart grows three sizes. He’s such a fun contrast and complement to SecUnit.  Given the way System Collapse ends, I hope this isn’t the last we see of the Preservation Alliance team or Three. We also now have at least one more rogue SecUnit roaming around (not to mention that rogue ComfortUnit from a few books back). I have no idea how many more of these diaries Martha Wells plans to do, but I will happily take whatever she has to offer. Sadly, we’re almost done with the Murderbot Diaries. The next novella, Platform Decay, won’t be out until May 2026, so it’ll be a while before we get to it. Because I’m just not ready to let go of my beloved sentient killing machine, next month we’re looking at Wells’ three Murderbot universe short stories. You can read “Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory” and “Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy” on Reactor and “Compulsory” on Wired.[end-mark] Buy the Book Platform Decay Martha Wells The Murderbot Diaries (Volume 8) Buy Book Platform Decay Martha Wells The Murderbot Diaries (Volume 8) The Murderbot Diaries (Volume 8) Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget The post Martha Wells Book Club: <i>System Collapse</i> appeared first on Reactor.