Platform Decay

If you look up interiority in a writer’s dictionary, it should feature a picture of Murderbot.

Martha Wells’ eight-volume Murderbot Diaries novella series is as successful as it is because of her mastery of bringing the reader inside the organic and non-organic tissues of the titular rogue Sec Unit. Her deadpan delivery of Sec Unit’s thought processes as it deals with each entry’s life-threatening challenge (or its equally fraught encounters with messy human emotions) are what make her stories so compelling, intense, hair-raising, touching, and hilarious.

Sec Unit is an introvert. They’d always be happier to sit in a storage locker and watch his favorite science fiction soap opera, Sactuary Moon. But Wells continues to torture them with plots that place them in direct, excruciating contact with one or more humans or augmented humans. His duty is always to protect them—despite the human’s evident instinct to place themselves in mortal danger—and their slow recognition of their feelings for the humans is the heart of the series.

While the series is packed with action, it’s a story about self-discovery that continues to tug at our heartstrings.

As a writer of science fiction, there are a few things that continually impress me about Wells’ writing. The world-building is untouchable. It’s not the world-building of a sword and sorcery fantasy, but it’s even more impressive. Wells has crafted a galactic civilization plagued by capitalism. Every inch of the environments and action is imbued with the corrupting influences of corporations looking to enslave humans through dependency on products, services, laws, and regulations.

It feels terribly real because we’re living in it. Wells just opens our eyes to it.

Part of that world-building is linked to Sec Unit’s interiority. They are a master hacker, capable of sensing, navigating, and manipulating a world humans (at least unaugmented humans) can only access via a device. As Sec Unit tackles each story’s threats of violence, they are using a vast and complex internet of things to aid them. Sec Unit controls drones, hacks networks, hijacks robots, and redirects elevators with skill and speed. Wells’ addition of the Internet of Things to her gritty corporate reality gives her story another layer of detail that makes her main character more alive.

I’ve gotten this far into the review without talking about the plot of Platform Decay.

Well, the thing about these stories is that the plot is secondary. I mean, fine, Murderbot finds themself on a mission where they must save a small group of humans from the corporate forces that threaten their freedom and their lives. See? It sounds like the plot of all of the series. I don’t read them for the plot. I read them to spend time in the head of Sec Unit.

It’s the interiority, stupid.

I’m giving this novella five out of five stars.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Platform Decay

Martha Wells

Publication Date: 5 May 2026

Publisher: Tor Books