{"id":25935,"date":"2026-03-14T16:13:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T20:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/?p=25935"},"modified":"2026-03-30T19:40:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T23:40:03","slug":"system-collapse-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/25935","title":{"rendered":"System Collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"

System Collapse<\/em> (2023) Martha Wells<\/a> (The Murderbot Diaries #7)<\/p>\n

\"System<\/p>\n

(According to Martyn, ART is of course capable of doing its own accounting, but it always ends up with extra numbers that no one can trace. So now Turi does it and has to keep a hardcopy ledger because otherwise ART would alter their data. No one knew if ART was making up numbers for the hell of it or if these numbers represented actual credit balances that ART was hiding somewhere.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Iris yelled over both of them, \u201cPeople! Calm down! We have soft-drop packs in the emergency locker. SecUnit can use one.\u201d <\/p>\n

She had large yelling capacity for a human her size. I had the feeling it came in handy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On our private feed, ART-drone said, What the hell are you doing? Your stats are dropping<\/em>. <\/p>\n

I was just thinking about alien contamination<\/em>, I told it. <\/p>\n

Stop that immediately<\/em>, ART-drone said. <\/p>\n

Right, good luck with that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I lack a sense of proportional response. I don\u2019t advise engaging with me on any level.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Characters<\/strong>: Murderbot, Perihelion\/ART, Ratthi, Overse, Pin-Lee, Dr. Mensah, Dr. Bharadwaj, Amena, Thiago, Iris, Tarik, Seth, Martyn, Karime, Matteo, Three, Sub-Supervisor Dellcourt, Bellagaia, Kaede, Danis, Variset, Corian, Turi, Trinh, AdaCol2, Lucia, Supervisor Leonide, Holism, Sum Total<\/p>\n

Cover illustration by Jaime Jones<\/p>\n

Publisher: Tordotcom<\/p>\n

Rating: 9.5\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

System Collapse (2023) Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries #7) (According to Martyn, ART is of course capable of doing its own accounting, but it always ends up with extra numbers that no one can trace. So now Turi does it and has to keep a hardcopy ledger because otherwise ART would alter their data. No […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[192,189,668,292,204,207,608,742,148,41,25,936],"tags":[219,218,538,212,655],"class_list":["post-25935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-5-10","category-ace","category-comfort-read","category-ebook","category-good","category-mental-health-rep","category-neurodiversity","category-physical-health","category-queer","category-reread","category-science-fiction","category-single-point-of-view","tag-martha-wells","tag-murderbot","tag-nb","tag-ptsd","tag-violence"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piQkW-6Kj","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":24037,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/24037","url_meta":{"origin":25935,"position":0},"title":"System Collapse","author":"Michelle","date":"November 2, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"System Collapse (2023) Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries, #7) (According to Martyn, ART is of course capable of doing its own accounting, but it always ends up with extra numbers that no one can trace. So now Turi does it and has to keep a hardcopy ledger because otherwise ART\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "9.5\/10"","block_context":{"text":"9.5\/10","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/9-5-10"},"img":{"alt_text":"System Collapse","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/System-Collapse.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":24328,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/24328","url_meta":{"origin":25935,"position":1},"title":"System Collapse, Audio Book","author":"Michelle","date":"March 14, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"System Collapse, Audiobook (2023) Martha Wells narrated by Kevin R Free (Murderbot Diaries #7) I still felt radically off my game and I was hoping for reassurance rather than statistics that confirmed that I was correct in thinking that everything sucked right now. (According to Martyn, ART is of course\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "9.5\/10"","block_context":{"text":"9.5\/10","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/9-5-10"},"img":{"alt_text":"System Collapse","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/System-Collapse.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":22538,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/22538","url_meta":{"origin":25935,"position":2},"title":"System Collapse","author":"Michelle","date":"November 19, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"System Collapse (2023) Martha Wells (Murderbot Diaries) MURDERBOT! This story picks up immediately following the events of Network Effect--ART and Murderbot are trying to keep their humans safe from the Barish-Estranza corporation while forging a planetary charter and waiting for reinforcement from ART's university. It's going as it always does\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "8.5\/10"","block_context":{"text":"8.5\/10","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/8-5-10"},"img":{"alt_text":"System Collapse","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/System-Collapse.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/System-Collapse.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/System-Collapse.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":25502,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/25502","url_meta":{"origin":25935,"position":3},"title":"System Collapse","author":"Michelle","date":"November 3, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"System Collapse, Audio Book (2023) Martha Wells narrated by Kevin R. Free (The Murderbot Diaries #5) \u201cThank you for your help,\u201d Iris said, in a way that could be mistaken for politeness by a bot but a human would definitely know there was an undercurrent of fuck you. \u201cAre you\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "9.5\/10"","block_context":{"text":"9.5\/10","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/9-5-10"},"img":{"alt_text":"System Collapse","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/System-Collapse.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":25886,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/25886","url_meta":{"origin":25935,"position":4},"title":"Artificial Condition","author":"Michelle","date":"March 1, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Artificial Condition (2018) Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries #2) I didn\u2019t care what humans were doing to each other as long as I didn\u2019t have to a) stop it or b) clean up after it. Constructs sometimes fall under the same category as bots, sometimes under the same category as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "10\/10"","block_context":{"text":"10\/10","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/10-10"},"img":{"alt_text":"Artificial Condition","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Artificial-Condition-190x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":24008,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/24008","url_meta":{"origin":25935,"position":5},"title":"Artificial Condition","author":"Michelle","date":"October 16, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Artificial Condition (2018) Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries #2) Constructs sometimes fall under the same category as bots, sometimes under the same category as deadly weapons. (FYI, that is not a good category to be in. I could feel ART metaphorically clutch its function. I closed the story by reflex,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "9.5\/10"","block_context":{"text":"9.5\/10","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/9-5-10"},"img":{"alt_text":"Artificial Condition","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Artificial-Condition.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}