Murderbot Q5. Technology

1

This is clearly a sterotypical science-fiction story, with spaceships and robots and computers and all that stuff. What did you think of the technology? Does this story count as "hard SF"?

What did you think of the state of information security, given that both Murderbot and ART were able to control just about every computer system they came across?

Comments

  • 1

    The only true hard SF is one minute into the future. Knowing many hackers as I do, the only thing different was the speed with which they did things. The end result is the same. They were also taking over systems that barely had any security at all, actually. Like most systems today.

  • 1
    Im not sure we learned enough about the setting to label it as hard or not. How realistic is an organic/machine cyborg, and why does it need to be human shaped? Does it become un-hard if we don’t accept these setting elements?
  • 1

    I think the key word here is stereotypical. It's a space opera. Technology is not what this story is about. I think I remember a quote from PKD about this. I'll try to dig it up.

  • 0
    edited February 3

    Here is the quote. I got it from https://biblioklept.org/2017/09/19/the-shock-of-dysrecognition-philip-k-dick-defines-science-fiction/

    One of the interesting things about this is that it seems for Dick that SF depends on the reader as much as the text and the author, which raises interesting dilemmas for analysing genre fiction.

    I will define science fiction, first, by saying what sf is not. It cannot be defined as “a story (or novel or play) set in the future,” since there exists such a thing as space adventure, which is set in the future but is not sf: it is just that: adventures, fights and wars in the future in space involving super-advanced technology. Why, then, is it not science fiction? It would seem to be, and Doris Lessing (e.g.) supposes that it is. However, space adventure lacks the distinct new idea that is the essential ingredient. Also, there can be science fiction set in the present: the alternate world story or novel. So if we separate sf from the future and also from ultra-advanced technology, what then do we have that can be called sf?

    We have a fictitious world; that is the first step: it is a society that does not in fact exist, but is predicated on our known society; that is, our known society acts as a jumping-off point for it; the society advances out of our own in some way, perhaps orthogonally, as with the alternate world story or novel. It is our world dislocated by some kind of mental effort on the part of the author, our world transformed into that which it is not or not yet. This world must differ from the given in at least one way, and this one way must be sufficient to give rise to events that could not occur in our society—or in any known society present or past. There must be a coherent idea involved in this dislocation; that is, the dislocation must be a conceptual one, not merely a trivial or bizarre one—this is the essence of science fiction, the conceptual dislocation within the society so that as a result a new society is generated in the author’s mind, transferred to paper, and from paper it occurs as a convulsive shock in the reader’s mind, the shock of dysrecognition. He knows that it is not his actual world that he is reading about.

    Now, to separate science fiction from fantasy. This is impossible to do, and a moment’s thought will show why. Take psionics; take mutants such as we find in Ted Sturgeon’s wonderful MORE THAN HUMAN. If the reader believes that such mutants could exist, then he will view Sturgeon’s novel as science fiction. If, however, he believes that such mutants are, like wizards and dragons, not possible, nor will ever be possible, then he is reading a fantasy novel. Fantasy involves that which general opinion regards as impossible; science fiction involves that which general opinion regards as possible under the right circumstances. This is in essence a judgment-call, since what is possible and what is not possible is not objectively known but is, rather, a subjective belief on the part of the author and of the reader.

    Now to define good science fiction. The conceptual dislocation—the new idea, in other words—must be truly new (or a new variation on an old one) and it must be intellectually stimulating to the reader; it must invade his mind and wake it up to the possibility of something he had not up to then thought of. Thus “good science fiction” is a value term, not an objective thing, and yet, I think, there really is such a thing, objectively, as good science fiction.

    I think Dr. Willis McNelly at the California State University at Fullerton put it best when he said that the true protagonist of an sf story or novel is an idea and not a person. If it is good sf the idea is new, it is stimulating, and, probably most important of all, it sets off a chain-reaction of ramification-ideas in the mind of the reader; it so-to-speak unlocks the reader’s mind so that that mind, like the author’s, begins to create. Thus sf is creative and it inspires creativity, which mainstream fiction by-and-large does not do. We who read sf (I am speaking as a reader now, not a writer) read it because we love to experience this chain-reaction of ideas being set off in our minds by something we read, something with a new idea in it; hence the very best science fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create—and enjoy doing it: joy is the essential and final ingredient of science fiction, the joy of discovery of newness.

    (in a letter) May 14,1981

  • 0

    Hard SF - no, not in my view, as there's no real attempt ever to present a coherent view of the state of the art. For example we have seen no glimpses into why SecUnits (and presumably ComfortUnits) are a mix of organic and synthetic material - no rationale as to which bits are which and why. We have a whole spectrum of "regular" humans, augmented ones, XYZ units and bots and constructs of multitudinous types, so ranging from fully biological to fully synthetic, but no real understanding of how this has come into being. I don't mind that at all as a narrative device, and it is quite secondary to the story Martha Wells wanted to tell, but it kind of highlights that the whole tech side of things is just a backdrop rather than a key area.

    Turning to security and such like, all these gizmos of various types speak the same protocol and are mutually hackable, the outcome apparently depending only on the processing power involved. There doesn't seem to be a dimension of levels of security (eg encryption key length in contemporary terms), there doesn't seem to be any real struggle involved... the strong just overwhelms the weak. (Hence my comments in another thread about the murderbot's double standards about feeling bad about getting a partial memory erasure, while happily doing much worse to loads of other gadgets.

    Now, some of that is covered by the often-repeated theme "the company makes cheap shit so there's no real sophistication in any of the systems" but I found this very unconvincing. So that was a weak point of the books for me, but again I don't think Martha Wells really wanted to focus on that. The inferior gizmos were basically Red Shirts who were dispensable in the grand scheme of uncovering what really happened at the mine.

  • 0

    @BarnerCobblewood said:
    Here is the quote. I got it from https://biblioklept.org/2017/09/19/the-shock-of-dysrecognition-philip-k-dick-defines-science-fiction/

    One of the interesting things about this is that it seems for Dick that SF depends on the reader as much as the text and the author, which raises interesting dilemmas for analysing genre fiction.

    I will define science fiction, first, by saying what sf is not. It cannot be defined as “a story (or novel or play) set in the future,” since there exists such a thing as space adventure, which is set in the future but is not sf: it is just that: adventures, fights and wars in the future in space involving super-advanced technology. Why, then, is it not science fiction? It would seem to be, and Doris Lessing (e.g.) supposes that it is. However, space adventure lacks the distinct new idea that is the essential ingredient. Also, there can be science fiction set in the present: the alternate world story or novel. So if we separate sf from the future and also from ultra-advanced technology, what then do we have that can be called sf?

    We have a fictitious world; that is the first step: it is a society that does not in fact exist, but is predicated on our known society; that is, our known society acts as a jumping-off point for it; the society advances out of our own in some way, perhaps orthogonally, as with the alternate world story or novel. It is our world dislocated by some kind of mental effort on the part of the author, our world transformed into that which it is not or not yet. This world must differ from the given in at least one way, and this one way must be sufficient to give rise to events that could not occur in our society—or in any known society present or past. There must be a coherent idea involved in this dislocation; that is, the dislocation must be a conceptual one, not merely a trivial or bizarre one—this is the essence of science fiction, the conceptual dislocation within the society so that as a result a new society is generated in the author’s mind, transferred to paper, and from paper it occurs as a convulsive shock in the reader’s mind, the shock of dysrecognition. He knows that it is not his actual world that he is reading about.

    Now, to separate science fiction from fantasy. This is impossible to do, and a moment’s thought will show why. Take psionics; take mutants such as we find in Ted Sturgeon’s wonderful MORE THAN HUMAN. If the reader believes that such mutants could exist, then he will view Sturgeon’s novel as science fiction. If, however, he believes that such mutants are, like wizards and dragons, not possible, nor will ever be possible, then he is reading a fantasy novel. Fantasy involves that which general opinion regards as impossible; science fiction involves that which general opinion regards as possible under the right circumstances. This is in essence a judgment-call, since what is possible and what is not possible is not objectively known but is, rather, a subjective belief on the part of the author and of the reader.

    Now to define good science fiction. The conceptual dislocation—the new idea, in other words—must be truly new (or a new variation on an old one) and it must be intellectually stimulating to the reader; it must invade his mind and wake it up to the possibility of something he had not up to then thought of. Thus “good science fiction” is a value term, not an objective thing, and yet, I think, there really is such a thing, objectively, as good science fiction.

    I think Dr. Willis McNelly at the California State University at Fullerton put it best when he said that the true protagonist of an sf story or novel is an idea and not a person. If it is good sf the idea is new, it is stimulating, and, probably most important of all, it sets off a chain-reaction of ramification-ideas in the mind of the reader; it so-to-speak unlocks the reader’s mind so that that mind, like the author’s, begins to create. Thus sf is creative and it inspires creativity, which mainstream fiction by-and-large does not do. We who read sf (I am speaking as a reader now, not a writer) read it because we love to experience this chain-reaction of ideas being set off in our minds by something we read, something with a new idea in it; hence the very best science fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create—and enjoy doing it: joy is the essential and final ingredient of science fiction, the joy of discovery of newness.

    (in a letter) May 14,1981

    That made for an interesting read, though I think I ended up in only partial agreement with it! Penned in 1981, it was before a lot of the transformation of SF to cover internal worlds and interpersonal relationships rather than external worlds and confrontation. I get what he was saying about one's evaluation of a genre depending on one's world view - could magic every happen or does it make it automatically fantasy? for example. And I get the internal struggle he has when saying Thus “good science fiction” is a value term, not an objective thing, and yet, I think, there really is such a thing, objectively, as good science fiction. Still thinking about all that.

  • 2

    I struggle with the "what is hard SF question", but I guess if forced I would say it was not. I like my hard SF to be full of intricate explanations that I can barely understand half the time. This felt very much like the technology provided just the barest cover for the story that Wells wanted to tell about being a human etc.

    @clash_bowley is right that the failure of the security in all of these devices feels pretty much in line with today.

  • 1
    “It can’t be hard SF because I could understand it” doesn’t seem like such a bad metric 😁
  • 0

    I suppose I reckon that "security's rubbish today so it'll always be so" isn't very convincing! I mean, space travel is kind of rubbish today but by the time of the book they've got it cracked quite nicely. And current medical science or robotics can't do lots of what's assumed in the book. Now, I get that security is a kind of unending arms race and that the hackers' skills will increase along with the defenders', and maybe there's a kind of gentlemen's agreement between the various companies involved that they deliberately won't spend too much on security.

    Going back to the question of hard SF, space travel is another tech which is just assumed to work somehow, with journey times being a bit dull but unremarkable in length... but so far as I recall not a word is spent sketching out for us how it works, with wormholes or warp drive or funky mushroom spore drive or unobtanium or whatever. In the context of the book that works extremely well, but if Martha Wells was intending to write hard SF it's an odd omission.

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