User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
This review is for Hugo-winning novelette The Secret Life of Bots by Suzanne Palmer: “A rogue bot cannot be tolerated, whatever good it may have done.“
It’s official -
I found my second favorite bot (the top favorite being, of course, Murderbot, why’d you ask?). It’s Bot 9, a teeny-tiny multipurpose bot on a formerly decommissioned Ship that now has been commandeered from the junkyard for a very dangerous mission. The Ship, that is. Bot 9’s mission is simple - task 944, take care of a pest plaguing the Ship.
“The bot would rather have been fixing something more exciting, more prominently complex, than to be assigned pest control, but the bot existed to serve and so it would.“
The little Bot 9 (dwarfed by giant 3 centimeter silk Bots) takes his task very seriously. So do the people who serve as the Ship’s rudimentary crew - they take their task very seriously too, as they need to save the Solar system from an alien invasion. And the big crew has no idea about the existence of the little mechanical crew of Bots, serving the Ship, doing their tasks, in their spare time chatting on botnet, reciting Mantras and forming a very peculiar culture. Secret Life of Bots, indeed.
“It was eighty-two point four percent convinced that there was something much more seriously wrong with the Ship than it had been told, but it was equally certain Ship must be attending to it.”
When the connection dropped, Bot 9 hesitated before it spoke to 4340. “I have an unexpected internal conflict,” it said. “I have never before felt the compulsion to ask Ship questions, and it has never before not given me answers.”
What happens when an older generation Bot 9 (
“I have never met a bot lower than a thousand, or without a specific function tag”) still carries the Improvisation Routine module instead of uninstalling it to keep up with the newer models?
Well, sometimes there things that it needs to take in its own chassis (or its own grabber arm, I guess) and maybe go just a teensy bit rogue: “Please! We all wish you great and quick success, despite your outdated and primitive manufacture.”
“Thank you,” Bot 9 said, though it was not entirely sure it should be grateful, as it felt its manufacture had been entirely sound and sufficient regardless of date.
It left that compartment before the hullbot could compliment it any further.”
Terry Pratchett once noted,
“Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.” Not to disagree with Sir Terry (the horror of even thinking such a sacrilege!), but he clearly hasn’t met Bot 9. Bot 9 can do anything — save the semi-suicidal humans, Solar System, you name it — and still finish his task 944, eventually.
Also, I implore you - be nice to your Rumba or your smart watch or whatever smart appliance you may have. You never know when they get an improvisation routine — and you certainly want them on your side.
I’m giving my iPad a hug right now.5 multibot stars.
Read it (and listen to it) here: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/palme...
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Edited to add:
This issue also contains a wonderful novelette Pan-Humanism:Hope and Pragmatics by Jess Barber and Sara Saab.This is a slow, measured tale of two people in the near future in which climate change has devastated the world. But priorities have changed, and culture has changed, and pan-humanism is what drives the work of restoration and fixing the problems we caused. All while two people are brought together and pulled apart time and again while working on fixing the world. It’s not as much a story as a chronicle of their lives, and it has a quiet charm that grows on you by the end of the story.
3.5 stars.
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Recommended by: carol.
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Also posted on my blog.
Rating: really liked it
5 stars for the delightful novelette "The Secret Life of Bots" in this magazine issue, which won the Hugo Award in 2018. It's free online here at Clarkesworld magazine. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Fans of WALL-E will particularly appreciate this whimsically poignant tale about a little outdated robot with a can-do attitude. Robot #9 is reactivated by its spaceship after a lengthy time in storage, and is assigned the task of ridding the Ship of a particularly destructive “biological infestation” (the bots begin to call it the “ratbug,” though Bot 9 privately questions the accuracy of that moniker) that is chewing apart bots and other parts of the Ship. Bot 9 sets to with a will, though it wonders why the Ship is in such poor shape and why Bot 9 has been assigned a task that is so low on the maintenance queue.
As Bot 9 pursues the elusive ratbug around the Ship, it becomes acquainted with many of the newer bots. It also becomes aware of an alien invasion that has decimated humanity’s defenses, and the Ship’s desperate mission to try to stop an alien ship heading toward Earth far larger and more powerful than itself. Bot 9 is archaic in many ways compared to the newer bots, but perhaps it has some unique capabilities that may help their cause.
The story is told primarily from Bot 9’s point of view, interspersed with some scenes from the point of view of the Ship’s human captain. The Bots really do have a life and culture of their own that is invisible to most humans. Bot 9 recites various mantras to help it with its tasks, discusses its concerns with the AI brain that governs the Ship, and communicates politely with the newer, more specialized bots on the Ship (“We all wish you great and quick success, despite your outdated and primitive manufacture.”).
The bots and the Ship AI are chatty and almost human in some of their attitudes and communications, which required some suspension of disbelief. But that’s a minor complaint, given how much this story otherwise enchanted me. “The Secret Life of Bots” is neatly plotted, with a memorable and appealing main character, and a pleasing theme that touches on friendship, courage and ingenuity. I hope Bot 9 and its friends have more adventures in store.
Rating: really liked it
'The Secret Life of Bots' 2018 Hugo Best Novelette
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/palme...
An elderly ship-borne bot is pulled back into service.
“I am assigning you task nine hundred forty four in the maintenance queue,” the Ship answered. “Acknowledge?”
“Acknowledged,” the bot answered. Nine hundred and forty-four items in the queue? That seemed extremely high, and the bot felt a slight tug on its self-evaluation monitors that it had not been activated for at least one of the top fifty, or even five hundred.As it works, it learns more about the current state of the ship and the humans piloting it. The little machine is equipped with Improvisation sub-routines, as well as governing Mantras which give it loads of character. Fans of Murderbot and ART will likely enjoy it (although the robot is nothing like Murderbot).
Read before, no idea where/if there's a review. Re-read after reading
Finder by Palmer.
“Please! We all wish you great and quick success, despite your outdated and primitive manufacture.
“Thank you,” Bot 9 said, though it was not entirely sure it should be grateful, as it felt its manufacture had been entirely sound and sufficient regardless of date.
It left that compartment before the hullbot could compliment it any further.”
Rating: really liked it
***The Secret Life of Bots by Suzanne Palmer***2021 reread:
I decided to give this another go, as a friend of mine keeps mentioning it as one of her favorite bot stories. And usually her judgement can be trusted (we'll just forget about this one Stephen King series that she keeps reading wrong).
I barely remembered anything about this story. But as it turns out, I did indeed like it better this time. The bots are fun, even if they don't reach Murderbot-level awesomeness (what does?!) and the meatballs are serviceable if not particularly memorable, as is the story.
Rounding up to four stars now.
*********
2018 review:
Mankind is at war again.
We're aboard a spaceship that's trying to interfere with the extraterrestrial threat.
The ship itself is pissed for having been in storage for way too long. Its crew and humanity as a whole meanwhile are dependent on the ship functioning properly. And a little bot on board the ship is developing a plan of its own.
This is an entertaining, sometimes humorous story with a nice message.
I liked the voices of the bots. The people on the other hand were somewhat bland.
Overall the story was a little too simplistic for my liking.
3.5 stars rounded down.
Winner of the 2018 Hugo Award for Best NoveletteYou can read it here.
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2018 Hugo Awards Finalists
Best Novel• The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi (Tor)
• New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)
• Provenance by Ann Leckie (Orbit)
• Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris)
• Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty (Orbit)
•
The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)Best Novella•
All Systems Red by Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing)• And Then There Were (N-One) by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny, March/April 2017)
• Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com Publishing)
• The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang (Tor.com Publishing)
• Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
• River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey (Tor.com Publishing)
Best Novelette• Children of Thorns, Children of Water by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny, July-August 2017)
• Extracurricular Activities by Yoon Ha Lee (Tor.com, February 15, 2017)
•
The Secret Life of Bots by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld, September 2017)• A Series of Steaks by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Clarkesworld, January 2017)
• Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time by K.M. Szpara (Uncanny, May/June 2017)
• Wind Will Rove by Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s, September/October 2017)
Best Short Story• Carnival Nine by Caroline M. Yoachim (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, May 2017)
• Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand by Fran Wilde (Uncanny, September 2017)
• Fandom for Robots by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Uncanny, September/October 2017)
• The Martian Obelisk by Linda Nagata (Tor.com, July 19, 2017)
• Sun, Moon, Dust by Ursula Vernon, (Uncanny, May/June 2017) by Ursula Vernon, (Uncanny, May/June 2017)
•
Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™ by Rebecca Roanhorse (Apex, August 2017)Best Related Work• Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate by Zoe Quinn (PublicAffairs)
• Iain M. Banks (Modern Masters of Science Fiction) by Paul Kincaid (University of Illinois Press)
• A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison by Nat Segaloff (NESFA Press)
• Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler edited by Alexandra Pierce and Mimi Mondal (Twelfth Planet Press)
•
No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters by Ursula K. Le Guin (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)• Sleeping with Monsters: Readings and Reactions in Science Fiction and Fantasy by Liz Bourke (Aqueduct Press)
Best Graphic Story• Black Bolt, Volume 1: Hard Time written by Saladin Ahmed, illustrated by Christian Ward, lettered by Clayton Cowles (Marvel)
• Bitch Planet, Volume 2: President Bitch written by Kelly Sue DeConnick, illustrated by Valentine De Landro and Taki Soma, colored by Kelly Fitzpatrick, lettered by Clayton Cowles (Image Comics)
•
Monstress, Volume 2: The Blood written by Marjorie M. Liu, illustrated by Sana Takeda (Image Comics)• My Favorite Thing is Monsters written and illustrated by Emil Ferris (Fantagraphics)
• Paper Girls, Volume 3 written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Cliff Chiang, colored by Matthew Wilson, lettered by Jared Fletcher (Image Comics)
• Saga, Volume 7 written by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
Best Series• The Books of the Raksura, by Martha Wells (Night Shade)
• The Divine Cities, by Robert Jackson Bennett (Broadway)
• InCryptid, by Seanan McGuire (DAW)
• The Memoirs of Lady Trent, by Marie Brennan (Tor US / Titan UK)
• The Stormlight Archive, by Brandon Sanderson (Tor US / Gollancz UK)
•
World of the Five Gods, by Lois McMaster Bujold (Harper Voyager / Spectrum Literary Agency)
Rating: really liked it
Review for
The Secret Life of Bots— by SUZANNE PALMER —
Are bot stories a hot, new commodity this year? Not that I am complaining, there just seems to be an abundance of misbehaving, self-aware bots gallivanting through our galaxy.
Not sure why this was nominated for the Hugo, but definitely fun to read. Good thing that Bot 9 was an outdated model with some design flaws...
Hugo Awards 2018 Novelette Nominee
Story can be found here: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/palme...
Rating: really liked it
'18 Hugo nom for the shorter fictions!
I actually read this one at a previous date and liked it well enough then, too, but even from last year's Best-of Clarksworld, there were better stories. Alas.
That being said, this one was pretty interesting with its whole pest problem and social niceties of bots. I had a good enough time with it. Some humor, some social message, but it was also pretty campy.
Rating: really liked it
The Secret Life of Bots
— by SUZANNE PALMER —
Kinda cute but childish. Not one I would nominee for Hugo.
Can be read here: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/palme...
Rating: really liked it
Not a deep tale, but bot 9 and its pal 4340 are cute together while they go on a bug hunt; meanwhile, their ship is on a critical mission to stop an alien ship from destroying Earth. And it’s a good thing bot 9 had those Improvisation routines.
Rating: really liked it
Rating and review only for "The Secret Life of Bots" by Suzanne Palmer:
This is the Year of the Bots! Not less than three works are nominated for the Hugo, from short story to novelette and novella. Is this a trend now among SFF authors? With the amount of artificial intelligence roaming the earth now, it seems that our fascination about them and their evolution - self awareness, free will, agency, their hidden lives and interaction - will continue to become a familiar plot line in many years to come.
This charming story is a great example of it.
Rating: really liked it
REVIEW FOR "THE SECRET LIFE OF BOTS"
"I have a purpose, therefore I serve."Enjoyable. I'm always willing to read robot stories and this was particularly entertaining. I liked the whole AI Mantra stuff and the botnet as a way of communication. Really cool but not exceptional for a Hugo winner.
Rating: really liked it
"Pan-Humanism: Hope and Pragmatics" by Jess Barber and Sara Saab was recommended to me by Charles Payseur of Quick Sip Reviews when I asked him for stories that show a more grown-up version of humanity. It's a beautiful mini-novel about people who truly try to make the future more beautiful, while not forgetting to treat each other like true friends.
I found this scene particularly telling, both about the world the characters live in and the way their relationship has been evolving:
Amir follows her. She’s planted in front of a bone-dry shower stall. The showerhead is impossibly shiny. There’s still a bit of plastic wrapping on it. It’s an antique, but brand new.
“It’s nearly two o’clock.”
“Are they going to be able to do this?”
“Trust, Amir. Trust.”
“Do you think it might even be heated?”
Mani, scooting out of her swim knickers, raises her eyebrows at him till he shoves his down too. “I bet it is.” She reaches into the shower stall and twists a handle. It screeches with disuse.
They wait.
At exactly two, their ears fill with the furious sound of a rainstorm. Then their own whooping. Mani bounds in without testing the temperature, makes a shrill sound. “It’s warming up!” She reaches out and grabs Amir’s arm. Her grip raises goosebumps. “Come on, get in!”
He does. It’s the most sublime thing he’s ever felt. He puts his hands flat on the wet tiles and closes his eyes under a hammering of water.
“How long can we stay in here?” He manages not to choke. Such a quantity of water is coursing down his face and onto his tongue.
“We’re being good by sharing. Let’s not get out for a while,” Mani says. “Are you crying?”
“Yes!” He opens his eyes to look at her but her face is blurry-wet. “Are you?”
“That’s private,” Mani says. But she wraps her arms around his waist, her belly against his flank, and rests her forehead on his cheek. Their bodies are slippery and warm. Amir hears himself make a purring noise. “Oh. Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Not like the mist,” he says.
“No. Totally different.”
Sharing a patch is encouraged in the misting rooms. They’ve done this many times. They wash each other’s backs and argue about what true pan-humanism might look like. It’s pleasurable. But this—private, warm, untimed, all this water sheeting down—is a whole different register of existence.
“I think I should tell you,” Mani says, “that I’m thinking about sex.”
Amir opens one eye to look at her, can only see the top of her head against his cheek. “Me, too,” he says, almost but not totally redundantly. Mani’s got a good view.
They’ve almost so many times, but never. This moment feels ripe, so very theirs. But it’s also the wrong moment.
“Water, though, Mani! Mindfulness. Presence. This.”
“Of course,” she says.
“We might never be able to have this again.”
“We might never have any given thing again,” Mani says, the pedantic one for a change.
“But all this water,” he says.
“No, you’re right,” says Mani, hushed in the hypnotic roar of the shower. “All this water.”
Or this snippet:
Mani’s face is complicated with emotions, flickering by too quickly for Amir to properly catalog them, happy-sad-excited-nervous. “It’s far away,” she says.
“It’s exciting,” he corrects. “Mogadishu, can you even imagine! Maybe I could visit you, one time.” This is unlikely, and they both know it. Mogadishu’s not on a clean air travel vector with Beirut yet. He’d have to do two months of civic engagement and a month of personal growth to balance taking a dirty flight for leisure. Mani musters a smile anyway.
And this exchange ... can you feel where it's going? Can you feel how loaded it is?
“Do you remember,” he says, “the Crowdgrow project I told you about during the Future Good conference?”
“You were really excited about it,” Mani says. “It seemed promising.”
“It was. The closed-room tests showed a fifteen percent improvement in air quality, and we had almost a thousand households signed up as testers. And we’ve applied for continuation funding every open cycle since. Not a lot—just enough for a pilot study. Less than we spend in administrative overhead on the Wet City project every week.”
“But no luck?” asks Mani.
“But no luck,” agrees Amir.
“Amir,” says Mani, but there’s too much pity in the way she says his name.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Amir says. “That it would be a waste. That Wet City is a better use of resources.”
“Yes,” says Mani. “I do think that.” The way she says this could have been kind, but it isn’t.
“You’re always so sure of yourself,” says Amir. The way he says this could have been a compliment, but it isn’t. “Is it ego?”
“Is it jealousy?” Mani shoots back.
Fortunately, Amir and Mani are grown-up enough to find their common ground--their shared space--despite the differences in their outlooks.
4 glorious stars. Perhaps even 5?
Rating: really liked it
"Antarctic Birds" by A. Brym - 2*
Absolutely no clue what this was.
"Little /^^^\&-" by Eric Schwitzgebel - 3*
Also little what this one was, but it was entertainingly weird.
"The Secret Life of Bots" by Suzanne Palmer - 4*
The little bots will save the day! This just seemed cute.
"Pan-Humanism: Hope and Pragmatics" by Jess Barber & Sara Saab - 4.5*
This is the type of story I'd like to see more of - less doom and gloom for the future, and more envisioning projects that people will do to help the world. The relationship at the heart of it was also bittersweet.
"Mobius Continuum" by Gu Shi - 4*
This felt a little too obvious, structurally, but I liked the writing and the translation seemed great.
"Bonding with Morry" by Tom Purdom - 4*
Robot caretakers was quite a theme with the reprints.
"Warmth" by Geoff Ryman - 4*
I found this one very sad, due to the theme of parents neglecting their children and the children instead bonding with their robot caretakers who would then forget them.
Rating: really liked it
Free here:
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/issue...
To read: The Secret Life of Bots by Suzanne Palmer
Rating: really liked it
A short and sweet story that takes about 30 minutes to read. It's about bots and especially about one old model bot 9, who luckily is a little special. Good read, but not sure why it won a HUGO shorter fiction award.
Rating: really liked it
Review is just for these two stories:
"The Secret Life of Bots" by Suzanne Palmer. Bot #9 saves the world! Cute mini space-opera. 4+ stars! Online at http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/palme...
2018 Winner, Hugo Award for Best Novelette. 2018 Finalist: Theodore A. Sturgeon Memorial Award.
Here's a real review from Tadiana: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
"Pan-Humanism: Hope and Pragmatics" by Jess Barber and Sara Saab. Life and love in a future Beirut and other cities, recovering from droughts and other environmental ills. Nicely done, 3.5+ stars. Recommended. Reprinted in the Dozois Year's Best #35. http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/barbe...
"Bonding with Morry" by Tom Purdom. Not reread (yet anyway), but I was lukewarm on this one when I first read it.
Here are links to all the 2018 Hugo nominees [formerly] online:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/31/17...
