Houston Southard
a name that looks so fake you'll care just as little to learn it's not
Martha Wells - The Murderbot Diaries
Murderbot is on the run. After removing itself from a condition of self-imposed confinement, due in large part to its desire to help the humans it was assigned to protect, it's running away from all but very few of those things that are familiar to it. It's space adventure, corporate cover-ups, and a rogue AI who likes soap operas. A SecUnit naming itself MurderBot journeying to find humanity by observing all the peculiar and illogical ways in which humans act.
Every AI story revolves around the AI either malfunctioning or going rogue. Readers flock to these stories because the narration is always from that of a new-born voice, a perspective that is innocent to the workings of the human mind and the world's rules and norms. Non-human POVs allows concepts of normality to be stretched. We find ourselves accepting the ways in which we're all alien to each other, and it's important in polarizing times to move past simple lessons to flesh out what underpins our differences to out-groups.
I relate. In God State University, a transgressed Godean breaks away from how gods are traditionally meant to germinate universes. In In These Pages, a copy of the new testament reflects on what it means to be the bible through encounters of those who hold it during mass. In Sincerely, Your Genes, a boy's DNA apologizes for all the evolutionary quirks that make puberty, and life, so backwards. In Through A Drive, Darkly, an alter boy whose mind is transferred into a cpu tries to take down a priest pedo ring.
Murderbot, though, has an attitude very reminiscent of a disgruntled teen. It's insecure about being a humanoid disguising themselves as something else. It's critical of others it's trying to emulate. Its outlook is dispassionate but charming. Dour but optimistic. SecUnits do the dirty work, an allegory of the working class dehumanization, a prevalence bolstered by automation and contemporary capitalism.
It's rare to come across a breakout author who can snatch the literary trifecta. This series, originally written as a one-off novella published by TOR, has grown into a fan-favorite, accolade-saturated, critically-acclaimed series. It's taken the Locus, Nebula and Hugo awards.