Compulsory

This short story is a little snippet of Murderbot's life as a secretly rogue SecUnit before meeting the Preservation team in [b:All Systems Red 32758901 All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1) Martha Wells https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1631585309l/32758901.SY75.jpg 53349516]. It's quite an agreeable addition to the Murderbot Diaries, completists can be pleased to add it to their collection, but no-one needs to have it: it doesn't tell us anything that we didn't already know.

(Oh the irony - I just got a “Prove you are not a Robot” box when I tried to post this).

A very thought provoking short story about money and profit taking over all things so that cost-assessments need to be performed even on human life. Most people would say that you can't put a value on human life, yet we live on a planet on which people need to actually pay money for health care - ie. to stay alive.

Interesting setup, disappointing resolution. I might tentatively recommend this as a taste test for someone unfamiliar with Murderbot, but with caveats: it nicely demonstrates Murderbot's essence, yet also Wells's occasional handwave-it-away laziness. The best of her books do not rely on the latter.