Murderbot Gets Us In Ways Humans Don’t
Murderbot Gets Us In Ways Humans Don’t
BY TARA MCMULLIN
Science fiction is full of neurodivergent-coded characters. Star Trek gave us Spock and Data, of course. But there are plenty of other characters who regularly miss social cues, take jokes literally, obsess over details, or provide plot-resolving logic on demand. The vast majority of these characters are support roles, providing foils for more charismatic protagonists.
But not Murderbot.
Murderbot offers an uncommon first-person perspective that resonates with countless neurodivergent fans while transporting neurotypical readers – and now, viewers – into a neurodivergent mindscape, creating new opportunities for understanding and empathy. And that’s why Murderbot is the neurodivergent main character we need right now.
Murderbot is the heart of Martha Wells's acclaimed Murderbot Diaries series, which exploded onto the sci-fi scene in 2017 with All Systems Red and recently made its television debut on Apple TV+. Through this human-robot construct, readers are transported into a foreign mind as it narrates the story, revealing its anxieties, resentments, and pleasures in the process.
That Murderbot is coded as neurodivergent is clear to anyone whose brand of neurodivergence makes eye contact difficult, feels their “performance reliability” drop the moment they step into a crowded room, or would prefer to “have an emotion” in a closet rather than in the presence of anyone else – organic, artificial, or otherwise.
Wells has been fairly open about how her own flavor of neurodivergence made its way into the character. In an interview with New Scientist, Wells explained that she “didn’t realize how non-neurotypical [she] was until [she] started writing Murderbot.” Countless neurodivergent readers happily accepted Murderbot as a metaphorical representation of their experience.
“Neurodivergent readers were able to see themselves represented in a way that centers their experience, rather than a neurotypical one,” Rachel S. Anderson, professor of English at Grand Valley State University, explains in an essay for Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture. This is especially valuable since Murderbot doesn’t want to be anything other than it is.
Unlike other neurodivergent-coded sci-fi characters, often AIs or androids like Data, Murderbot doesn’t strive to be more human.
Neurodivergent readers and viewers can immerse themselves in an inner world where difference isn’t something to be overcome.
What truly makes Murderbot stand out is that the first-person perspective gives the audience a rare opportunity to confront the “double-empathy problem.” As coined by Damian Milton, the double-empathy problem describes how neurodivergent people often sink a lot of effort into understanding and learning to navigate neurotypical culture (i.e., masking) to get along at work or avoid social stigma, while neurotypical people don’t have the same existential pressure to understand neurodivergent experience or culture.
A neurotypical person can know that their neurodivergent friend might have trouble making eye contact. But Murderbot makes that experience visceral in Network Effect: “Just a heads-up, when a murderbot stands there looking to the left of your head to avoid eye contact, it’s probably not thinking about killing you, it’s probably frantically trying to come up with a reply to whatever you just said to it.”
A neurodivergent person can try to explain masking to a neurotypical person, but in Rogue Protocol, Murderbot simplifies it: “I had written myself some code to make sure I behaved more like a human or augmented human. (Mostly randomizing my movements and breathing.)”
A neurodivergent person can recognize that their neurodivergent friend might have a tough time processing or talking about emotions, but Murderbot gives them a sense of what that’s actually like in All Systems Red: “Yes, talk to Murderbot about its feelings. The idea was so painful, I dropped to 97 percent efficiency.”
In fact, I use Murderbot as a cultural touchpoint in my marriage. My neurotypical husband, who actually read the series before I did, can better understand why I might wander off to “have an emotion,” or value the schklocky media I watch (and rewatch), or rely on scripts I’ve learned from said media in what, to him, are perfectly legible social interactions.
Murderbot gives us a shared language for differences that once seemed inexplicable to him.
By narrating its own story, Murderbot makes the unrelatable a little more relatable for neurotypical audiences while preserving its essential otherness. Literary critic Alan Jacobs argues that the “power of reading,” in part, derives from our ability to encounter both the relatable and the other. “For mental and moral health,” he writes, “we need both.”
For neurotypical readers, Murderbot is a main character who is distinctly other – an opportunity to think and feel with a mind profoundly different from their own – and widen their empathic bandwidth. For neurodivergent readers, Murderbot may be a delightful – and rare – encounter with a main character they have more in common with than the usual protagonist. Shared between friends, spouses, or family, Murderbot can create a much-needed bridge between people who experience the world differently from one another.
But more than that, Murderbot helps us see who we are, with all our idiosyncrasies, as valuable members of the team. Through its eyes, we see our differences as the strengths – and maybe even lifesavers – they can be.
In today’s fraught cultural landscape, we need Murderbot's radical perspective more than ever – a character who doesn't just represent neurodivergence but invites others to experience it from the inside.
BIO: Tara McMullin is a writer, podcaster, and critic who uses critical theory to rethink how work and identity are evolving in the 21st-century economy.
