Murderbot vs Bobiverse

[psikeyhackr]

I am caught up in both of these series and have read them multiple times. They are interesting in that they are relatively new (I started SF in the 60s) and I am mostly not too fond of recent SF.

Murderbot is extremely character driven while the Bobiverse has much more explicitely sci/tech oriented. I just did some searches and Earth is not mentioned in Murderbot. I cannot tell what year it is beyond hundreds of years in the future. While Bob is revived as a replicant in 2133 in the Pacific NW.

I find Murderbot amusingly entertaining but not intellectually interesting while the Bobiverse yields a wider range of stimulation.

Has anyone else compared these two sets of works. I have seen lots of commentary on each but not a comparison.

 

[Ursa major]

I'm not sure the two can easily be compared -- they're both so very different -- other than that both are very enjoyable to read.

I've read each book only the once, and had already finished the latest Bobiverse novel, Heaven's River, before I'd bought All Systems Red, the first novella in the Murderbot series (whose latest, and only just published, instalment, Fugitive Telemetry, I finished just this weekend).

But what I would say is that it is definitely the first person protagonist/narrator (and thus, I suppose, the writer of the "diary") that most holds one's attention in the Murderbot novel and novellas. I can't say how others will react to it, but every now and then I get a frisson of pleasure from the narrative (often in the asides... or the asides from the asides...).

 

[psikeyhackr]

Murderbot has interstellar travel with FTL taking days or weeks between stars while the Bobiverse is sublight only with trips taking years and time dilation. Taylor comes up with instantaneous communication for the Bobs though.

 

[Montero]

Well I'm with @Ursa major as to how different they are. Bob is a lot chattier. The characters of the Bobs do range a bit in terms of how they look at life and how positive they are about things, but the original Bob was on the "hey wow, look at the fun world out there" end of the spectrum and MurderBot is more "what sh*t is going to hit me next/oh heck, look at the daft client the sh*t will hit them shortly"

 

[Ursa major]

"what sh*t is going to hit me next/oh heck, look at the daft client the sh*t will hit them shortly"

...and "I could be watching episode 132 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon."

 

[Parson]

Original Bob was serious fun, one of the best of the year if not the decade. In my opinion the books have digressed from there. I'm worn out by the constant wink and nod to S.F. books and movies. The latest one was okay, better than a lot of what I read, but not terribly engaging. Murderbot is much more serious in tone, if not in stakes. The Bobs are off saving planets and human existence and that sort of thing. Murderbot is basically trying to defeat human stupidity whenever "it" can. I'd say as a series Murderbot has the edge if only because it stayed more true to it's original premise. Murderbot is maturing and becoming a more well-rounded character, but it (I so want to call Murderbot a she!) is still recognizably the same "person" as before. While the Bobiverse has become a more complex and less hopeful environment. They are now for me a less enjoyable read.

 

[psikeyhackr]

If I had been reading Bobiverse when I was 12 to 18 I would have been researching the stars he named and being sure he got his distances right. In the process I would have stumbled across other things and done more research.

I was reading about Greek philosophers in 7th grade because Arthur C Clarke used Plato's Allegory of the Cave to explain reality viewed through infrared.

I can't even tell how far in the future Murderbot is set or what stars are involved. Murderbot's trapped social situation is the story.