#66 in Science fiction
All Systems Red
- 168
- Pages
- about 3 h
- Reading time
- Hugo Award for Best Novella
- Nebula Award for Best Novella
- Ignotus Award for Best Foreign Short Story
- Locus Award for Best Novella
- Bob Morane award for best foreign novel
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Our view
“All Systems Red” is short, quick and carried by its narrator: a security cyborg that has slipped its programming and would much rather watch soap operas than deal with people. Its awkwardness around the humans it protects is both the joke and the heart of the story, and readers who know that feeling love it. Some readers find the humans thinly sketched at this length, so that the ending lands more lightly than it might.
Worth knowing A novella of under two hundred pages, published by Tor.com in 2017; it won the Hugo, the Nebula and the Locus. The narrator is a security unit that has hacked its own governor module, calls itself Murderbot and would rather watch serials than deal with humans. The early books are short, so the series is easy to sample. Apple TV+ adapted it in 2025, with Alexander Skarsgård as Murderbot.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
All Systems Red is a 2017 science fiction novella by American author Martha Wells. The first in the Murderbot Diaries series, it was published by Tor.com. The series is about a cyborg designed to protect humans on a research mission. The cyborg narrates the story and calls itself "Murderbot". It has developed independence from its original programming by overriding its "governor module" and prefers watching soap operas over its security function. As it spends more time with some caring humans, it starts developing emotions that make it feel uncomfortable.
Reading order · The Murderbot Diaries
Full order & progress →- The Future of Work: CompulsoryThe Future of Work: Compulsory–Not ranked yet
- All Systems RedThis book
8.38.3 / 10 - Artificial Condition
8.48.4 / 10 - Rogue Protocol
8.38.3 / 10 - Exit Strategy
8.58.5 / 10 - Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory
7.97.9 / 10 - Network Effect
8.98.9 / 10 - Fugitive Telemetry
8.38.3 / 10 - System Collapse
8.28.2 / 10 - Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy
7.97.9 / 10 - Platform Decay
8.08.0 / 10
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.1 across 3,986 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 96% of the weight and the score stays at 8.3 — the Science fiction average of 7.8 barely moves it. A further +0.20 comes from the small bonus for major awards.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.5 | 46 | 1% |
| Hardcover | 8.1 | 3.9K | 99% |
Frequently asked
How long is All Systems Red?
It has 168 pages — shorter than 98% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Science fiction — and a score of 8.3, the closest to this book.
