Digital 'Body Language' in The Murderbot Diaries

02/06/26

The sci-fi novella series The Murderbot Diaries is a favorite of mine for a whole host of reasons ranging from the dry sarcasm and painfully awkward vibe of the main character's perspective to the draw of watching a highly competent character make their way through complex problem solving, all while internally cobbling shit together and swearing. And yet, one of the things I most enjoy about the series is the way Wells takes the digital interactions between characters, entities, and environments and portrays them in a way that is very intuitive.

Backtracking for a second, I'll briefly explain how digital networks work in this series for the unfamiliar. In TMBD, everything that exists digitally (whether a person using a digital interface or a computer program with no physical corporation) interacts with the digital world through data 'feeds'. These feeds are sorted into channels that in many ways resemble modern digital infrastructure with more streamlining. Characters can open private feed channels with a specific person or group much like Discord or they can sort through public feed channels much like a decentralized social media. These feeds are used extensively in daily life, particularly in built environments like space stations where the architecture and life support are also interacted with digitally. When on missions, characters use the feed to keep in constant contact even when separated by hundreds of miles allowing them to coordinate with impressive efficiency. The constant use of feeds in this world is written such that it feels very natural, and part of that is through how character's digital interactions tell us more about them.

For the main character especially, its feed interface is a literal extension of its body, to the point where it develops subconscious feed behaviors like keyword filtering its audio inputs when something requires its full attention. Its humans, despite having external tools for feed interfaces, also have several unspoken norms and habits when communicating.

Some parts of this digital body language have present-day equivalents. One interesting example is what I'll call neutral acknowledgement. In the series it is common for characters to respond to messages by sending an 'acknowledgement'. They aren't making any comment or query about the topic, instead simply informing the sender that their message was seen and understood. At about the same time the series was published, iMessage added a 'reactions' feature to their app to some success. It wasn't long until I noticed that most people in my circle didn't use the 'like' reaction to indicate that they liked something, but instead as a neutral acknowledgement. This led to many interesting notifications amounting to 'John Doe liked "my car broke down, I need a ride"'. Additionally, people started using the 'question' reaction to send a second notification for a message left unread. For some people, these reactions replaced older methods using the 'thumbs up' emoji and '^'.

Other digital interactions in this series are hard-pressed to find online analogues today. This is particularly true for interactions between the main character and other constructs, mainly Perihelion/ART. Unlike other characters, these two have awareness of one another's background feed presence and activity even when they don't know what it is the other is doing. When Murderbot starts playing an episode of a show, ART 'leans' in to watch by tapping into MB's stream, making sure not to use too much of its massive processing so it isn't overwhelming for the Secunit. In fact, Murderbot's reactions to the media it watches become part of the stream of data, and ART uses that data to help understand the show better from the perspective of a semi-organic brain.

Another great use of this shorthand Wells develops for feed interactions is to take the abstract concepts of things like hacking and make them into fast-paced action sequences that have a really tangible feel to the reader. Murderbot can either be gentle and manipulative with a bot pilot or break in and shove half its functions into a box and puppet it depending on how much time and empathy it has.

Even Murderbot's relationship with its body and brain is digital. it can dial down its pain perception and label memories with literal notes-to-self. In fact, its organic mind sometimes even interferes with digital functions and effectively triggers a BSOD error.

Wells writes these digital interactions that range from highly abstract to humanly familiar, taking full advantage of writing a character with both a physical and digital body, and uses it to explore what it means to be human. For the main character, it takes a long journey to see that nature in itself. For the readers, it is painfully clear from the first line.

There's so much more I could talk about when it comes to the digital world of The Murderbot Diaries, for example part of what makes the main character uniquely good at its job is the ability it has to turn external digital networks into extensions of its body. Yet the common thread in this worldbuilding is the same for me. I see Wells' digital world as painting a very human picture of technology shaping our interactions with each other and our environments.