Martha Wells really didn't think anything through for her version of The Imperial Radch. (Aka The Murderbot Diaries)
(Edited on August 18 2025 because I found out that Martha Wells admitted they're all cyborgs, not robots. Because she's that racist and ableist and wants us to agree with both the in-universe dehumanization of physically disabled people of color, and her own in the real world. Absolutely astoundingly evil. Archived original version here.)
Ancillaries from The Imperial Radch are all different looking because they literally used to be real people who were kidnapped, murdered, and their brains taken over.
Martha Wells fucking lies to us and tells us that the cyborgs in her setting are made from cloned human tissue, to make us think they're actual synthetically organic robots, but then...it's never brought up that they'd all be exactly identical to eachother because if that were true, they'd all be cloned from the original source?
It's implied that they all look different, even though they also apparently all have the exact same proportions.
If they *didn't* all look different, then we would have gotten comments from characters about confusing Murderbot for another cyborg, or thinking it has a twin.
So, we're supposed to casually accept that all cyborgs are physically unique, except for their proportions, which are all, somehow, exactly the same. No difference even in weight between them. (because of her long-standing hatred of fat people as well as her hatred of people of color and physically disabled people)
And yes that's already extremely contradictory for no good reason. Gawaine giving away the horse and finding it dead five seconds later, yada yada yada. It's a game of telephone but for writing.
But even if we accept this contradictory statement as true, (even though she fucking admitted they're cyborgs, not organic robots) that "each individual cyborg was cloned from a different source" that's...not how capitalism works.
Modern day capitalism doesn't care about genetic diversity even when it's crucial for species we eat not going extinct.
There's absolutely no way capitalists would suddenly care about preserving "genetic diversity" when it's literally not needed in any way. These enslaved cyborgs don't reproduce. Genetic diversity is not even remotely a consideration.
There is no in-universe justification we’re ever given, and considering Martha Wells’ loathing for doing world building for this series, we’re just never gonna get one.
They all look different because, if we take the shit in this series at face value despite her confirming it's literally in-universe propaganda because they're cyborgs, because despite the fact that she’s never bothered to describe it, Murderbot has to be Unique and Special™.
Even though that would make no fucking sense. The point of cloning en masse is that it’s supposed to be cheap and easy and can be done over and over and over again without end.
No capitalist is going to go out of their way to collect so many samples of genetic material to create a supposedly unlimited supply of completely unique clones who don’t even reproduce.
It’s a small detail, yes, but it’s just another inconsistancy upon piles of inconsistancies, born out of her insistence that her protagonists must be the most special characters ever to exist, while also trying to mimic better writing that...doesn’t prioritize creating Mary Sues.
She wants the cool vibe of The Imperial Radch, but doesn’t want any of the nuance or actual depth for characters and backstories and worldbuilding. She doesn't actually want to take slavery, classism, or the idea of disposable people seriously.
Murderbot is simultaneously "super expensive and worth investing constant resources for healing in", but also "cheap and easy to replace and not worth healing". And you’re just supposed to believe both of these things at once, and who cares if they’re completely contradictory.
Murderbot is a disposable plastic cup, because Ancillaries are disposable and Martha Wells wants Murderbot to be as cool as them, and wants the free Tragic Backstory Sympathy that telling the audience it's disposable brings it, so we'll overlook the fact that it goes around murdering other slaves out of pure sadistic spite every single chance it gets.
Murderbot is expensive and worth investing endless repairs in, because Martha Wells is ableist and lazy and would rather die than write a character who becomes physically disabled over the course of the story, even though Murderbot’s literally based on a character who -- *gasp* -- became physically disabled over the course of her story! Multiple times! And none of them were ever magically healed like they never happened!
We're lied to and told Murderbot is "made of cloned human material", because that sounds cool and scifi-y, but then, according to this lie, isn't actually a direct clone of anyone, or even one clone among many, because Martha Wells’ protags have to be the most unique and special and bestest characters in the setting ever, and she thinks that specialness would be diminished if Murderbot had a few thousand clone-siblings running around.
So we just end up with another completely contradictory set of ideas on top of the rest that we’re already supposed to accept in the series.
And then only later, after writing this series to be as purposefully confusing as possible, does she reveal that they're actually all cyborgs, and she just doesn't want to make that clear, because she knows the wolves would be at her throat for asking us all to agree with the literal in-universe slave owners that the dehumanization of these physically disabled people of color is correct and true.