Do you read sci-fi by authors of color? I just ask because you seem to be making yourself angry to the point of crying when you read white women’s sci-fi. Which, if you want to branch out beyond white authors and early 20th century pulp, there are lots of authors of color who might be approaching themes you like better!
Octavia Butler has really fascinating takes on aliens. Andrea Hairston is creative and weird with blending sci-fi and fantasy. Cadwell Turnbull has magical critiques of police and sci-fi explorations of colonialism. Yoon Ha Lee writes all about empire In Space and digital consciousness. Rivers Solomon has a spaceship story that’s explicitly about the kind of 19th century chattel slavery that you want The Murderbot Diaries to be. Simon Jimenez writes absolutely gorgeous sci-fi that leaves me in awe, about space travel and the effect of time dilation and the passage of time and the encroachment of the imperial core on its periphery. Malka Older’s Infomocracy series is explicitly political in fascinating worldbuilding ways. Nnedi Okorafor writes absolutely beautiful if emotionally harrowing fantasy and sci-fi books emphasizing African magics and African futures. Ted Chiang writes some of the best sci-fi I’ve ever read, it is SO creative and does such interesting things with aliens, AI, time, culture, and free will. An Owomoyela and N. K. Jemisin write amazing short stories. There are lots of authors out there that might be approaching the themes you want more to your taste! I highly recommend checking them out instead of making yourself upset that one series isn’t what you want it to be, and raise up the ones by authors of color that might be more aligned with what you’re looking for!
Yes, I do. Just because I criticize a racist white woman's racist writing does not mean I don't read anything else, and it's weird of you to assume that would be true, especially because I very rarely *actually* talk about The Murderbot Diaries, I just happen to be thinking about it now.
It's been barely a week since I started talking about it again, because that's when I found out about the new shitty story where Martha Wells asks us, in 2025, to sympathize with and relate to disgustingly rich academics who are casually strolling past an ongoing genocide, without even wanting to lift a hand to help the victims, even though they have the power to.
While she has the gall to lie to us about basic facts about book 2, so she can pretend there was character development where there was none.
I recognize your URL, you know. You are a big fan of The Murderbot Diaries. You're not sending this ask in good faith, you are sending this to try and get me to stop criticizing the series you like, because you don't want to see Martha Wells' racism criticized.
Because you don't want to have to think about it and do the hard work of unlearning it and criticizing it yourself. Because you're happier to stay racist, because that means you get to keep worshipping Martha Wells' writing and not feel bad about any of the slavery apologism baked in.
"Please stop criticizing my favorite racist white woman's racism! I swear its for your own mental health, not because I don't want to acknowledge her racism, or anything!!!! It's for your own good!!! I swear!!!!!"
And here you are. This is how you choose to respond to seeing Martha Well's love of slavery apologism criticized and called hat it is.
You're trying to weaponize actual authors of color to silence criticism of the racist white woman from Texas who literally just published a story on July 10, 2025, telling us all that it's okay to not even WANT to help victims of genocide, even if you have all the power in the world to do so, because you have more important things to worry about! Like Ancient Aliens bullshit!
You literally just reblogged the art post treating one of the most glaring and *jarring* examples of the slavery apologism in this series like it's heartwarming instead of horrific.
And yes, I will copy and paste my entire post about the quote here, so that you have to read it again, since you're so in denial about what it really means you're trying to pretend you Just Really Care about authors of color and *that's* why you're trying to shut me up about Martha Wells' unending racism.
“It’s not an ex-SecUnit,” Ratthi corrected gently, before the quiet could get too quiet again. “You can’t be an ex-SecUnit until you’re dead.’
Yeah I’m sure one of Murderbot’s literal slave owners who’s literally using it as a meatshield (what SecUnit is a euphemism for) is totally an unbiased voice on this matter.
Again, Martha Wells does not think that Murderbot can or should be allowed to be anything other than a meatshield, forever, until it dies.
To the point she’s literally trying to convince us, through the words of one of Murderbot’s literal slave owners who actively benefits from using Murderbot as a meatshield, that “it just stop being a [meatshield]”.
and he’s saying this in Murderbot’s hearing too, while speaking over and for Murderbot, without any permission from Murderbot to do this, ever. This is not something he was given permission to tell people, this was never discussed, ever.
This man is literally telling the slave he co-owns that it can never stop being a meatshield, so it may as well not even try. This isn’t a statement Murderbot gets to even make itself, it literally gets dictated to it by one of the people who literally owns it, whose orders Murderbot is literally incapable of disobeying if doing so would threaten the life of that person. And since they literally keep forcing Murderbot to act as a meatshield for them and others, it literally will never get to stop.
But Martha Wells wants us to see Ratthi saying this as him being a good friend who really just GETS Murderbot, yknow? He really understands!
Literally this series is just slavery apologism stacked upon slavery apologism, and you’re meant to see the slave owners as pure cinnamon rolls who can do no wrong, even though they literally keep using Murderbot, the slave they went several entire solar systems out of their way to rent out for literally no reason, as a meatshield.
This statement is not sweet or cute or touching. It’s fucking horrifying, especially because Ratthi is literally one of Murderbot’s owners. One of the people who abused the position of power Literally Being Its Owners gives it to put Murderbot into this life threatening situation on purpose.
They were all literally so eager to have their human meatshield back they didn’t even wait until Murderbot was recovered from its traumatic brain injury!
Sarcasm: But it’s okay. Because look, we’re told the slave owner is “gently” saying that the slave can never be anything more than the thing it was enslaved to do! So that makes it okay, and cute, and heartwarming! What a healthy relationship!
You're trying to convince me to stop criticizing Martha Wells because you don't want to have to examine her virulent bigotry so you can keep worshipping lines like this.
And your response to this quote? Repeating again the slavery apologism Martha Wells wants you to accept into your worldview!
#I love this moment because it is important in untangling Murderbot’s complicated feelings about Being A SecUnit#because a SecUnit isn’t a job. Being a SecUnit isn’t just the job it was put to. It’s the kind of being it is#and it’s figuring out what it means to be a SecUnit without being a corporate slave!#and it doesn’t want to have to (Detroit) Become Human to be a person worthy of respect!#Murderbot IS a SecUnit. It does not want to have to Not Be A SecUnit to be seen as a person worthy of being listened to and treated right#And this moment was so interesting#and I really like this art. This scene of it#Looking at itself like what am I? Who am I trying to be?#The Murderbot Diaries
You didn't fucking send this ask because you genuinely want to promote authors of color. You just want me, and everyone else in this fandom who's starting to wake up and smell the racism, to stop criticizing Martha Wells' long-established love of slavery and racism.
Anyways. I have many of Octavia Butler's books on my reading list, I just have to find them lol. I already read the Xenogenesis / Lilith's Brood trilogy, and look forward to more of her writing.
(The only problem there is the people in the miniscule fandom who missed the point entirely and think the Oankali are hot saviors of humanity. I hope this series never ever ever gets adapted to screen because I know that will draw all the white monsterfuckers with no critical thinking skills out of the woodwork and then we will all just have to blow up the planet ourselves)
Warning for anyone reading this post who wants to read Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis series: It deals very very seriously and heavily with rape, slavery, complete and utter lack of bodily autonomy or self-control, and more. It is not a book series to take or recommend lightly, please look up a more in-depth list of trigger warnings before you decide to read it.
Also to get in ahead of the game, yes, Xenogenesis also has characters who use it/its pronouns, but they're not nonbinary or Queer, (except one of them, who can certainly be considered Queer cuz uh. That wasn't supposed to happen.), they are the third reproductive sex of an entirely alien species, responsible for all the eugenics their species is infamous for.
Octavia Butler was not trying to represent real nonbinary people at all, and they ooloi do not represent us even ignoring her intentions.
Also while we're on the topic, there aren't any Queer characters at all, everyone is very aggressively cisalloheteronormative, which, in universe, is likely do to the aforementioned eugenics the Oankali are doing. They have no use for anyone who can't be bred to their standards.
Let me put that list in bullet points for everyone:
Octavia Butler has really fascinating takes on aliens.
Andrea Hairston is creative and weird with blending sci-fi and fantasy.
Cadwell Turnbull has magical critiques of police and sci-fi explorations of colonialism.
Yoon Ha Lee writes all about empire In Space and digital consciousness.
Rivers Solomon has a spaceship story that’s explicitly about the kind of 19th century chattel slavery that you want The Murderbot Diaries to be.
Simon Jimenez writes absolutely gorgeous sci-fi that leaves me in awe, about space travel and the effect of time dilation and the passage of time and the encroachment of the imperial core on its periphery.
Malka Older’s Infomocracy series is explicitly political in fascinating worldbuilding ways.
Nnedi Okorafor writes absolutely beautiful if emotionally harrowing fantasy and sci-fi books emphasizing African magics and African futures.
Ted Chiang writes some of the best sci-fi I’ve ever read, it is SO creative and does such interesting things with aliens, AI, time, culture, and free will.
An Owomoyela and N. K. Jemisin write amazing short stories.
The reason I keep talking about Martha Wells is, quite literally, because SOMEONE has to point out and not let anyone ignore all of her long-established bigotry, and it may as well be me, especially since no one else has stepped up to the plate.
She's been writing since the 90s and decided she'd rather defend the literal OG British colonizers than admit she used racist tropes in her fantasy series, The Books of the Raksura, in 2011.
She is currently gleefully profiting off of actual white supremacy by shilling for Apple of all things, despite The Murderbot Diaries claiming to be anticapitalist, telling people to waste their grocery money subscribing to Apple, all to reward the trillion dollar corporation for whitewashing her own protagonist, which she's spent almost a decade now (the series will be 10 years old in 2027) is a person of color.
She doesn't get to *not* be criticized, and I'm gonna keep doing it until the rest of her audience, for all the book series' she's published, starts doing it themselves. She doesn't get to just take Apple's money and profit off of white supremacy. She may not know I exist, but I will be a thorn in her side until everyone else opens their eyes and realizes exactly what propaganda her writing is trying to feed them.
She's been writing slavery apologism, explicitly, since at least 2011, with The Books of the Raksura, where she also explicitly endorsed eugenics. She has been obsessed with biological essentialism rooted in racism, transmisia, misogyny, and more, since the start of her writing career as far as I can tell.
Someone has to pick apart the bigoted shit she is telling everyone to see as good, and I've yet to see one other person as committed to the job as I am.
Her writing is also, literally, just a fucking hilariously great example of How Not To Write. She is literally still failing basic writing fundamentals such as "if two characters are speaking, their dialogue needs to be in separate paragraphs" in 2025, and still doesn't even know how to use pronouns.
Yes, I get angry about the bigotry. Which is the correct response to have to bigotry. But what you don't see is me laughing my head off for minutes straight because, oh, I don't know, would you like me to just give you a quote? Lol. Lol. Lol.
This little scene takes place on a space station with Earth-normal gravity, totally normal floors, and the character in question wearing totally normal clothes.
There is no fucking explanation for this at all. It's just hilariously absurd because, it seems, Martha Wells.....didn't.......check......how big a meter is????????
Please enjoy this completely and utterly ridiculous mental image, on me.
Deni ran, boot soles squeaking on the floor. They tripped and slid the last couple meters on their knees.
And this is happening during what's supposed to, in theory, be a really tense scene. But you can't take it seriously. Because. Martha Wells, seemingly, could not be assed to make sure she knew how big a meter was. Again, I cannot stress enough. Nothing about this environment or this person's clothes makes this a reasonable thing to say or expect. They're not wearing an anti-gravity suit. They're not wearing some kind of personal force-field that they can use like a skateboard.
It's just the wrong form of measurement that Martha Wells didn't fucking double check, and then no one corrected her.
When was this published, you ask? Surely this must be from the 90s?
Nope! This is from Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology, which came out 25 days ago. July 1st, 2025.
Literally if you ever feel bad about your writing, or like you're not good enough to make it as a published author, just pick up a Martha Wells story and actively read it. Actually look at the dialogue and what's happening, don't just go by the vibes she wants you to take away.
I can in fact do both. I read books by good authors all the time. That doesn't mean I'm gonna stop criticizing Martha Wells or anyone else's bigotry.
I didn't decide that The Murderbot Diaries is about chattel slavery. Martha Wells did when she decided to write about chattel slavery. No one held a gun to her head and told her she had to write about slavery. She decided that for herself. And has now spent almost a decade regurgitating slavery apologism onto the page for us all to read and for many people to mindlessly consume.
Including you, right now, desperately pushing back against admitting that the series you like is racist and is doing slavery apologism.
You are trying to pretend that the only problem here is me, and not the slavery apologism you are trying to avoid acknowledging. So you sent this ask to try and get *me* to shut up, as though silencing me will let you ignore the slavery apologism you now have a name for, which you will have to fully fucking admit to sooner or later.
It depends on how desperate you are to cling to your happy racism.
Sorry. Hate to tell you this but once you see the slavery apologism you can't unsee it, even if you don't want to admit to it yet. You will never be able to see that quote you want to worship so much in the same light now that you know it's literally more slavery apologism.
The sooner you admit that the sooner you'll stop being racist.
Stop fucking using authors of color to try and deflect criticism away from a white woman's racism just because you're still happy to chug the slavery apologism and are upset that you now have to think about it.
The fact that you assume it's impossible to both criticize a racist white woman and read books by authors of color sure says a lot about you, and none of it is good.
Maybe try using critical thinking skills for 5 seconds instead of chugging the slavery apologism juice. Your own tags from literally today, less than an hour ago, you are just repeating the exact same slavery apologism I have been talking about on my blog for years now.
Maybe learn to actually give a fuck about combating bigotry instead of trying to silence criticism of your favorite racist white woman just because you're not ready to admit that, maybe, just maybe, telling enslaved people that they can never be anything other than the thing they were enslaved to do is fucking evil.
Maybe don't try to use the existance of authors of color as a weapon to convince people to stop criticizing the racist white woman whose writing you worship and don't want to think badly of. Your motivations are very fucking transparent when you reblog positivity for the series but none of the criticism. We can all see what you're trying to do, lol. I hope you feel bad about it.
Just try unlearning a tiny bit of racism. Just try unlearning the slavery apologism that Martha Wells wants to to worship. It will make you a better person.
Authors of color do not exist for you to use to prop up racist white women. Don't fucking treat them like they do.
