Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • All Systems Red

  • By: Martha Wells
  • Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
  • Length: 3 hrs and 17 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (1,550 ratings)
Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
All Systems Red cover art

All Systems Red

By: Martha Wells
Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Buy Now for £10.99

Buy Now for £10.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

All Systems Red (Dramatized Adaptation) cover art
Children of Time cover art
The Cloud Roads cover art
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) cover art
A Psalm for the Wild-Built cover art
Artemis cover art
The Martian cover art
The Singularity Trap cover art
He Who Fights with Monsters: A LitRPG Adventure cover art
Colony Mars: The Complete Trilogy cover art
The Stone Man - A Science Fiction Thriller, Book 1 cover art
Alien: Covenant Origins cover art
Aliens: Phalanx cover art
HALO: The Fall of Reach cover art
Omega Rising cover art
Blueshift cover art

Summary

All Systems Red is the tense first science fiction adventure novella in Martha Wells' series The Murderbot Diaries. For fans of Westworld, Ex Machina, Ann Leckie's Imperial Raadch series, or Iain M. Banks' Culture novels.

All Systems Red tackles questions of the ethics of sentient robotics. The main character is a deadly security droid that has bucked its restrictive programming and is balanced between contemplative self-discovery and an idle instinct to kill all humans.

In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.

But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn't a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied 'droid - a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as "Murderbot."

Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is. But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.

©2017 Martha Wells (P)2017 Recorded Books

What listeners say about All Systems Red

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    927
  • 4 Stars
    424
  • 3 Stars
    162
  • 2 Stars
    28
  • 1 Stars
    9
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    887
  • 4 Stars
    366
  • 3 Stars
    110
  • 2 Stars
    23
  • 1 Stars
    10
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    835
  • 4 Stars
    374
  • 3 Stars
    143
  • 2 Stars
    27
  • 1 Stars
    13

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Well written & narrated, but short for 1 credit

Nice robot perspective story and it kept me listening, a nice and calm narrator. Will be looking into the next in the series, but at 3 hours long unsure if it justifies one whole credit 😊

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

22 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
  • L
  • 02-05-18

Yay, Murderbot!

Never did I think I'd be rooting for a character called "Murderbot", but here we are. This is such a fun, interesting book. The whole cast of characters, large for such a short book, was compelling and three-dimensional. I can't wait for the next instalment!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Do weapons systems dream of the wild west?

A fast-paced shoot up, who done it, with no philosophical ramifications unless you have been living under a rock for the past fifty years.
Fun fast read that will not stay in the long-term memory circuitry.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Goodreads choice awards nominee sci fi 2017

I started this expecting a fun listen with a silly plot, well it's fun alright but the plot was so much better than I expected. Murderbot has hacked it's controls and finds itself stranded on a remote planet with terrible things happening all around it and now to top it all off, the latest group of humans it has been assigned to guard, actually want to interact with it. People throw big names around like custard pies sticking to a wall when they are trying to explain (or sell) books like this and they often have very little to do with the actual author or story beyond the genre it's in. Since they've really overdone it with this one I will say that in my opinion the story is most like something I would expect from John Scalzi (the less crude stories like The Dispatcher and Old Man's War - note this is not a judgment, I love most of Scalzi's books, this is for comparison only) with a touch of Ann Leckie. I'm not going to tell you much about the actual story beyond this because I don't see any point in spoiling the plot. 5* story, will be listening to again and can't wait for the next.

Narration is harder to mark. My problem is that I love this narrator's work. I listen to a lot of different stuff and he does one of my favorite series the Holmes and Moriarity books by Josh Lanyon (fun and sarcastic murder mystery/romance, between two men, one of whom has been a previously top selling writer of a long running series/sometimes amateur detective and the other of whom is an ex cop/ current incredibly successful author who thinks things should be left with the police. The point being that Kevin R. Free is very good at over the top and funny, while still managing to make the best of a great plot, so I was surprised that his performance here was a little flat in comparison, particularly when voicing Murderbots' thoughts as opposed to voice (perhaps the editor directed him to do it that way). The narrator has a beautiful voice in my opinion and while it's not immediately apparent he can soften his tone enough for a real range of emotion to come through. This also helps with managing to do distinct voices for the main characters without putting on silly characters for the women, which I always appreciate. 3 1/2* but going up to 4 nearer the end. I hope they keep him for subsequent stories where he can really come into his own.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Fantastic!

Martha Wells's fantastic sci-fi novella All Systems Red was one of my favourite finds of all 2017. It was everything an AI sci-fi story should be and then some! It was thought provoking but also entertaining and engaging.

The world building and plot were both good but it was the lead character, Murderbot, who stole the show. Murderbot was a great lead character and was very easy to root for. Its mission was to keep the humans on its team safe but that did not mean this socially anxious security android had to like them or want to spend any more time with them than it absolutely had to.

All in all I loved this novella and will definitely be trying more of Martha Wells books in the future. The only flaw in this whole story was that it was only a novella rather than a full novel. I wanted more of Murderbot and this fascinating world!

Rating: 5 stars.

Keven Free was nothing special but he did do an acceptable job with the audio.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Boring

I could not even finish the first chapter, I just found it so boring. Just not for me.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent gripping adventure with a convincing non human hero

A murder bot is acting as a security guard to human explorers on a mystery planet. Unknown to them he has hacked his governor and is capable of independent action. Heavily armed he could have become a mass murderer. Instead he risks his own existence to protect them from destruction. First of a series.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Wham Bam thank you Martha!

Although short its a bloody great story, I got it on a two for one deal so it only cost me half a credit.

Its really well narrated and flows well, the characters are well formed for such a short story and the action is at just the right pace, I'll be checking out some of her other stuff for sure.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

A socially awkward Murderbot is endearing.

Not a great SciFi reader but I enjoyed this a lot. The protagonist made story for me. My only complaint is that it felt short and end sort of lackluster bit that just made me want to read the next installment more.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Short

Good story, but it’s like half of a book or less. Not really value for money.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful