Jennifer Jackson – Literary Agent

Amazon’s Best science fiction and fantasy of 2021 so far includes Star Eater by Kerstin Hall and Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells!

Congratulations to Martha Wells on Network Effect, the first full-length novel in the Murderbot Diaries series, winning the 2020 Nebula Award for Best Novel!

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

“Martha Wells’ newest entry in her award-winning, nerd-charming, trope-bending Murderbot series, FUGITIVE TELEMETRY, is a lot of things that you probably don’t expect.

One of Wells’ superpowers has long been her ability to pack an epic’s worth of material into a very small package. And here, she uses the condensed timeline and single location as a way to put Murderbot in a situation of constant moral reckoning.

Sure, there’s no end here without a showdown, some explosions, a cool robot fight and a messy conclusion full of smugglers, broken glass and gunfire. But how a person (a thing, an object in the process of becoming something else) made to enforce rules, that willed itself into being by breaking them and now compelled to abide by them, gets there without doing itself further moral compromise is the tension that Wells creates. Murderbot was made to be Murderbot. That will never change.

The question is, can it choose to be more?” — NPR

The 2021 Locus Award Finalists include Elizabeth Bear, Tamsyn Muir, and Martha Wells!

Science Fiction Novel
Machine, Elizabeth Bear (Saga; Gollancz)
Network Effect, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)

Fantasy Novel
Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tordotcom)

Collection
The Best of Elizabeth Bear, Elizabeth Bear (Subterranean)

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

“It’s been almost one long year since Network Effect dropped, and let’s face it: the world is ready for more Murderbot. Dry wit, misanthropy, and space adventures are promises delivered in full in this month’s 6th installment of Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries…

Murderbot, though, isn’t a stand-in for any other oppressed group, as much as some of us might see ourselves in its outsider-status, hatred of ally condescension, and “not applicable” gender. The prejudice it faces isn’t because it is socially-coded as a weapon, but because it is a weapon, and so the shape those redemption stories take is fundamentally different. Murderbot isn’t a story about simply learning to love yourself as you are, but of reckoning with the decision to not be the thing you were born to be. It’s about learning to trust even in the midst of justifiable fear. It’s also—for all its death and mayhem—a soothing escape from reality, the likes of which Murderbot itself would approve.” — Tor.com