And so that’s what Fugitive Telemetry’s about.

Martha: – get a murder, you know, an actual kind of classic murder mystery, they don’t know very much about how to handle it, and so, and Murderbot has to come in and help them, and they don’t like that, and Murderbot doesn’t particularly like it either. Preservation doesn’t have a ton of crime anyway, and especially not on the station, and so the station security is mostly kind of a safety patrol doing, like, cargo rules enforcement and environmental enforcement and that kind of thing, so when they – I ended up with Murderbot basically ending up helping solve a murder mystery…. Martha: – and it works pretty closely with station security to do that, and I kind of realized I need to show how that relationship built up, and so that’s what, what kind of generated Fugitive Telemetry…. There’s conflict basically with station security kind of being, like, horrified that there’s this, you know, living murder machine – – now on their station, and the reason I wrote it, actually, is there’s a, a bit in Network Effect – not to be too spoiler-y – where Murderbot prevents, it’s basically a flashback of Murderbot preventing an assassination attempt on Dr. Martha: But it’s set on Preservation Station, not long after Murderbot has arrived with Mensah and everybody for the first time, and it’s kind of basically Murderbot getting used to Preservation and Preservation getting used to Murderbot. During that interview, Wells explained that Fugitive Telemetry takes place after Exit Strategy but before Network Effect, and fills in some of the space between those two stories: In October 2020, I got to speak to Martha Wells about Murderbot (my inner 13 year was NOT cool). And now everyone gets brand new Murderbot to read! I was in the midst of yet another re-read of the series, and having a brand-new Murderbot story was a delight. I definitely cannot adequately transcribe the noise I made when I received an ARC of Fugitive Telemetry, the newest in the Murderbot Diaries. I have barely ever mentioned the Murderbot series in the past year, so it may have escaped your notice.

Fugitive telemetry martha wells