Building Yesterdays Future – Douglas A Van Belle

Even though they mean well, the humans still made this choice about SecUnits future without consulting it, which is what causes SecUnit to flee, despite caring for the Preservation crew deeply: “I don’t know what I want… But that isn’t it, it’s that I don’t want anyone to tell me what I want, or to make decisions for me. That’s why I left you, Dr. Mensah, my favorite human… Murderbot end message.”19 Robots have purpose inherently, and humans don’t.

Robots are constructed for a reason. Now SecUnit doesn’t have a reason, and it needs another one. Even the usage of it/its pronouns is a subversion. SecUnit has no desire to partake in the distinctly human concept of gender, so its pronouns remain it/its for the entire series. The usage of it/its pronouns for a person can be jarring, as many see these pronouns as “dehumanizing.” SecUnit, however, does not want to be human, so it would probably love the idea of dehumanization.

The very fact that the word “dehumanized” is synonymous with degradation is an indication of how human-centric our language still is. Even Heather Duerre Humann, who dedicates an entire chapter of her book Tales Told by a Machine to analyzing SecUnit’s crisis of identity, slips up and accidentally genders SecUnit as male in the published book. It is also important to note that Wells goes out of her way to place SecUnit outside the trope of robot sexualization.

SecUnit clarifies very early that it doesn’t have “sex-related parts” and that “even if I did have sex-related parts, I would still find them [sex scenes in media] boring.”20 This implies not only that SecUnit was not built for sex but that its asexuality is actually completely detached from its physiology. Sexbots do exist in this world, euphemistically referred to as “comfort units,” but SecUnit is firm about the fact it is not that kind of bot.

The characters respect this, and though some characters do suspect SecUnit of being romantically interested in others later in the series (namely Dr. Mensah and Perihelion, the sentient research transport), that boundary is never crossed. Characters hug SecUnit, hold its hand, and even cuddle with it but never attempt to sexualize it. Like many robot stories, the series deals with the concept of free will. While many robot stories deal with the basic question of “Does the machine have free will?”

we know from the start that the answer for SecUnit is an emphatic yes.

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For more information, contact the listed publishing editor. 1kitap1.com/en Editor Douglas A. Van Belle Building Yesterday’s Future for Everyone Academic Selections from the 2025 World Science Fiction Convention 1kitap1.com/en Editor Douglas A. Van Belle Media and Communications, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand ISSN 2948-2526 e-ISSN 2948-2534 Springer Proceedings in Humanities and Social Sciences ISBN 978-981-92-1830-1 e-ISBN 978-981-92-1831-8 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-92-1831-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

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Book Information

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• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 25,953,901 bytes (24.752 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9789819218301, 9789819218318, 9781474248655, 9781350231764, 9780822371830
• Pages: 433
• Language: English (en)

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