Martha Wells

Martha Wells is an American science fiction and fantasy author whose Murderbot Diaries has become one of the genre's most acclaimed recent series, following a self-hacked security android -- who privately calls itself Murderbot -- as it tries to watch its favorite soap operas in peace while reluctantly getting drawn into protecting the humans it's contracted to guard. Beginning with the novella All Systems Red in 2017, the series has won a remarkable run of Hugo and Nebula Awards, prized for its dry first-person voice and its unusually thoughtful handling of autonomy, anxiety, and found family through a nonhuman narrator.

Before Murderbot's breakout success, Wells had already built a long career writing epic fantasy, including the Books of the Raksura series and the standalone novel The Death of the Necromancer, as well as media tie-in novels for Star Wars and Stargate: Atlantis. Murderbot brought her a much wider readership relatively late in a career that had already earned deep respect within genre fiction circles.

A new reader should start with All Systems Red, the short, self-contained novella that launches the series and remains its most-recommended entry point. The Murderbot Diaries was adapted into a television series for Apple TV+, premiering in 2025 with Alexander Skarsgard in the title role.