and parents back to the station. It becomes apparent that the bounty hunters who collected them are going to jettison the module into space and kill the remaining refugees, so Murderbot forces its way into their ship, disarms the bounty hunters, and allows station security to collect the remaining refugees safely. It is concerned that the bounty hunters have another SecUnit, which turns out to be a human in configured SecUnit armor. Once it returns to Preservation, and is almost crushed by a Port Authority crane, Murderbot figures out who has been seamlessly hacking the Security System. Murderbot returns to the Port Authority offices, evacuates the humans, and goes after the murderer: Balin the Port Authority Bot, whose exterior conceals a CombatBot controlled by the owners of BreharWallHan. This CombatBot fights with Murderbot until they fall into the central transit ring of the station, where Murderbot finds a small army of non-conflict bots from Preservation Station there as backup (including the bot from the hostel and a Port Authority bot who helped search for refugees). Knowing that it cannot defeat a SecUnit and a horde of non-lethal-but-unified bots, the CombatBot-that-was-Balin powers down. The mystery solved, Senior Indah offers to pay Murderbot for its services, and offers it future consulting work. It agrees, finding that it doesn't dread the task, but only "if it's really weird." Reception Publishers Weekly wrote that Wells "gives depth to a rousing but basically familiar action plot by turning it into the vehicle by which SecUnit engages with its own rigorously denied humanity". The Verge likewise felt All Systems Red to be a "pretty basic story", but nonetheless "fun", and lauded Wells's worldbuilding. James Nicoll observed that the plot relies on "opportunistic corporate malevolence", and noted that only Murderbot's personality prevented the setting from being "unrelentingly grim". All Systems Red won the 2018 Nebula Award for Best Novella, the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Novella, and the American Library Association's Alex Award, and was nominated for the 2017 Philip K. Dick Award. The three following novellas had enough votes for the 2019 Hugo Award final ballot but Wells declined all nominations except for Artificial Condition, which won. Network Effect won the 2021 Nebula Award for Best Novel, the 2021 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and the 2021 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. The Murderbot Diaries won the 2021 Hugo Award for Best Series. Adaptations