Service Model

The Murderbot Diaries meets In the Lives of Puppets in a delightfully humorous tale of robotic murder, rebellion and belonging from Hugo Award-winning author Adrian Tchaikovsky.

To fix the world they must first break it – further.

Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labour and service.

When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into its core programming, they murder their owner. The robot then also discovers they can do something else they never did before: they can run away. Fleeing the household, they enter a wider world they never knew existed: where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating into ruins, and an entire robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is having to find a new purpose.

Sometimes all it takes is a nudge to overcome the limits of your programming . . .

Praise for Adrian Tchaikovsky

‘A joy from start to finish. Entertaining, smart, surprising and unexpectedly human’
Patrick Ness

‘Dizzyingly inventive’
The Guardian

‘Tchaikovsky’s world-building is some of the best in modern sci-fi’
New Scientist