It’s not often that an author creates a character so unique, compelling, and fan-beloved that it spawns an award-winning, best-selling book series—and a critically acclaimed TV show, to boot. Sci-fi and fantasy writer Martha Wells has achieved that with her Murderbot Diaries. While there’s no doubt temptation to keep following disgruntled security unit Murderbot, who was first introduced in the 2017 novella All Systems Red, on misadventures around the corporation-controlled galaxy, it sounds like Wells has started envisioning a finale for the series.
There are seven novels and novellas in the Murderbot Diaries series to date (plus several short stories set within the same universe); the eighth installment, Platform Decay, arrives in May. But book number nine, Wells told Polygon in a new interview, might be Murderbot’s last chapter.
“I only have one Murderbot book on contract right now,” Wells said. “It’ll probably be the end of the year, at least, before I start the next Murderbot. I’ve got some vague ideas for it, but I’m not really sure what it’s going to be yet. And that may be the last book.”
In Platform Decay, she told Polygon, Murderbot is in “a really good place.” So it might also be a good place for the author to start winding down the self-aware AI robot’s story, as much as that’s possible.
“It’s never going to be the kind of series where you’re going to get to the end and everything’s going to be solved and fixed,” Wells explained. “It’s not a story where [the protagonists] can just kill one villain and things will get better. In this corporate hellscape, there’s always going to be someone to take their place.”
Just because the Murderbot Diaries might end doesn’t mean Wells is going anywhere. In addition to season two (and hopefully more) of Apple TV’s Murderbot series, which is directly adapted from her books, the author also has several other irons in the fire. At present, she told Polygon, she’s working on the third book in her award-winning fantasy series that kicked off with Witch King in 2023 and was followed by Queen Demon in 2025.
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