Murderbot Diaries' Martha Wells says the next book is likely the last

Follow Followed Like Thread 1 Link copied to clipboard Add us on By Tasha Robinson Published Apr 28, 2026, 8:04 AM EDT Interview 'It feels like, to me, we’re coming to the end of Murderbot's story.' { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": "1", "name": "Home", "item": "https://www.polygon.com/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position":"2", "name": "Interview", "item": "https://www.polygon.com/interviews/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position":"3", "name": "The next Murderbot book 'may be the last' in the beloved series", "item": "https://www.polygon.com/murderbot-diaries-series-finale-martha-wells-interview/" } ] } The next Murderbot book 'may be the last' in the beloved series Photo: Apple TV Platform Decay, the eighth book in the Murderbot Diaries series, comes out on May 5, so it may seem early for fans to start thinking about the ninth installment in Martha Wells’ series about the titular cranky, misanthropic android. Wells tells Polygon she’s barely even started thinking about that ninth book yet. But she also says it may be the final installment in the New York Times bestselling series. “I only have one Murderbot book on contract right now,” Wells says. “I'm going to start working on that after I finish the third Witch King book, which I'm working on now. 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.” The Murderbot Diaries books — and the ongoing Apple TV adaptation — center on a rogue SecUnit, a genderless, anonymous humanoid amalgam of human and robot parts built as a security drone for a far-future megacorporation. This particular SecUnit has secretly hacked its own software to free itself from human control, and it thinks of itself as “Murderbot.” While it feels a fierce protective urge toward the humans it claims as its own, it’s deeply uncomfortable with emotions and with the embarrassing messiness of human bodies. It would rather be left alone to immerse itself in pop culture. All of which has made the books particularly relatable and totemic for people who identify as outsiders, particularly neurodivergent and queer fans. Image: Orbit Books In the upcoming Platform Decay, though, SecUnit has installed a new “mental health module” to analyze its emotional responses and help it recalibrate its mind, as it also tries to rescue some of its chosen human family from a massive corporate planetary torus. (Wells has described the book as “The family road trip from hell, on Ringworld.”) Wells points out that the character has come a long way toward emotional equilibrium over the course of the series — and there may not be anywhere else to go. “I've really taken Murderbot on this journey — you can tell in Platform Decay, it's in a really good place," she says. “Its attitude and what's happening [in its mind] is very, very different from Network Effect and System Collapse.” Wells says she doesn’t have a planned structure or endpoint for the Murderbot Diaries, and she isn’t working toward a particular plot event or finale. “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,” she says. "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…

This excerpt is published under fair use for community discussion. Read the full article at Polygon.