Murderbot Fanfiction
Martha Wells's novella series about a self-hacked security android that would rather watch serials than deal with humans, and keeps saving them anyway. The fandom honors Murderbot's canonical asexuality and touch-aversion, making this a rare archive centered on platonic intimacy: fic about ART, the colossally smug research transport, and Murderbot's prickly bond with the Preservation humans vastly outnumbers romance. Mission casefic in Wells's dry first-person voice and 'Murderbot is reluctantly cared for' comfort fic are the signature genres.
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What is Murderbot fanfiction?
Murderbot fanfiction is fan-created stories set in the The Murderbot Diaries universe. With over 4,000 works on Archive of Our Own, Murderbot is one of the most popular fandoms in the fanfiction community.
These stories explore beloved characters like Murderbot, ART, Dr. Mensah, Dr. Gurathin, and many more. Writers create everything from short one-shots to epic novel-length adventures, exploring relationships, alternate universes, and "what if" scenarios.
Most Popular Murderbot Fanfics
These are the highest-rated Murderbot stories on AO3, ranked by kudos from readers.
Starlet Extraction
by beloved000
A rising star on the entertainment feed is taken hostage to fend off a corporation's hostile takeover. She is rescued by a strange SecUnit and its friend(?), a bot-driven transport. When asked why they are going so far to help her, they respond, "You need to survive to film the next season of World
It’s Panto Time!
by Rosewind2007
Discussing something else altogether in the New Tideland Discord (how chimpanzee ‘smiles’ are fear or threat displays) led to a discussion of how if we growled or hissed at people who annoy us it’d be a satisfyingly clear form of communication… Which obviously led to me deciding SecUnit would love t
They're Somewhere Around Here
by Raberba girl (Raberba_girl)
AU where the All Systems Red survey goes off without a hitch, it's only afterward that things start going wrong.Stranded on a station, PresAux are attacked and then hire their rescuer to escort them home. Security Consultant Eden is amazingly competent, but also awkward and extremely shy. Is it too
The Butterfly Effect
by MephistophelesBlue
Warning! Heavy Platform Decay spoilers! Three exercises free will in a big way, and there are consequences that could impact the entire Corporate Rim. Seth and the crew need to make decisions that could impact multiple polities.
The ART of Courtship
by Anonymous
I have been compromised. If you think that means that I am performing at suboptimal capacity, then you are wrong. However, a small 0.002 % of my computational power has recently been directed towards processes you could say are not exactly productive. This anomaly is not due to malware. It is also n
show me how's the way to be
by brahe
I don’t know how to explain this to her, SecUnit tells me, and dumps a massive metadata file at me. I’m not sure what it expects me to do to help until I open the file. It’s comprised entirely of tagged interactions between SecUnit and Dr. Mensah. This log is deeply personal, and I take great care w
A We Problem
by MrCelleOshkosh
Set immediately after Platform Decay. Perihelion is angry at Three and Three doesn't know how to deal with that. It just wants to be part of a team again, but doesn't know how to go about that. This story will be about Three's trauma and how it heals and finds a family again.
Princess Party Etiquette
by Arten
Murderbot gets roped into a princess tea party with Sofi and does not entirely hate it.
Spark
by mimsical
MB's life is pretty stable. It works for campus security, makes friends with the university faculty, and tries to be a functional adult. What it might do in its private life is its own business. Then ART decides to make that its business, too. Neither of them expect how much they'll matter to each o
Pretty protocol
by Mango_Mush
Kaila and M.B meet miki! One makes a friend and the other gets mildly irritated about that.
Passkey Login Bypass
by bluebellescent
It was 1.0 that had told me, while teaching me to hack, that one of the easiest ways into a system was faking having passkeys and permissions even if you didn’t. “It’s a lock with one key,” it had said. “So just pretend you have the damn key.” The concept was sound, so I used it.
if i hit a squall
by asphodellic
We finish ART's cargo run. We somehow get roped into stopping a robbery at a food kiosk on the station, and I save the image of Three's tiny smile when the owner thanks it to permanent memory. For…security reasons. And then the humans come back, and everything goes to shit.
Once Bitten...
by MrFarty
A SecUnit is bitten by a apparently drug-addled human. It subdues its attacker, but then its own behaviour starts to change ‐ in disturbing ways.
sight of the sun
by CellBlock1138
ART has something to give SecUnit. There's just one problem.
Proportional Response Module
by pacphys
While poking about in ART's modules, Murderbot discovers that ART actually does have a module on Proportional Response! Or... perhaps more accurately, it did have a module on Proportional Response.
Recursive Systems
by genderhexed
I’d locked eyes with Mensah, looking like that. My energy weapons had deployed, without my awareness or direction. My targeting systems had identified her and Bharadwaj, quite insistently, as direct and immediate threats. Maybe this is just a temporary, dangerous, system glitch, and a hard restart w
Hostage: Caught, Disarmed, Broken, Held
by ESE (SecurityUnit)
Alternate Universe where Mensah and SecUnit are caught by the Combat SecUnit in Exit Strategy.
SECURITY
by ESE (SecurityUnit)
(An illustrated fight club human trafficking AU)
Reassembly
by mailbox_20
"You're being reassigned" I stood there, staring at Seth like he had just shot me. Reassigned? Maybe I didn't understand what that meant in this context. I queried a definition and nope. I got it. Can they do that? *** SecUnit is reassigned to another ship for a supposedly low risk mission. ART ha
Display Model
by Brushtail
When you are the secunit assigned to a construct supply store, your life is safe but boring. Until someone hands you a file that is.
Murderbot Fanfics by Length
Pick a reading commitment — from one-sitting one-shots to 100k+ epics:
Popular Murderbot Ships
Murderbot/ART
Murderbot/ART (The Murderbot Diaries)
A rogue SecUnit that hates feelings and a sarcastic research transport with delusions of parenthood form the central relationship of Martha Wells' series. Fandom argues joyfully about whether their bickering co-dependence counts as romance, marriage, or something with no human name.
1,800 works →
Gurathin/Murderbot
Gurathin/Murderbot
The augmented human who distrusted Murderbot hardest becomes the one who digs up its name and defends it, a prickly arc the TV adaptation amplified into a fandom surge. Fic thrives on their matched social awkwardness and grudging mutual protection.
700 works →
Common Murderbot Tropes
Popular Characters
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Murderbot fanfics are on AO3?
There are over 4,000 Murderbot fanfiction works on Archive of Our Own, making it one of the platform's largest fandoms.
What are the best Murderbot ships?
Popular Murderbot pairings include Murderbot/ART, Gurathin/Murderbot. Each ship has thousands of dedicated stories exploring their relationship.
How can I read Murderbot fanfiction on my phone?
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