Martha Wells
b. 1964 · American speculative fiction novelist
Martha Wells (born 1964 in Fort Worth, Texas) is an American writer of speculative fiction, best known for her science fiction series The Murderbot Diaries and for her fantasy books. She earned a degree in anthropology at Texas A&M University, where she also became involved in the campus science fiction and fantasy community. Her training in anthropology shows in the care she takes in building societies that feel realistic and internally consistent.
Her first published novel, The Element of Fire, appeared in 1993 and opened the Ile-Rien setting, which she returned to with The Death of the Necromancer and the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy. She then wrote the stand-alone novel City of Bones and The Books of the Raksura, a series of five novels and two story collections. She has also written young adult novels, including the Emilie books, and licensed tie-ins for Stargate and Star Wars.
Her most widely read work began in 2017 with All Systems Red, a novella about a security android sent to protect a team of scientists. The series won Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards, and in 2021 Network Effect earned her another Hugo for best novel. Wells has also spoken publicly about the erasure of women and marginalized creators from the history of science fiction and fantasy, the theme of her World Fantasy Convention speech “Unbury the Future” in 2017.
Key works
- The Element of Fire (1993): the first Ile-Rien novel, a fantasy about magic and politics in a fictional country.
- City of Bones (1995): a stand-alone fantasy that received strong reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews.
- The Cloud Roads (2011): the first of The Books of the Raksura, about a society of winged beings and their relationships.
- All Systems Red (2017): the first novella of The Murderbot Diaries, a science fiction story narrated by a security android.
- Witch King (2023): a fantasy novel that opens The Rising World series.
Curiosities
A grumpy robot
The Murderbot Diaries takes its title from the nickname of its protagonist, a security android who calls himself Murderbot. The series won Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards in the novella category.
A speech about forgotten creators
In 2017 Wells served as toastmaster of the World Fantasy Convention, where she gave a speech called “Unbury the Future” about marginalized creators and the deliberate suppression of their existence.
Original Filopedia text based on Wikipedia (es) and Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.