Automatic Noodle
A cozy near-future novella about a crew of leftover robots opening their very own noodle shop, from acclaimed sci-fi author Annalee Newitz.
An instant USA Today and indie bestseller!
Indie Next pick | Library Reads pick | Best of the Year at Elle, Gizmodo, Reactor, Library Journal, and more!
You don’t have to eat food to know the way to a city’s heart is through its stomach. So when a group of deactivated robots come back online in an abandoned ghost kitchen, they decide to make their own way doing what they know: making food—the tastiest hand-pulled noodles around—for the humans of San Francisco, who are recovering from a devastating war.
But when their robot-run business starts causing a stir, a targeted wave of one-star reviews threatens to boil over into a crisis. To keep their doors open, they’ll have to call on their customers, their community, and each other—and find a way to survive and thrive in a world that wasn’t built for them.
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Community Reviews
Feeling very meh about this book. Automatic Noodle has some of the classic tropes of "cozy fantasy" -- including found family, descriptions of cooking and crafting that feel like ASMR, and a must-have trip to the local farmer's market. At the same time, this book attempts to reflect on current US political issues through a series of not-so-well-hidden metaphors that I personally found a little too on the nose. If the author wanted to write about a group of queer friends starting their own restaurant in modern-day San Francisco while struggling with trauma and disability... well, that's the book basically, I don't find that having robots and a vague futuristic setting added much to it.
I just think there is not much substance to this short book. It's short, cozy sci-fi, about a group of robots who try to start a noodle house in post war San Francisco. They are physically diverse but I found their characters to be bland and almost indistinguishable. The allegory for marginalized and traumatized folk is obvious and undeveloped.
There is an underlying conflict between robots being given rights but being given minimal rights, but we never learn really anything of the philosophy behind this, legitimate concerns with robots, if any, versus their actual value. the robots are simply portrayed as human beings in different bodies, which ends up making it feel extremely... artificial.
I suppose my issue is more with the "cozy" subgenre. The clankers face little conflict, their restaurant is an immediate success, the central problem is easily overcome. I get low stakes is par for the course but it was just dull to me.
Some of the world building was interesting, a soft-bodied octopus bot designed for rescue, would be nice to explore. but there isn't space in the length as a novella or I expect in the subgenre as a cozy book.
The prose is fine, but feels adolescent, I felt like I was reading a book aimed at 7-year-olds. For example, the food is described with the odd adverb and often the use of the word "perfect" there's no real exploration of the food itself, through imagery or plot. Maybe because the bots can't eat and only one can "taste".
I clearly don't like cozy books and have virtually no interest in reading about food in fiction. not sure why it always just ends up boring the socks off me. I've never understood the obsession some people have with noodles.
But if you do like cozy fiction and noodles, you may love this.
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