Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz Review

A cozy near-future novella about a crew of leftover robots opening their very own noodle shop, from acclaimed sci-fi author Annalee Newitz.
 

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 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.

Masquerading under the guise of a cute and innocent story of sentient robots starting a take-out noodle restaurant, Annalee Newitz’s Automatic Noodle is brilliant satirical novella that is full of creative and imaginative metaphors. Part start-up company business story and part reflection on human experiences and rights, Automatic Noodle is a smart scifi themed exploration of many prominent and hyper-relevant social, political, and cultural topics, its charming robots serving as potential proxies for a wide variety of disenfranchised groups in a post war torn San Francisco. A timely book appropriately written for the US, minus certain conservative readers who may take issue with the thematic messages, Automatic Noodle is a unique and quirky story best suited for those that like their scifi stories to have intellect and substance.

Before I get into the book’s creative success, I think it’s important to address a common misconception I see with this book and quite a few past reviews of it. For those interested in reading this book, Automatic Noodle is NOT a cozy scifi story. While the story has an inherent cozy feel to it due to the lack of fast-paced action and an almost whimsical feel to it at times, there’s a lot more to this book; anyone that says this is a simple and cute story of robots making noodles is missing the entire point. The social commentary also is very San Francisco and California-centric which naturally lends itself to more liberal, social, and generally left political reflections. Those that align with more socially conservative politics may find this book off-putting or difficult to read (or in a more optimistic scenario, have an eye-opening experience). Yes, there are sentient robots that are opening a restaurant, but the story isn’t about the restaurant and noodles itself, but what the business represents and why they are doing it in the face of immense obstacles that have real world counterparts. Anyone that doesn’t get it or finds the story unrealistic either isn’t particularly bright or perhaps needs to read the book from a more imaginative standpoint. Also of note, though the robots in the story are fully sentient and have feelings, this book does not cover the topic of AI technology or how they become self-autonomous. While some may find this story flies a bit close to the sun with this increasingly contentious topic, the robots are clearly meant to be a metaphor for challenged groups of humans rather than being literally interpreted as AI-driven robots with complex thoughts and feelings.

Those points aside, for readers that do appreciate creative liberties and social commentary, there’s a lot to like in this book. In Newitz’s version of San Francisco in the near future, the state of California has ceded from the rest of America following a destructive and costly war. Sentient robots previously used in the war have been freed from their original purposes within California and now have a sense of independence with some notable caveats. With proper personalities, memories, albeit digital hard drive-based ones, aspirations, and feelings, these robots suddenly thrust into freedom is presented similarly to the effects of the emancipation proclamation of 1863. Now freed to a certain extent, these robots are now able to seek paid employment, take ownership of themselves (if they aren’t under existing contracts), have increased rights (but only if they are subservient and come second to human rights) and are legally protected from abuse (but only if reported and supported). While technically a story about robots, Automatic Noodle is a metaphor that can work both for those that were previously enslaved and released as well as the immigrant experience. Despite their newfound “freedom”, robots cannot open a bank account, cannot own property (but they can lease and spend hard-earned money for non-permanent ownership), cannot fully run their own businesses, and most importantly cannot vote, even on matters that affect their own independence and well-being. What starts as a simple story about a group of robots taking over a corrupt and infamously mediocre chain restaurant location becomes a scifi reimagining of non-US citizens attempting to navigate a world and society full of systematic failures.

“The HEEI rights laws qualified that freedom, gave it shape and substance, entirely because humans couldn’t steal something that hadn’t yet been measured. And now they could.”

The metaphors and commentary are not limited to just the status and challenges of “aliens” (one’s legal status, not extraterrestrial beings of course), but also go much farther on the state and trajectory of the country. Now California being an independent state, neighboring America is depicted as the worst of all of current political and cultural patriotism taken to the extreme.  While never directly referenced by name, the robophobic San Francisco Vigilance Committee is akin to the xenophobic arm of the MAGA movement with all the discriminatory ideology one would expect. After the fledgling restaurant begins to take off, it is the discrimination against robots that throws both the restaurant and the robots’ freedom into jeopardy. The commentary runs both directions though. One notable example is when a robot Lemon cannot understand or care about why the restaurant greeter and waitress Sweetie would want to run a business whose core purpose caters exclusively to humans and not robots in a “us vs them” mentality. While the political and social commentary has subtle angry undercurrent, a direct reflection of the current political climate in the US, it’s still a measured and thoughtful approach that recognizes that self-preserving and individualistic mentality isn’t appropriate.

The commentary and reflection aren’t simply limited to political topics but also cultural ones or those involving self-identity. One aspect I particularly enjoyed was the discussion around the restaurant’s name “Authentic Noodle”, the chef robot Hands concerned with the name can misrepresent their business as Hands is not of Chinese ethnicity when preparing biang biang noodles, regardless if the technique is faithful. The namesake of the book is also referenced in the back half of the story in way that’s very clever, not to mention memorable. While the ex-miltary robot Staybehind and the greeter/kiosk attendant Sweetie have clearly identified genders and pronouns used, the other two robots Hands and Cayenne are narrated using they/them pronouns. Gender is inherently a human/living concept, and it was interesting to see it represented in a robot-based story as well as hints of what robot intimacy and love can look like (G-rated of course).

While the book is very creative and ambitious from a literary and analytical standpoint, it isn’t without a few rough edges. While I found most of the Newitz’s metaphors to be very impressive and successful, there were a few that felt a bit heavy-handed or unnecessary compared to the others. In an early scene where Sweetie is damaged in the storm and suffers visible physical injuries, her cutting/shaving off half a head of hair for convenience and personal satisfaction felt a bit on the nose and middling compared to a later scene where she discards her other human-looking modifications in favor of a more robotic looking exterior which is a more substantial moment and form of self-expression. A select few comments about American absurdity and xenophobia, while justified given the current political landscape, also started to feel less inspired and more preachy. This is an odd point considering this book is inherently very liberal to begin with, so it ends up preaching to the crowd that already knows the issues at hand.

While the thematic content and metaphors are excellent and creative, the narrative story is also a bit sparse, the bulk of it taking place in the last third of the book. While I found the restaurant’s growth and focal review bomb interesting, I wanted a bit more from the ending that was optimistically hopeful and cute but a little lacking. The investigation and solution to the mysterious review also felt rushed and abbreviated to keep the novella length appropriate. There was a good amount of character development around Staybehind’s memories and grief from the war and Hands’s disappointment following robophobic remarks, but the other two robots and token human Robles didn’t get as much development despite having strong introductions, and the overall restaurant narrative just kind of ends on a quiet note. Given the book’s novella format, the amount of story and exploration presented is quite good and well-paced, but I got a distinctive feeling that this book was perhaps one where they had a lot of great loose concepts but wasn’t sure how to them all work from a story standpoint.

Creatively charged and imaginative, Automatic Noodle is a fascinating read that tackles many highly relevant and current topics through a unique and quirky presentation. While perhaps an odd match on paper, its cute story about a found family of robots starting a noodle restaurant nicely balances the book’s more hard-hitting content, the result being an interesting and quick read perfect for those that appreciate intellectual flavoring with their scifi books. It isn’t perfect and is ill-suited for those looking for the cozy and simple story advertised in its synopsis, but it’s a wonderful and thought-provoking book that packs a ton of discussion within a novella length format. It’s definitely worth picking up for those in the mood for something a little different or memorable.