Automatic Noodle

Automatic Noodle

by Annalee Newitz
Setting: California
Genres: Science Fiction
Published on August 5, 2025
Pages: 160
Format: eBook Source: Library

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.

I heard Annalee Newitz speak at a book conference in Washington D.C. in 2024. She was talking about the role of propaganda in authoritarian societies. I thought she was interesting and was even more interested when I realized that she wrote both nonfiction and science fiction. Automatic Noodle is the first of her books that I’ve read.

Her expertise in authoritarian regimes shows in this story. The robots wake up after they have been illegally shut down. There was a war when California seceded from the United States. Robots are supposed to have rights in California unlike in America. The fact that they were turned off means that something went terribly wrong.

Interrupt

Wake up processor

Restore memory

Decoding request for service

“Water detected”

Property protection protocol

Queue Command check

Command check timed out

HEEI main start

Relay emergency notification

Emergency

Emergency

Emergency

Staybehind’s body was moving before he woke up, driven by fear and algorithms.

They decide to restart their restaurant but to actually make it good this time. The problem is that although San Francisco is supposed to be robot-friendly, that isn’t actually the case in practice. Humans are still deciding what rights to extend. They can’t really own a business. They do it anyway.

“Independence was only for some people. It felt as though humans had granted bots civil rights for the sole purpose of taking them away again.”

This group of robots needs to decide what community and a life of their own devising is going to look like for them. And it is going to start with the best noodles around.

“Millions had fled the Bay Area after missiles hit Mountain View and Cupertino in ’57, but millions had stayed too. San Francisco’s population was a tenth of what it had been before the war, and those who remained were rebuilding with a desperate love. You could see it everywhere. People filled their violated spaces with sparkling textiles and murals that vibrated with color; they refurbished old machines with agonized tenderness, turning broken glass into shimmering gems to decorate their bicycles and game halls. It was, she supposed, a way of defying death. Necessities helped people survive, but joyful excess gave them life.”

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