Necessities helped people survive, but joyful excess gave them life.
page 90
Table of Contents
Why Automatic Noodle?
I first saw Automatic Noodle on Kobo’s picks for the best fantasy, sci-fi, and horror books of 2025 list. The premise for this novella seemed interesting enough at the time that I put it in my TBR (to-be-read) pile and also put in a hold for it in the Toronto Public Library system. There was and is a large number of holds on this book relative to the amount of copies available (13) so it took be until February 2026 to get my hands on the book.
This is my first time reading anything by Annalee Newitz though she is an author I have been aware for a number of years now. All I knew about this book is what was in the description of the book on the Kobo ebook store and on the Storygraph page which is – cozy science fiction novella involving robots.
Let’s get into it.
The Book
I think right about now is a perfect time for a book like this. When the world outside is dripping with cruelty and injustice it is comforting to read a book like Automatic Noodle, a story about a group of HEEI (human equivalent embodied intelligence) robots getting together to start a noodle restaurant. Cozy science fiction is a genre that is more intriguing to me right now than cozy fantasy ever was.
I’ll start with the good. This book is set in near future San Francisco (2074), in a world where California has seceded from the United States of America and become its own nation. The book presents a world in the middle of rebuilding life in the aftermath of a war. The world feel familiar, Annalee Newitz sprinkles in aspects of contemporary life – cryptocurrency, the vagaries of Doordash-like services, internet trolls and conspiracy theories. I liked the world on display here.
The science fiction aspect is primarily explored through the presence of sentient robots, which the contemporary AI bros would refer to as artificial general intelligence. These robots were recently granted limited rights under the new Californian constitution. For example – they aren’t allowed to open bank accounts or own a business. But they can choose an employer. I think this is supposed to be some of commentary on sentience and civil rights but it was never fully formed enough to resemble anything coherent.
The cast of characters includes four robots (Staybehind, Sweetie, Hands, Cayenne) and one human (Robles) – they are an eclectic bunch. All the robots get significant backstories in the form of memory recall chapters where the book describes a significant event in the character’s life and why they are the way they are and how they got here. The human gets a lot less character development and is therefore less interesting as a character but the robots more than make up for this flaw.
Speaking of flaws, Automatic Noodle has one of the rarer flaws I encounter in my reading. The book is a little too short for its own good. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that large chunks of the book’s page count are used up for character backstories which do not move the plot forward. This in itself would not be a problem in a 300+ page book but in a book that is 163 pages it becomes the source of bad pacing. It felt like the actual plot of the book didn’t get enough time to breathe.
In addition to the pacing issues, I think it is a shame that we don’t get a deeper and longer exploration of the very intriguing world that Annalee Newitz has created in this book. I really wanted to spend just a little more time in this post-independence California, and to get a sense for the politics of the world and the people who inhabit it, both robot and human. Unfortunately, that just did not happen with this.
All of this leads to a tertiary issue which was that the themes of this book were very surface level and underdeveloped. Automatic Noodle tries to tackle a whole host of themes – sentience, gig work, PTSD, cryptocurrencies & informal economies. I don’t think any of these get enough time in the sun to fully bake into anything. It felt more like the author used these themes more as set dressing than anything else.
Concluding Thoughts
Automatic Noodle was fine. I don’t think it was worth the several months I waited to get my hands on a copy but putting that aside, I think this does what it advertises which is a cozy science-fiction story. However, I was disappointed when I did get an interesting world with a shallow exploration of its themes. Frustrating and unsatisfying.
I don’t regret reading this and I am open to more suggestions for books in the cozy science-fiction sub-genre. Especially if they are a little longer.
That’s all from me. See y’all in the next one.
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