Automatic Noodle - Annalee Newitz - ★★.¾

AUTHOR: Annalee Newitz

GENRE: Dystopian Fantasy

PUBLICATION DATE: August 5, 2025

RATING: 2.75 stars.

In a Nutshell: A sci-fi dystopian novella set in the near future. Quirky robot characters. A whimsical storyline that is dark and cosy in turn. Goes overboard on the preachy themes and agenda. Lopsided in its allegory. Contains a subtle equivalence between robots and immigrants/enslaved people – weird. Suspension of disbelief and doubts necessary to enjoy the book better.

Plot Preview:

2064. San Francisco, Independent California. A group of food service robots find themselves abandoned in a ghost kitchen. With no human around and with a desperate need to keep things going, they decide to take over their delivery app account, rebrand their food service, and serve the best authentic hand-pulled noodles in town. Just when it seems like they will be successful in their endeavour, someone starts review-bombing them, and worse, not all the one-star reviews are exactly false. Can the robots save their future before everything they worked so hard for is destroyed by some mysterious reviewer?

The story comes to us from the third-person perspective of the robots.

Bookish Yays:

🍜 The creativity of the concept. Yes, the execution is a bit flawed, but the idea still deserves credit for thinking beyond the box.

🍜 The setting of independent California that has won a war against the big nation it belonged to erstwhile. This might be a bit too political for certain readers, and the barbs are really intense at times, but as I have no personal connection with the location, I found the whole thing absurdly comical.

🍜 The robot characters. Given that this is a cozy SciFi, the key robot characters are obviously endearing. I couldn’t decide who’s my favourite, but I guess Sweety earned a special spot in my heart. StayBehind, Cayenne and Hands were also amazing.

🍜 The teamwork and bonding across the robots. Very interesting to see robots using their tech contacts to resolve real-world issues.

🍜 The pacing. At just 160-odd pages, this is a quick novella. And the quirky storyline and easy-going writing makes the pages zoom by even faster.

🍜 The title. Has a special role to play in the plot and suits it perfectly.

Bookish Okays:

🤖 The wavering level of coziness. Though promised as a cozy novella, the plot has several dark themes. The book does have fun but it is not always fun.

🤖 The foodie stuff. I loved learning about biang biang noodles (I’d never heard of these in my life!). However, the idea of hand-made noodles being made by robotic hands was a bit depressing to me, especially given what’s happening in the real world.

🤖 The multitude of themes in the book: PTSD, mental health issues, found family, relationships, politics, survival, independence, experiences of immigrant and enslaved persons, grief, war… None of the topics is overt or aggressive, just hinted subtly. It is a reflective experience, but might not click with those looking to avoid politics or hot topics.

Bookish Nays:

💸 The allegory. No matter how the book tries to convince us of this, the experiences of enslaved people and immigrants can never be the same as that of robots. Humanising robots is one thing, but equating immigrant experience with that of humanoids? Nope, goes too far.

💸 The whole review-bombing subplot. Starts okay, but is quite farfetched, and the end resolution is too easy. We also keep hearing of the restaurant breaking several rules, but this angle is not explored further.

💸 The whole “authentic Chinese noodle” thingy. How come cultural appropriation doesn’t apply when robots are involved?

💸 The depiction of gender diversity in the robots, with them knowing their exact gender and even their pronoun preferences. Can we please stop forcing this theme on non-human characters? Not every book needs to have commentary on gender! Let’s reserve this much-needed inclusivity for stories where the topic comes up naturally. Applying it to robots is almost a mockery.

💸 The emotional sentience of the robots, which also includes romance – absolutely not something I would expect to find in a near-future dystopia featuring robots. Thankfully, the romance is limited to a flashback scene, but even that tiny scene weirded me out. In a world where AI is getting more and more intrusive by the day, I don’t want to read a book showing robots being called “as good as humans” and having emotional feelings. Also, why are we forcing in a romance subplot in every single storyline?

🎧 The Audiobook Experience:

The audiobook, clocking at 4 hrs 13 min, is narrated by Em Grosland. They do a masterful job of rendering all the voices in a non-robotic manner. If you are interested in the book, the audiobook is a great choice.

Overall, I did like some things about this cozy sci-fi novella. But by shoving in too much social commentary and humanising the robots more than necessary, it didn’t allow me to enjoy the content more. Maybe this would have worked better for me even a couple of years ago when AI wasn’t so ubiquitous. But in today’s day and age, seeing the plot upvote sentient robots and even justifying them as ‘human’ because they think is more annoying.

Recommended to readers looking for an unusual story and who can suspend disbelief easily, and can be more forgiving of the whole ‘robots have the same rights as humans’ idea. I have no idea if this was meant to be a satirical work, but perhaps it works better if you think of it as such.