Automatic Noodle

I'm not normally much of a cozy fiction reader, but this was lovely: smart, funny, and pointed in highly relevant ways. The story is a simple, warm hug in so many ways, but there's a lot going on underneath to inform the world that Newitz builds; a very dark, involved tale sits just out of frame. Beautifully done as always.

The shtick: intelligent robots traumatized by war, capitalism, and oppression struggle together to establish a noodle shop in war-torn, separatist San Francisco.

Other than thinking robots and tube delivery technology, the worldbuilding is a fever dream of the current moment despite being set in 2064: it's got crypto, LLMs, delivery apps, ghost kitchens, slang like "rizz". But it's unfair to take this aspect too seriously; it's not a hard sf novel trying to speculate about the future. At its heart, it's a comfy emotional novel about forming community around food in a ruined future.

It's fluffy, it's fun, it was something I needed right now.