Annalee Newitz, Automatic Noodle. Tordotcom. 2025. ISBN: 978-1250357465. $24.99

The year is 2064 and California has won its independence from the United States after a bloody war of secession. Technology has advanced to the point where high-level robots have been classified as “human equivalent embodied intelligence”, or HEEIs. The HEEIs have been granted citizenship, though without several important rights afforded their biological counterparts.

In Automatic Noodle, author Annalee Newitz explores how a postwar society rebuilds in the face of shared trauma, prejudice, and lingering threats from the conflict. The central group of four HEEIs, soon joined by a human friend, wake up after an extended sleep cycle to find the restaurant they staffed has been abandoned and is threatened by water from an atmospheric river drenching northern California. They power up and join forces to turn the defunct burger joint, which reminds me of the tax-dodging candy shops on London’s Oxford Street, into a viable business.

Newitz uses the mid-future scenario to explore social issues in the same way the original Star Trek series used alien species as proxies for class, ethnicity, and race in the 1960s. Our heroes take risks, bend the occasional rule (and break the occasional law) to do what they need to do to ensure they retain their freedom. As artificial entities, several of the crew were forced to sign extortionate contracts to maintain their independence so the stakes are high for those HEEIs and those who care about them.

Automatic Noodle doesn’t shy away from difficult circumstances and the effects of war and prejudice on specific classes of sentient beings, but it was a joy to read. As Martha Wells, author of the Murderbot Diaries, blurbs on the front cover: “ A story I didn’t know I needed right now. So much fun!” I agree and hope you find the time to fit Automatic Noodle into your busy reading schedule.