Annalee Newitz’s writing in Automatic Noodle is as fun as the cover. The story is about a set of robot friends who run a fast-food joint and are trying to work off their contracts. These robots were deactivated after the California-US war, and they find themselves in various states of “free”. Some have higher debts and worse contracts than others. But what they all share is a passion for making delicious food, which is not what the current owners of the joint care about, but those owners have renegade on their lease and are awol.
One of the bots speaks to a block-chain bot and gets the lease put into a new name. The bots have set up a shell company to hide the fact that they are now in charge because although the war brought them their “freedom”, they are still indebted and not allowed to own businesses.
This fun sci-fi novella is a nod to San Francisco, noodles, the imperfections of capitalism, and the continued algorithmic madness guiding human (and robot) lives. If you’re looking for a bot-friendly read sprinkled with some heavier philosophical moments, then this is a great next pick. It’s lighter and shorter than Klara and the Sun by Kazou Ishiguro but has some of that reckoning about robot and human relationships. And it has some of the post-war collapse yet optimism of Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel.