08/05/2025
Annalee Newitz is a science journalist who also writes science fiction. They are the author of several bestselling books, including The Terraformers, which was nominated for the Nebula Award, and Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age. They have a monthly column in New Scientist magazine, and are the co-host of the Hugo-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. Their latest book, Automatic Noodle, is out now, and we were delighted they agreed to be interviewed about it by writer Kat Howard.
Kat Howard: While Automatic Noodle is a delightful novella about robots who make human food, the fact is that robots do not need human food. What made you decide to write a story that addressed the idea of a group of characters embracing and becoming deeply skilled at something that offered its greatest appeal to others?
Annalee Newitz: Part of what I wanted to play with in this book was the question of what it actually means to enjoy food. You might think that the robots are making something that is only for humans, but we know that they're getting all kinds of pleasure out of it. For example, the robot Cayenne is able to taste with their arms, and they get so much satisfaction out of creating flavors that are pleasing. Meanwhile the robot Hands views the noodles as a form of art. Hands is making the noodles, and spends a tremendous amount of time working on getting the dough in the perfect shape, and perfecting their technique of pulling the noodles. So this is something that the robots are doing for themselves, partly to make enough money to survive, but mostly because there's pleasure in creating something beautiful that other people will enjoy.
All of that being said, I also wanted to think about the idea of art as a kind of sacrifice. You make something that pleases you, but ultimately that art goes out into the world, and it's consumed (hopefully) by some number of people. Once it's out in the world, though, it's not yours anymore. For me the joy of making art is really in sharing it. And that's what the robots are doing in their restaurant. They're sharing. They’re making a space where people can appreciate something that goes beyond daily drudgery and gives them a feeling of hope.
KH: One thing I really liked about this book was the linking of food and memory—I’m thinking in particular of one of my favorite scenes, where Cayenne meets Hands. What is a really good food memory for you?
AN: I have so many strong food memories. There are meals that I had years ago that I still think about, and restaurants that have closed that I still miss. I think part of it is because when you go to a restaurant, oftentimes it's with friends or with good company. So you remember the meal, and you remember the conversation. Or if you go to a restaurant by yourself, which I like to do, then you remember whatever book it was that you were reading while eating.
I think one of my best food memories is from a restaurant that was near my house when I was living in Boston over 20 years ago. It was a hole in the wall Italian place, and they made shrimp fra diavolo, with linguine in pomodoro sauce that had sliced jalapenos and fresh basil in it. Plus, perfectly tender shrimp from the skillet. They would always serve it with a couple of complimentary slices of delicious garlic bread. And the portions were huge, which was just right. I think about that pasta all the time. I wish that restaurant were still around.
KH: Do you like to cook yourself? Is there a dish, like the biang biang noodles in the novella, that you have challenged yourself to perfect?
AN: I do enjoy cooking when I have time, and I have tried to recreate that shrimp fra diavolo that I mentioned above. I've done a pretty good job, but cooking for yourself is never quite the same glowing feeling of having someone else cook for you. I think the dish that I've worked the hardest to perfect is mapo tofu. I did a show one time with Kenji Lopez-Alt, who actually showed us how to make mapo tofu live on stage. He told an amazing story about searching all over China for the perfect recipe, and did his usual science nerd chef routine where he broke everything down and analyzed all the ingredients. That was great, but what was really great was that he gave me the leftover mapo tofu after the show. It was delicious. So I tracked down his recipe, and mastered it after a couple of tries. The best part is that I was able to substitute vegetable broth for the chicken broth, and beef crumbles for beef. And it tastes just the same. You would never know it was vegetarian—the texture is perfect. Mapo tofu is one of my favorite dishes, so it's really nice to be able to make it for special occasions.
KH: Automatic Noodle struck me as not only a love letter to food but to San Francisco. Can you tell us a little about the uniquely SF elements here? Or perhaps about the decision to use Nortons as currency?
AN: Automatic Noodle is really the first time that I've tried to write about San Francisco in my fiction. I've written a lot about the city in my journalism, and my first job as a reporter was at the San Francisco Bay Guardian, which was the city's free weekly paper for decades. Sadly, like many free weekly papers, it is no more. But for whatever reason, I never really wrote fiction about this place.
It's odd, because San Francisco has always been legendary in my mind. When I was growing up in the suburbs of Southern California, pretty much the only way I stayed sane was by promising myself over and over that I would move to San Francisco as soon as I turned 18. I did move to the Bay Area when I turned 18, but I lived in Berkeley to go to college. Nevertheless, I would go into San Francisco as much as I could, just trying to soak up all the weird q***r awesomeness of the place. I've always loved the city's combination of kinkiness, artsiness, nerdiness, and just plain silliness. Unfortunately, right now, the city is under the influence of techno-oligarchy. But you know what? We're going to turn that s**t around. Because this city is just too damn sweet and weird for fascists and anarcho-capitalists. It's haunted by weird people from the past. Its future is going to be packed with weird people. And maybe weird robots too.
This novella is also full of Easter eggs for anyone who knows San Francisco history. I called the local currency Nortons because in the 19th century there was a famous and beloved weirdo who lived here who called himself Emperor Norton. He would issue decrees, and wander around town talking to people about political issues of the day. He had a kind of absurdist progressive point of view, and would only publish his decrees in the local Black-owned newspaper. At some point he decided to issue his own currency, given that he was the emperor of the United States. That currency was of course called Nortons.
There are a lot of references in the book to places and people in San Francisco now. I mentioned Noe Valley Books, a wonderful independent bookstore that will be hosting my book launch on August 3rd. There's also a reference to the publication 48 Hills, which covers San Francisco politics and culture, and is run by some of my old colleagues from the San Francisco Bay Guardian. And there's tons of other stuff.
I hope that people will have fun finding all of the other references to San Francisco history and culture in the book, and let me know when they find them.
KH: One of the robots notes casually that humans are obsessed with toilet paper. The phrasing made me laugh, because, well, we are! You’re writing in a number of nonhuman consciousnesses here. What were some of the pleasures and challenges of this?
AN: One of the things that I love about writing robot characters is that it gives me a chance to explore what it means to be inside a very different kind of body from my own. I love the idea of having a body that is totally fungible, where you can detach your arms and upgrade your feet and do surgery on yourself without any pain or consequences. I don't see robots as creatures who have transcended their bodies. I see them as creatures who can explore their bodies more fully than a biological person could. That's why I wanted to focus this book on a form of physical enjoyment: eating delicious food. By experiencing food from the perspectives of four very different robots, we gain a new appreciation for what truly gives us pleasure when we have a sensual experience.
KH: Are there any other projects or things that you’d like to call our readers’ attention to?
AN: I co-edited an anthology with Malka Older and Karen Lord, which is coming out in early December. It's called We Will Rise Again, and it's a collection of essays, interviews, and speculative short fiction that deals with political resistance and protest.
One of the reasons we started working on this anthology about 3 years ago was because we felt like speculative fiction doesn't treat social science with the same respect as it does science. Oftentimes you hear writers saying that they researched a particular scientific idea before writing fiction about it. Rarely do you hear people saying that about social science, or politics. So we asked all of our fiction contributors to interview a movement leader or activist, to get their wisdom on what a realistic form of political resistance might be. All of the stories in the book are informed by real life experience. Even if the stories are fantastical, they are in dialogue with ideas taken directly from protest movements. We also included several interviews with activists in the volume, to give readers a sense of what we were asking experts when we put our stories together.
We have an awe-inspiring collection of pieces that I think will inspire a lot of hope and maybe help people make plans for new kinds of political resistance.
Get the book: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250357465/automaticnoodle/
