Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

Your hosts read Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz, a novella about robots starting a noodle shop in near-future San Francisco. They debate if it can be called cyberpunk (kinda) or cozy (also kinda), and how the scifi setting opens up conversations around familiar situations. Your hosts also talk about naive robots and surprising pacing.

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Thanks to the following musicians for the use of their songs:

- Amarià for the use of “Sérénade à Notre Dame de Paris”
- Josh Woodward for the use of “Electric Sunrise”

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

Transcript

Lilly 0:04

Hello and welcome to Fiction Fans, a podcast where we read books and other words too. I'm Lily,

Sara 0:10

And I am Sarah. And today we will be reading or discussing automatic Noodle by Anna Lee Nuit, which was a book chosen by our patrons as one of our quarterly patrons choice. Not poll, we didn't do it as a poll this time, but, as one of our quarterly patrons choice episodes.

Lilly 0:28

but first we have our quick five minute introduction, starting with something great that happened recently.

Sara 0:35

I bought noodles for myself last night for dinner inspired by this novella. They weren't hand pulled, but they were still pretty good.

Lilly 0:44

I also demanded noodles, but they were just frozen udon noodles from the Asian market. Obviously I didn't eat them while they were frozen, but this book demanded food accompaniment.

Sara 0:57

Specifically noodles.

Lilly 0:59

Yes. I think my good thing, so listeners, you can't tell but I'm wearing my Saron sweatshirt

Sara 1:07

oh, I didn't know you had a sour on sweatshirt.

Lilly 1:10

I do. That's not my good thing though. My good thing is that we ran to the grocery store very quickly today and on the way out there was another woman also in a Saron sweatshirt, but like a different one.

Sara 1:23

Amazing.

Lilly 1:24

And I didn't say anything. She was too far ahead and I didn't wanna like chase her down. I mean, I did want to chase her down, but I hesitated and then it was too late. But it was just kind of like a nice moment of, oh.

Sara 1:36

Amazing.

Lilly 1:37

It was fantastic. A, a moment of connection that only I know about, so maybe it doesn't count, but

Sara 1:44

Also, before we, before we get any further, I feel like I need to apologize to the listener because I do have the tiny terrors, my toddler pugs out with me as I'm recording. And so you may hear them being gremlins more than usual.

Lilly 2:01

they are going, I feel like the pets have been extra vocal in our last couple of episodes. Yours and my cat's as well, so

Sara 2:09

They, they have, they have wanted to participate more than they sometimes do.

Lilly 2:13

well, what are you drinking tonight?

Sara 2:15

I am drinking a fizzy fruit punch. Which I feel like is the right vibe for a warm San Francisco evening at a restaurant like sitting in a tiny little patio with twinkly lights all around.

Lilly 2:34

I can totally see that. I'm also, I'm drinking fizzy pomegranate juice,

Sara 2:38

Ah,

Lilly 2:39

similar vibe, although that was just because what was in the house, and I'm regretting it because the drink is cold. I am cold. I forgot to turn the heater on in this room. Mistakes were made.

Sara 2:49

I mean, this is also what I had in the house, so, and it does have pomegranate juice in it, and it is cold, but I don't mind that

Lilly 2:56

Yeah. I was also thinking green tea

Sara 2:59

tea was the other beverage that I thought suited the vibes of this book, but it's like. It depends on which way you wanna go. So I feel like if you wanna lean into the warmth of the novel or novella, you go for tea. If you want to lean into the vibes of the setting, you go for like the juice.

Lilly 3:23

Yeah, I, I agree with that completely. Have you read anything extracurricular lately?

Sara 3:29

I have not done a lot of extracurricular reading.

Lilly 3:32

Me neither. Alright. Right off the bat, why do I keep calling this book Atomic Noodle? Is it just like vintage sci-fi in my head maybe.

Sara 3:43

Yeah, I, I can't answer that for you because I don't have that problem.

Lilly 3:48

No, I, yeah, automatic has just turned into Atomic and I've done that multiple times while talking to you about it. I don't think I will do it now because I have read. The novella and gotten to how the, like, name is developed in the story. So I think that's enough that will like, make it stick in my brain, but it, it's just a dumb problem that I had.

Sara 4:15

Yeah, I, again, not an issue that I had. But the book is called wait, now you're, now I wanna call it Atomic Noodle. But no, the book is called Automatic Noodle and it's set in San Francisco, a San Francisco of the future. It's like what, 2063 or 2064?

Lilly 4:33

I thought It was farther than that, but I don't remember.

Sara 4:36

It definitely was a two and a six. Yes, it was January 8th, 2064. His last recorded memory was from July 31st, 2063. So it takes place in this, future San Francisco, and it follows four robots who, uh, wake up and for various reasons, decide that their next step is going to be running a noodle shop. And it's fun to read a book written in a city that you know decently well. I don't say, I'm not gonna say that I know San Francisco like the back of my hand because I don't. But I live quite near to it. I went to school there. I, I visit there periodically. And the author, Anna Nuit lives there, I believe. And it definitely felt like San Francisco.

Lilly 5:23

It did. It was really fun and like knowing the geography well enough that when new it's mentioned neighborhoods I could go, I know about how far away those are from each other. I lived in the inner Richmond and Inner Sunset for a couple of years, although at this point that was so long ago, it really doesn't count. However, also this book is fictional Future San Francisco, so close enough.

Sara 5:48

Close enough.

Lilly 5:50

It was, this was the most familiar setting we have read in a long time. And part of that is again, because we are familiar with the city, but also it's the closest to real world that we have read in a while.

Sara 6:05

Yeah, I think you're right about that. I mean, of course there's the K Wong novel down in the Sea of Angels, which is also set in a future of San Francisco, but that was very. That didn't feel as close to, to this San Francisco, to the real San Francisco, just due to the setting and the, you know, story and things that had happened.

Lilly 6:26

Yeah, that book felt much farther genre wise from reality. And so that created quite a bit of separation. Whereas this, I mean, it's, near future. I'm gonna make an argument to call it cozy cyberpunk at some point during this conversation.

Sara 6:43

I think, I think that fits.

Lilly 6:45

And that it was really fun. It was nice. It was nice to be back on earth after so long we've been reading other books and also Con Wong was over a year ago, I think.

Sara 6:55

That book was a long time ago. Yeah. I mean, I think we read it in early 2025.

Lilly 7:03

Yeah. so it, it was a, it was fun to come back, back home in more than one way. Right. Both reality adjacent and also a city that we're familiar with.

Sara 7:13

Yeah, it was, it was really nice to just be in a little bit of a more familiar setting after, so many books that are either, you know, fantasy or far future, you know, set on alien planets and things like that. And also just the, the nature of this being a book about a noodle restaurant I mean, a, it made me hungry, but be, that's a, a very kind of grounding plot. And just a nice change. Not to say that you know, they, they don't go through struggles or anything, but it is a a nice kind of almost quiet plot.

Lilly 7:50

Yeah, close to home in, in many ways.

Sara 7:53

Yes.

Lilly 7:55

Not that I've ever run a restaurant, but I did appreciate the amount of business talk included. Now, this is a novella, so space is at a premium just on the page. However, I really liked the balance, knew it struck with including. Some actual details about things that our main characters had to consider when opening and running a restaurant. They didn't overload us with details. It didn't feel like they just hid their business pitch in their novella or anything. But it also didn't feel like, has this person ever had a job before? Which sometimes in books especially ones that are so close to the real world, you can run into that, right? If you don't address the realities of a job that people kind of, I mean, people do have, not just kind of, I'm saying kind of, because there was enough marketing talk in here that I was like, I recognize what's happening.

Sara 8:53

Yeah, it was, nice that Nuit included our main characters. Thinking about some of the logistics that are involved in running a business, it didn't feel like any of that was hand waved away. It also wasn't the focus of the story, which was good,

Lilly 9:11

Yeah because that could have gotten overwhelming really fast.

Sara 9:13

yeah, like, this wasn't a, about, you know, supply chains and making sure that they have enough flour, but things like that did get mentioned. And it just helped make the book feel very considered. Mm-hmm.

Lilly 9:28

there was that perfect level of addressing it without going into too much detail or making everything about it.

Sara 9:36

Yes, exactly.

Lilly 9:37

Yeah. Which I, I really appreciated. I thought that was just handled really well and made the whole thing feel so much more real.

Sara 9:46

Mm-hmm.

Lilly 9:46

concrete, and not just like hand wavy, like, I'm gonna open a cafe and, you, you know, you know what I'm saying?

Sara 9:54

Yeah. Yeah.

Lilly 9:55

Not that no one has ever opened a cafe, but books about coffee shops do not tend to hit that reality line very well.

Sara 10:04

they don't always know and they don't always have to. But it, it is a nice contrast when a book like this does.

Lilly 10:11

Yes. So my argument for calling this book, at least cyberpunk adjacent, is that there are conversations around bodily autonomy and body modifications and how that interacts with identity. And that is one of the things that I think cyberpunk, I mean. Cool awful corporations also, which there, there was some like capitalist dystopia hints in this as well, but to me that's what like really makes cyberpunk cool and interesting. And in this case, that was also wrapped up in the metaphor where being a robot also kind of was in conversation with the trans experience.

Sara 10:55

Yeah, I could, I could see the argument for the being cozy cyberpunk. I definitely think that the book does use robots as a metaphor for the trans experience especially in the way that the robots are, kind of a second class citizen in the country of California because California is just exiting a war with the rest of the United States. California has seceded and is now its own its own country. And robots have some legal rights, but they don't have a ton. And the argument for not giving them more is, well, we'll wait and see what happens. You have to, you, you can only get a little bit because you can't push people too far.

Lilly 11:46

Well in, in that way, I think it was drawing on the civil rights movement in the United States, quite a bit as well. And I, I know you have a comment here that racial prejudice comes up, right? People are. Prejudice towards robots in a way. And, and so it's not like a perfect one-to-one. Right there. There's a couple of different oppressed groups that are being explored through robot identity here.

Sara 12:13

Yeah, we, we do also have a human character. I pronounced his name Robles in my head. I don't know how you pronounced his name.

Lilly 12:27

Well, there's an argument to be made because Paso Robles is a city that is spelled the same as this character's name is spelled and is pronounced Robles, like that's how you pronounce the city name. However, I believe that that is a,

Sara 12:42

An Americanization.

Lilly 12:44

yes, an aggressive Americanization and so it being a character's name and not a place name. I wonder if it's pronounced more like Robles, which is how I would say that that's more likely to be pronounced in Spanish. However, I don't fucking know. I think you're safe pronouncing it the way the city is pronounced, because that's a pretty, like, you can just say, I don't know there's a city pronounced that way.

Sara 13:13

Yeah, I don't know. But if you go Robless and I go Robles, one of us is right?

Lilly 13:18

Pro. Well, maybe.

Sara 13:19

maybe.

Lilly 13:21

So you're referring to, Robless Who worked with the robots in their prior employment when the robots were kind of indentured servants to a restaurant that was a ghost kitchen and did terrible food and just like rebranded every time it got too many negative reviews. But he was doing, I think, delivery at the time. He was just a delivery guy basically for

Sara 13:46

I, I I think so. Yeah.

Lilly 13:49

but he, he shows up quite early on and is probably the only nice human that we meet.

Sara 13:57

He's not the only nice human that we meet because there's the food critic who leaves a nice review. And then there are the human teenagers who hang out and who help create merch and stuff.

Lilly 14:11

That's true. The food critic did not know that they were robots, so I don't know if we can say that. We know he was, I guess I said nice. Non prejudiced. Maybe I should have said instead.

Sara 14:21

That's true. We don't know if the food critic was prejudiced or not, but going back to Robles he does say that he is an immigrant without documentation and papers, so that's touched on through more than just like the robot experience as well. we do see that a little bit through the perspective of the character of, of Robles.

Lilly 14:44

That's true. There was a very sad author's note at the end. I don't know if you saw it. But apparently Robles is named after someone that knew it's new who has passed away, which is very sad.

Sara 14:58

I, I did see that. It, it was, it was very sad.

Lilly 15:02

And I mean, a, a character who was really wonderful to begin with and that, I don't know if it changes the tone, but

Sara 15:12

I don't think it changes the tone, but I think it's a really nice way to, to honor a lost friend.

Lilly 15:18

Yeah. And especially a character that is just like nice and good,

Sara 15:24

Yeah, Robles was great.

Lilly 15:25

Yeah. And he definitely provided some. Levelheadedness for the robots perspective maybe

Sara 15:34

I think he was a good counterpoint.

Lilly 15:36

Yeah, It was interesting near the beginning, sweetie, one of our main characters is in a pretty dangerous situation and the tone around her talking about it felt really like downplayed. And I don't know, it was off. And I, I thought maybe that's just because they're robots and so they approach life and death situations differently. But then we see stay behind later have a, a memory of a dangerous situation and that, oh, shoot, a stay behind they them, or does that character use he pronouns?

Sara 16:14

I thought stay behind used. He, yes. His last recorded memory, he scrolled through the events.

Lilly 16:20

Thank

Sara 16:21

Yeah.

Lilly 16:22

And then Cayenne and Hands are the other two of our main characters, and they both use they pronouns for the most part, except for one sentence. That might be a typo because it's weird to change a pronoun just once for a single sentence. I don't know if you had that. You have a physical copy, so it might be different for you. Actually,

Sara 16:44

I do have a, a physical copy. I didn't notice, typo.

Lilly 16:50

let me find it. the chapter is called the Sunset and the Richmond.

Sara 16:54

oh, conveniently, that's the chapter that I had opened.

Lilly 16:58

suddenly cayenne plunged his five tasting arms into the cumin loom and I am pretty sure that's the only time Cayenne doesn't use they, them pronouns.

Sara 17:10

in the

Lilly 17:11

This is after, so they've gone to a restaurant that makes hand pulled noodles to try them, and they've had a conversation. They being hands, I think for the most part, although Cayenne talks as well to the chef, they end up buying food and then they're tasting it.

Sara 17:29

It, it is, it is there too in here.

Lilly 17:33

It's cayenne plunged there, tasting arms.

Sara 17:36

No, his, his five tasting arms. Mm-hmm.

Lilly 17:39

You said it's there. And I was like. As in the, the physical location or as in

Sara 17:44

sorry.

Lilly 17:46

I, okay. But I think that's the only time I'm pretty sure Cayenne's pretty consistently they, in the rest of the book, even in the same chapter, they wrapped an arm around their friend's hand.

Sara 18:00

Yeah. I, I think that's just a mistake.

Lilly 18:02

Okay.'cause I also, like none of the robots are gender fluid. Like they don't seem to change identity in that way very much. We see sweetie kind of go from very human presenting to very robot presenting, but she continues to use she pronouns the whole time.

Sara 18:19

Yes, I believe so.

Lilly 18:21

Okay. That was my, am I missing something or is it just a typo? Am I reading way too far into this? The answer was yes. I did have an uh, oh moment. This doesn't happen to me very often, which I take as a point of pride. But in one of the interactions, I believe in this case, it was sweetie with one of the delivery workers. I had a, but they meant, well, that's not that bad.

Sara 18:47

Oh no.

Lilly 18:48

I, you know, okay. So, and I have to interrogate that. And I'll, I will do that off, the podcast. But that's the joy of fiction, right? You can interact with these things in the safety of not making anyone else deal with that bullshit.

Sara 19:02

I mean, and, and I think fiction is good for making you interrogate those moments for exactly that reason.

Lilly 19:08

the scene was clearly telling us that that character was doing something wrong. Like I, I was not confused in that sense. So I was like, okay, this is a misunderstanding that I am having.

Sara 19:20

Right? But what I mean is like it forces you to confront that in a way that means that no actual people get harmed.

Lilly 19:28

Yes, yes, yes, exactly. Some things about this book felt very timely. We just had a huge atmospheric river come through, both Seattle and the Bay Area.

Sara 19:40

Yes.

Lilly 19:40

Absolutely drowned in us,

Sara 19:43

Although it's, it's been a couple of weeks since our atmospheric river, so it, it didn't feel quite as fresh in my mind.

Lilly 19:50

but there's a, an atmospheric river in this book as well, and the characters have to deal with some flooding issues and just sort of all of the water and how that affects their restaurant setup at the beginning. So that was fun.

Sara 20:05

Yeah. I mean, I, I, and I think that contributed to it feeling very much

Lilly 20:09

Okay. That's, we can't have squeaky toys. I'm sorry. That's on the, that's where I draw the line.

Sara 20:16

But I, I think that things like the Atmospheric River helped with that feeling of this is a book set in a very specific place for me anyway, like it, it contributed to the atmosphere of, or the, the vibe of Yes, this is the Bay Area.

Lilly 20:35

Absolutely there were a couple of other aspects that made it feel very timely and in some ways, maybe even already outdated, which I thought was fascinating and, uh, a horrible, a horrible side effect of how long publishing can take. But their cryptocurrency. Now, there is a plot reason for why cryptocurrency has sort of, I'm gonna say reemerged because. I don't know. You heard about it a lot and now I don't hear about it at all anymore. AI has kind of taken over those buzzword spaces, but there is it plays quite a role in this because robots aren't allowed to have bank accounts, but they can use cryptocurrency. And then there's also like an official city of San Francisco blockchain where contracts live, which is not real.

Sara 21:27

I mean, no, San Francisco doesn't have an an official blockchain.

Lilly 21:31

Well, no, I just, no, it is just not a capability. Anyway, so that was interesting. It felt like a blast from the past, but the, the text dealt with why those things, those technologies that are kind of dead to us have reemerged 40 years in the future. And then there were some slang words like cringe and riz that felt, I don't know. I noticed them. They stuck out to me.

Sara 21:59

Yeah, I, so I didn't necessarily feel they were that jarring in this book in particular. I had that experience with a different book. Oh, this is another squeaky toy.

Lilly 22:11

Yeah, we can't do that to our listeners, Sarah. I'm sorry.

Sara 22:15

but I, I can't, I can't take another toy from them because they're gonna be so unhappy. But I did have that experience with another book that I read recently which we have not discussed on the podcast. But I did write a review about it on our blog.

Lilly 22:35

I thought that might be what you were talking about.

Sara 22:38

For whom? The Bell Tolls by JC Lynn. And I don't really touch on this in the, in the blog post, but there was a lot of very current language or slightly past current language that felt jarring to me. So I, I understand where you're coming from with that comment, even if I didn't necessarily feel it particularly about this book myself.

Lilly 23:01

and I am typically a huge proponent of slang, especially when this is a setting that is supposed to feel familiar, right? In this case, now this could just be my biases. I don't actually. Speak with the youths very often, so I could be very wrong, but my understanding is Riz has sort of passed into Millennials know about it now. It's not cool anymore. Now, again, I, I welcome corrections. I know we have some listeners who teach, and so probably know what people are saying much more accurately than I do. But that's the, that's the category that, that slang is in for my head. And so it stuck out in that sense, but it did still make it feel very real. It just made me think that the character was maybe a little out of touch, which is okay.

Sara 23:53

Speaking of words that made you think a certain thing. I don't know if this was a me problem but every time I read Grando Sando, which was the like the

Lilly 24:06

GrubHub

Sara 24:07

platform, yeah. GrubHub, I did think Brando Sando, which is not right at all,

Lilly 24:13

I also thought that, yes,

Sara 24:15

but it was, it was incredibly jarring every time I read it. This is totally a me problem, not, not a, not a book problem at all, but,

Lilly 24:24

I thought it was pretty funny, especially because we're not supposed to like think too highly of that platform. It is just kind of tech garbage, right? So it was fine for me to giggle every time the name came up.

Sara 24:36

I mean, it was, it was funny. I agree. It just also took me out of the book every time I thought, Brando Sando,

Lilly 24:44

Well, you know, if this is the 2060s San Francisco, then Brando Sando did exist. Maybe he founded Grando. Sando,

Sara 24:52

he, maybe he did. You're right. Head Cannon accepted.

Lilly 24:57

Oh, the word I had the most trouble with. And this is such petty bullshit. But, oh. And I also know that I'm probably the only person in the world who feels this way, but I really hate Puffer jacket. The jacket is not puffing. It is a puffy jacket that is an adjective describing the jacket. I know I am wrong. I know that the official name for that item of clothing is puffer, and I fucking hate it. And this book referred to a puffy jacket using the incorrect. popularly accepted way, and it made me so angry. I also really hate blusher, which I've been seeing more people referring to the makeup item blush as blusher.

Sara 25:47

Yeah, that one I don't like puff puffer jacket. I don't mind, but blusher just, yeah.

Lilly 25:54

It's an adjective. That is only me, and I know that, oh, Nuit does not deserve my vitriol. But,

Sara 26:05

They do not.

Lilly 26:06

for, uh, about five minutes before I had read this book, I convinced myself that it was a regional thing. Because the only people who I had heard use that phrase were from the Midwest, and so I was just like, oh, okay. It's, it's a regionalism. That's fine. I can ignore that. But apparently not. That's just what everyone calls it and that bothers me so much. So we discussed cyberpunk as a description for this book, and I think it's not hard. Cyberpunk maybe soft cyberpunk.

Sara 26:39

Yeah, cyberpunk esque.

Lilly 26:41

Yeah, adjacent. Perhaps we could throw in there as a qualifier. I also think we should talk about where this book falls on the cozy scale.

Sara 26:51

I do think that it falls closer to cozy than not cozy. There is some conflict. In the novel. So I wouldn't necessarily call it like a fully cozy story. Like it's, it's not, you know, on a scale of zero to a hundred, it's not at a hundred,

Lilly 27:11

Right.

Sara 27:12

but I'd say maybe in the like 70% cozy.

Lilly 27:16

I agree completely. It like if someone said, is this a cozy novel period? I would say no. There is enough tension around like real world experiences that I think knocks it out of like officially 100% cozy

Sara 27:35

And also I think some of the, issues that the robots deal with beyond the rob phobia. They also most of them are dealing with some form of PTSD from their experiences in this California United States War, which has only just ended basically. And so, yeah, I think there are enough hard discussions that it's not, it's not a cozy novel

Lilly 28:01

However, the experience of reading it was for the most part, quite warm and comforting,

Sara 28:07

and also just the plot of them opening up a a restaurant, a noodle restaurant is, I think, inherently cozy.

Lilly 28:18

food. When there is such a center on food, it not all coziness has to include food. But if there's this much food, I think that does push it towards the cozy side of the scale. Right?

Sara 28:33

Yes, I agree.

Lilly 28:34

And there's also that element, like they begin as coworkers and end as a found family. Like that's just nice. Its just nice to read

Sara 28:44

Yeah, it was,

Lilly 28:46

and maybe found families a little dramatic.

Sara 28:48

I mean, but they all pulled together and I would definitely say, if not found family, I think their friends, by the end of it, not just coworkers,

Lilly 28:58

Yeah. And I just, friends is such a vague word. You could mean like, yes, this is a person that I text occasionally and sometimes grab a drink with to this is a person who I would put my life in their hands. And they're more on the, they're on the warmer side of friends, right.

Sara 29:17

one, I wouldn't call, I, I usually use the phrase acquaintance

Lilly 29:23

Yeah, if you meet up with someone for drinks, just to hang out with them.

Sara 29:27

Yeah. I mean it, if I'm doing it every week, yeah, that's a friend. If I'm doing it twice a year, I think that's more of an acquaintance

Lilly 29:34

Really? I consider someone a friend if I actively seek out their company.

Sara 29:41

we have. We have different scales.

Lilly 29:44

An acquaintance is someone I'm forced to interact with.

Sara 29:47

No, an acquaintance is somewhat, I don't know very well

Lilly 29:51

Well,

Sara 29:51

see them once a year. I don't know them very well once or twice a year.

Lilly 29:55

Interesting.

Sara 29:57

I mean, they might be friendly acquaintances, but I, I think for me, they would still be on the acquaintance side of things.

Lilly 30:03

Hmm. Well this is not here nor there. So before we get into our spoiler conversation, who should read this book?

Sara 30:11

I think you should read this book if you enjoy sci-fi. Want something that's on the cozier side of things. Maybe I should qualify that si sci-fi. That's very reality adjacent. And if you wanna be hungry noodles.

Lilly 30:31

This episode of Fiction Fans is brought to you by sotia.

Sara 30:35

That's our zine. Each issue has a different theme that celebrates genre and genre blending in a new way.

Lilly 30:41

PDF and EPUB versions can be purchased on our website and Patreon, supporters of all levels get free digital copies.

Sara 30:50

You can find all the issues and more at patreon.com/fiction fans pod. Thank you for your support.

Lilly 30:57

The remainder of this episode contains spoilers.

Sara 31:04

I did have one. I hesitate to call it a problem because I think it says more about my reading preferences than it actually does with about the book. But I, I did have one issue. With this story, and that's the main conflict, which is that their new restaurant Authentic Noodle has gotten essentially review, bombed and stay behind, looks into who is behind this, this review bombing, this targeted, spamming. And then infiltrates their anti-bot discord server and gathers all of this like evidence and sends it to Grando Sandos trust and safety. But the actual resolution of, him sending it over and trust and safety, removing the, the fraudulent reviews all gets handled or resolved off page, which is just a stylistic choice that I, I think, tends to leave me a little frustrated because you build up this conflict and then it just kind of falls off a cliff for me,

Lilly 32:15

Interesting. I don't think I felt that way. We saw stay behind doing the espionage and getting the information. And so not seeing grando sando, like how could we see that happen if it's from stay behinds perspective? Right. I guess, he could have gotten an email from them confirming that they like agree with the

Sara 32:38

I mean, it's it's just that like the next time we hear about it, we, we see stay behind doing the investigation, and then the next time we hear about it, it's like three weeks later and, and. There's a comment in passing that everything was resolved.

Lilly 32:54

I, so I, the reason why I say I think I didn't have a problem is because the ending did feel really abrupt to me. And I think that is probably just a function of, this is a novella. Things are not going to continue to escalate. Right? They're going to resolve. And so when that aspect was resolved so quickly, I assumed that that meant that that was just a stepping stone to the real conflict it was like hand waved away. I was just like, oh, well that was easy. So what's the retaliation gonna be, you know? And so when that was actually genuinely like the fix, I was like kind of taken aback, but I ascribed that more to just the length of the story and constraints in that sense. But I could see if that had been more on the page, maybe it would've felt more like the final resolution to me.

Sara 33:50

Yeah, it just, and I think that I feel a little bit how you do about it, it feeling like it was a stepping stone to a larger conflict. And that's part of my frustration with it. Because it just, it like, it, not that it feels unresolved, there's a, there's a resolution. But it, it just, I don't know it for being the final conflict, it felt very

Lilly 34:17

it seemed simple. Yeah.

Sara 34:19

Yeah.

Lilly 34:21

and now this is again, maybe my prejudice showing, but I did not expect Grando Sando to take stay behind side. I assumed that there would be an auto response that was like, sorry, your complaint was rejected. And then he, and then he would have to sweet talk some AI bot into escalating his complaint or something, just because that's how customer service always works.

Sara 34:44

Yeah.

Lilly 34:46

And so when it was just like it worked the first time, I was like, there, there was no way that could be that simple.

Sara 34:53

yeah, like I was, I was glad for them that it was that simple, but

Lilly 34:57

Yeah.

Sara 34:57

I was not, again, maybe it's like you, I don't have enough trust in corporate safety which given, given the world who does.

Lilly 35:07

Although he did have a connection, right? He was given the name of someone that Cayenne knew.

Sara 35:13

yes, he, he did have connections to some of the bots and, and trust and safety.

Lilly 35:19

So maybe he was taken a little more seriously because of that. But I would've liked to see that, you know, I, I did expect this conflict to have more happening.

Sara 35:29

Yeah. I, I think that's, that's where I land on that.

Lilly 35:32

Yeah.

Sara 35:33

Like I just, it, it, it just needed a little bit more something.

Lilly 35:39

And that's part of what made it, made me think that this book is more on the cozy side, right? Because it does have such a straightforward solution to their problem.

Sara 35:48

Yeah.

Lilly 35:49

There's not often do they have to go back to the drawing board and try again. It's just the first thing they try works. Now there are escalating problems in a sense. But again, because of the length of the story, it doesn't go into it that deep. Now, on the non cozy side is what Suzy Q is doing, is effectively using astroturfing in a disinformation campaign about, uh, you know, oh, if robots are cooking the food, then they're leaking robot oil, which is gonna give our kids cancer and, you know, fake generative AI images of food that's not actually what they're serving. And all of the fake accounts that Suzy Q uses to make it look like a bunch of people support her when it's actually just her.

Sara 36:40

Well, there, there were a handful of people who felt like her.

Lilly 36:44

It was a, it was about like,

Sara 36:46

was like 15 or something.

Lilly 36:47

yeah, I was gonna say one third, two thirds, or maybe even a quarter of real people.

Sara 36:52

Yeah. It was not, certainly not as many real people as the targeted harassment, you know, tried to make it seem like.

Lilly 36:59

Yeah. And that is such a real problem on social media today. And it's interesting because that is a problem I ascribe to bots. You know, it's bots who are trying to make it look like there's a bunch of supporters for this issue. And so having it be robots who are dealing with that was kind of a fun twist in that sense. Although obviously the bots running social media accounts to so discord in our social media are not the same kind of bots who are opening a delightful noodle shop.

Sara 37:33

No, they're not.

Lilly 37:34

But that hitting so close to home is what then made me go, but this, this is not that cozy because this is so genuinely distressing.

Sara 37:43

Yes. Yes. I, I think there's enough that ties into very big, real world problems that it, it doesn't, like I said, it, it doesn't fall at the a hundred. Point on that. Zero to a hundred scale.

Lilly 37:57

Yeah, the on top of the ones that we discussed in the nons spoiler section, of course.

Sara 38:01

Yes.

Lilly 38:03

But the, this felt like a spoilery enough conversation that I wanted to save it for this part. One thing that did start to get on my nerves. I loved all of the main characters, all four of our robots, except for hands. I'm so sorry. I'm a hands hater, not even a hundred percent, because their relationship with Cayenne was so cute. I loved it. I loved how you could tell from like their first introduction that they were into each other and then you kind of got their history in flashbacks and then you saw them kind of develop like, oh, I loved it a plus. So wonderful. However, hands is the only robot who did not experience the war. They were woken up like right at the very end and never actually well I guess they were a manufacturing robot so they wouldn't have been on the front lines the way Stay behind and Cayenne were anyway. But anyway, they were pretty naive in some ways that made me want to shake them. The way they have a total breakdown at the beginning when they get the slew of bad reviews that I was more understanding about. But the whole thing with like, they failed because they sold out. Like in what world is selling out of all of your product a bad business day? Like you were not born yesterday, you had a job before this. Like no one would ever say that or think of that. And that was just, it felt like they just had to be distressed for some reason so that people could comfort them. And I was just kind of like, no, if they're gonna be like that, just let them be upset. I just like, what are you gonna do about that at that point?

Sara 39:57

I didn't mind hands so much hands probably was my least favorite of the, the four robots. But and I, I did find them a little frustrating at times for that naivete and that kind of lack of real world experience, but not so much that it affected my enjoyment of the story. Okay.

Lilly 40:19

No, I, and like I said, I liked them for the most part. There were just some moments and then that, that one we failed moment was just too much from me. I like could not,

Sara 40:32

Hands was a bit dramatic.

Lilly 40:35

and like they roll up to the conversation where all of their friends and coworkers are celebrating at how good they did at, because they did great. They sold so many noodles. And hands just goes, we failed because we sold out before the end of the day and read the room. Even if you didn't know that selling all of your product is a good thing. Read the fucking room. Ugh. That like, that one scene was, it was okay. Hands was cute. I really liked Cayenne and I liked their relationship. The almost sex scene, the, the robot intimacy, I thought was very fun and felt different from humans in a way that I really liked, especially in this, in this setting.

Sara 41:24

Yeah, I liked how Nuit did that because we also see some robot intimacy in stay behinds memory of himself and, and one of his friends. And that also, I mean, it, it, it also felt different from what Kayan and Han's experience, but the same feeling underpinning it. So I, I liked how Nwi did it.

Lilly 41:48

Yeah. And it is like these are robots, right? They're not humans. And it wasn't just actually, they're just like us. Like, no, they are different. They are robotic ent, they're he eyes, I think was the phrase used, which was like human intelligent level. That's really not what that stands for at all. But that was the gist of it.

Sara 42:12

Something about humans and I think experiencing emotion,

Lilly 42:19

Something like that. I, because there are a lot of different kinds of bots that we meet as well. Our four main characters are all he eyes. But there are there, there's the, the blockchain contract that Cayenne talks to. There are,

Sara 42:36

Embodied intelligence.

Lilly 42:38

yes. Yes.

Sara 42:40

Yes.

Lilly 42:41

And so seeing these different robots and how they do interact with the world around them very differently even from each other, but how the, he eyes still respect the contracts or the security cameras in a way that humans don't seem to get. Right. Like.

Sara 43:02

Well, stay behind. Makes a point very early on in the book where he comments in the narratives that he didn't believe in the myth of graded intelligence as far as he was concerned. Puppy grade and even the maligned machine grade were just as good as the HEI individuals who were granted civil rights after the war. The way stay behind saw it, if you could talk and feel, then you were a person, period.

Lilly 43:28

Yes. Which is also why this is not a, it's not a one-to-one direct metaphor, Right. Because arguing they're not people would make me sound like a psychopath. It's still science fiction. And the world building was just so much fun and done throughout the story in a way that. It really added to what we were learning. It didn't feel clunky or intrusive at all. And I feel like I keep saying that about the novellas that we read, but I think that's because we read so few novellas that we're reading the cream of the crop.

Sara 44:06

was gonna say maybe we're just really good at picking which novellas to read

Lilly 44:09

I do actually think that's true, but in longer books, authors have more space, which is good, can be good,

Sara 44:17

often. Good.

Lilly 44:19

but it does also mean that there can be more Lord dumping happening. And in a novella, there's just simply isn't that economy of page. And so you get really elegant worlds, like you get an automatic noodle and it was

Sara 44:36

Yeah, I, I really enjoyed it. This is a book that we saw Nuit do a reading from at Worldcon, and so I'm very glad that it was suggested for us by our patrons.

Lilly 44:54

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Fiction Fans.

Sara 44:57

Come disagree with us. We're on Blue Sky and Instagram at Fiction Fans Pod. You can also email us at fiction fans pod@gmail.com or leave a comment on YouTube.

Lilly 45:08

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Sara 45:15

We also have a Patreon where you can support us and find exclusive episodes and a lot of other nonsense.

Lilly 45:21

Thanks again for listening, and may your villains always be defeated. Bye.