The cover of Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz, featuring a robot hand holding chopsticks pulling noodles out of a container with San Francisco and assorted robots at the bottom.

I received this as an eARC via Netgalley. Preorder link.

This is a delightful, thoughtful novella. Set in post-war/post-apocalypse California (which is no longer part of the US), San Francisco to be precise, a group of intrepid robots start a restaurant serving biang biang (hand-pulled) noodles.

Come for the discussions of sentience, survival, and mutual aid. Stay for the delightful autonomous robots working through their trauma and creating a community where humans and robots alike are valued and can thrive.

This is exactly the kind of story we need right now. And, also, hand-pulled noodles.

Highly recommended.