Exploited Robots and a Commitment to Community Populate 2060’s San Francisco in Annalee Newitz’s ‘Automatic Noodle’

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KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As both a science journalist and a sci-fi writer, Annalee Newitz thinks a lot about what our technology-saturated future might hold for us. Newitz’s new novella, “Automatic Noodle,” is set in 2060’s postwar San Francisco after California has seceded from the U.S. In the midst of an exploitative dystopia, a crew of robots opens a noodle shop with a sweet and resilient commitment to community, excellent food and rebuilding. We talk about what Newitz sees in our AI future, and how the values and community bonds that have long made San Francisco great may fare then, and now. Guests: Annalee Newitz, science journalist, science fiction writer and co-host of the podcast 'Our Opinions are Correct' - their previous book is 'Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:56.2	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:58.4	Well, folks, it's been done now.
1:03.2	The most San Francisco book that has been or could ever have been written has been written.
1:06.1	It's called Automatic Noodle by Annalie Newitz,
1:10.3	and it is delightfully, sweetly, painfully about this place we call home. The plot simple, four robots open a noodle shop in a jaggedly dystopian San Francisco,
1:16.6	in which California has won a war of secession and climate change pounds on the city.
1:21.6	But what comes across is that Newitz, as they have written, wants this weird, kinky, nerdy city to live through the coming
1:29.0	years of oligarchy and climate chaos.
	...

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