Send Noodles

Automatic For The People.
(Image via Goodreads)

There’s a moment about a third of the way into Automatic Noodle — Annalee Newitz’ forthcoming novella — in which android protagonists complain about how the law prohibits robots from joining labour unions. It’s just a passing reference, but it’s an interesting implied criticism of contractualist approaches to labour relations. When unions are created by legal structures, the ability of labour to organize is constrained by adherence to government regulation. (By contrast, a solidarity-based union like the Industrial Workers of the World cannot be compelled to exclude anyone.)

The book — which hits store shelves on August 5 — is a small-scale story about four robots who open up a biangbiang noodle shop in San Francisco. It’s a quick, breezy read that details the trials of setting up a quasi-legal business while facing backlash from internet trolls.

Set in the aftermath of a Californian war of independence, Automatic Noodle is based in a new nation that has declared emancipation for artificial intelligences — including robots. Because this declaration was a controversial decision, the few rights granted to robots are always at risk.

Within this future California, robots have the right to earn a living, and the right to bodily autonomy … but are subject to restrictions around property ownership, where they can live, and what political activities they can engage in. They are not full citizens, and there are political forces (particularly the alt-right ideologues in charge of what’s left of the United States) seeking to undermine what rights the robots do have.

The four protagonist robots — octopus-like Cayenne, human-mimicking android Sweetie, former robot soldier Staybehind, and industrial kitchen robot Hands — find themselves abandoned by a low-rent employer and, thus, set about building a life for themselves.

This is all obviously a metaphor for the struggles of a wide variety of real-world equity-deserving groups. There’s a subplot about Cayenne and Hands having an ace-romance, and another about Sweetie having body dysmorphia, and yet another about Staybehind’s trauma from conflict. In the hands of another writer, this might have come across as heavy handed and confusing, but here it feels natural because the four protagonists are well developed and generally likeable. If anything, these plot lines might have deserved more time to play out in a larger work.

Annalee Newitz' novella is a love letter to a
version of San Francisco that has space for
working class people and is safe for people
of varying backgrounds.
(Image via SFTravel.com)

The titular noodle shop in the novella is a worker-owned collective both owned and managed by its employees. Far from the standard individualistic perspective on entrepreneurship, the employees embrace democratic decision-making and a system of shared rewards. This setup is an important driver impacting how workers are able to assert their rights.

One highlight of the book is the depiction of internet trolls who engage in conspiracy-fueled campaigns against the restaurant. Even though it is made clear in the text that those behind the review-bombing are bigoted and misinformed, it’s a portrayal that includes some empathy around how loneliness and a lack of community can drive people to feel connection in toxic online forums. 

Authentic Noodle has been described by its publisher as “cozy” science fiction and although it will appeal to fans of that subgenre, we’d suggest that its treatment of regressive bigots on the internet is decidedly ‘uncozy.’ There’s something timely about a novella in which the major plot line is a campaign of “coordinated inauthentic activity” against members of marginalized communities who have the temerity to eke out a modicum of success.

In a genre that often presents conflicts at a planetary (or galactic) scale, it’s sometimes a pleasure to read a work whose scope is very human-scale and relatable. Automatic Noodle is a gem of a novella that we highly endorse.

A Bee-lief in the Common Good

“It is truly amazing how many flavours of dumb an apocalypse can spawn.” 

— Ada Risa (Bee Speaker.)

Bee Speaker — the third book in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Dogs of War trilogy — is the capstone to an emotionally rich and intellectually satisfying hard science fiction series that deserves to be recognized with a nomination for the best series Hugo Award.

Bee Speaker's cover art
is by Pablo Hurtado
de Mendoza
(Image via Head of Zeus)

When the first Dogs of War novel was published in 2017, no North American publisher was willing to take it on. Children of Time had garnered Tchaikovsky some fans among science fiction readers, but he was still primarily seen as an author of multi-book epic fantasies.

Dogs of War was well received in the United Kingdom — earning a BSFA nod — but for years, it remained largely unknown in the United States and Canada.

That initial book introduced the audience to Rex, one of the first genetically-altered dogs bred and built as a loyal, obedient, and fearsome soldier. Along with his teammates — a hyperinteligent bear named Honey, a chamelon/lizard named Dragon, and a hive-mind swarm of Bees — Rex is dropped into the middle of a brutal war in near-future Mexico. If this were simply a war novel with a compelling protagonist, it would have still been a good piece of fiction … but Tchaikovsky shifts gears no fewer than four times through the story. With each pivot, the book becomes something more; a courtroom drama, a moral philosophy exercise, a political thriller. Tchaikovsky engages the reader with questions about moral culpability of those within a hierarchy, about the rights of animals, and more fundamentally, about what it means to be a person. It is a book that is complete unto itself, needed no sequel, and Tchaikovsky had no plans to write one.

Over the years, Dogs of War’s reputation grew by word of mouth. It resonated profoundly with some, and eventually found its readers. By 2021, it had earned a devoted following — and improbably, a sequel titled, Bear Head.

With Bear Head, Tchaikovsky took the story decades further into the future, centering the narrative around Rex’s teammate Honey. The sequel tackled the colonization of Mars by ruthless corporations using genetically modified humans to create a hierarchical civilization on the Red Planet. Like the previous book, Bear Head is about ways in which freedom can be subverted, but is more explicit in advancing an argument that if the rights of any sapient being are eroded then the rights of all sapient beings are at risk. Like the first book, it is complete unto itself and needed no sequel.

Which brings us to Bee Speaker, a novel that expands upon, refines, and also subverts thematic elements of the previous two novels in the trilogy. We may never have expected this sequel to exist, but are very glad it does.

Picking up centuries after the events of the previous book, Bee Speaker is set after a major technological collapse. On Earth — where much of the action takes place — the remnants of corporate feudalism have become warrior enclaves led by superannuated former billionaires and their descendant tribes, while subsistence farmers pay tribute from their meagre harvests, and a Bee-themed religion preserves what addled knowledge they can of the past. Mars — partially terraformed during the events of Book 2 and populated by genetically engineered humans, dogs, and other bioforms — fared slightly better than the Earth, having been forced by circumstances to maintain their technology for survival reasons.

Dogs of War has gained readership
over time, eventually being translated
into a variety of languages such as
French, Latvian, German, Catalan,
and of course Polish. 
(Image via Goodreads)

The book follows the exploits of modified human Ada, canine Wells, and lizard Irae — Martian engineers who are lured to Earth by a cryptic distress signal. Their expedition is the first contact that the two planets have had since the fall of Earthbound civilization and they stumble into unexpected situations and a clash of cultures, unintentionally upending local power structures.

The Martian characters operate under a misapprehension that the people of Earth will share their ideas about acting in the common good; while members of the feudal warrior culture make rash and impulsive decisions based on macho notions of honour. The book could be read as a parable about the impossibility of human progress, or as a comment on turning your back on the care and feeding of a working democracy.

While the previous books explored the pitfalls of hierarchies of high-technology and of corporate dominance, Bee Speaker posits that when democratic governance fails and technology crumbles, the worst sorts of low-tech hierarchies will reassert themselves. It also shows how even those who enjoy being at the top of the pyramid will eventually be brought low by the very hierarchies they believe in.

The cyclical nature of dark ages and renaissances will remind some readers of Walter Miller Jr.’s Canticle for Leibowicz, as will the role of religion in preserving knowledge. In Tchaikovsky’s book, however, the religion is based on the worship of Bees — the hyperinteligent hive mind who is the one character tying all three books together. One of our favourite characters in Bee Speaker is Cricket, a pious, easily influenced, and intellectually vulnerable young monk of the Apiary (the name for the church of Bees).

Uplifted animals have been a staple of science fiction for decades, but are often depicted either as just normal people, or as somehow … lesser. Informed by his passion for ethology (the study of animal behaviours), Tchaikovsky’s depiction of uplifted animals avoids these pitfalls; he seems to grok the canine soul, and offers us non-human characters who are not lesser, but inescapably other. We suspect that those who have had a dog in their life will appreciate this aspect of his speculative writing.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s ability to create stories infused with abiding empathy for all creatures great and small has helped solidify his following. This trilogy puts these insights front-and-centre. Although they may not be his best-known novels, the Dogs of War books might be his strongest and most emotionally interesting.

Bee Speaker is not in any way a sequel we expected, but it is one we are very glad exists.