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Non-cartographic book rec: "Automatic Noodle" by Annalee Newitz is a cozy dystopian scifi about robots starting a noodle joint in San Francisco. Gave me powerful Golden State feels! Newitz even used Joel Pomerantz's map Seep City to ensure the city hydrology worked! us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

us.macmillan.comAutomatic NoodleA cozy near-future novella about a crew of leftover robots opening their very own noodle shop, from acclaimed sci-fi author Annalee Newitz.An instant USA Tod...

The Map Center

@mapcenter.com

Overall I found it sweet, imaginative and richly explored. Gave me a killer restaurant list for the next time I'm in SF. It's an extremely millennial book in its vocabulary and attitude. Sometimes that felt too on-the-nose? 8/10 ideal quick read best served with a spicy hot noodle soup.

27/10/26, 5:03 pm0 reposts10 likes

Sam G. Howard

@samghoward.riliberator.com

I listened to it on audiobook as part of the Hugo packet. It was very good (high quality stuff in the Best Novella category).

The Map Center

@mapcenter.com

Because I know every geographer in the Bay Area (lol I wish), I actually had a beer with Joel Pomerantz in like 2018 when Seep City came out. He did incredible, exhaustive research on the history of San Francisco's hydrology and hid did it all without GIS. I wanna say he used Illustrator. WTF.

The Map Center

@mapcenter.com

I tried to buy some of his maps for The Map Center but he only hand delivers his maps one at a time on a bicycle. No bulk orders.

Annalee Newitz

@annaleen.bsky.social

It's true! I got to talk to him because he biked over to deliver my map.

The Map Center

@mapcenter.com

What a sweet guy. When the Nature in the City map was released in 2017 he noticed that a 'historic waterway' they drew was actually an 18th century Spanish ink spill that was copied overtime and eventually the error made it into a modern SFPUC dataset and thus into the map.