Sourdough: A Novel - Secret Bear Library

272 pages

Published Sept. 5, 2017 by MCD.

(2 reviews)

Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers close up shop, and fast. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her—feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.

Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market, and a whole new world opens …

Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers close up shop, and fast. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her—feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.

Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market, and a whole new world opens up.

When Lois comes before the jury that decides who sells what at Bay Area markets, she encounters a close-knit club with no appetite for new members. But then, an alternative emerges: a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology. But who are these people, exactly?

5 editions

[email protected] reviewed Sourdough: A Novel by Robin Sloan

Review of 'Sourdough: A Novel' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Someday someone will dig through the carbon nanotube graveyard of Silicon Valley and wonder, was there ever any humanity here? And someone else will hand them this book, gray and dusty from age, and say, "Yes. Many of the people here felt the yearning of creating something by hand, for no other reason than the pleasure of mastering a craft, and sharing it with their friends. Those people all left, and the ones that remained turned into robots, and died." The first person nods solemnly. It is a shame. Had more people read this book, perhaps this land might have been saved.

Emily Johnson

rated it

Mar 9