Sourdough
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.
Stats for nerds
10recommend
15mentions
13people
2017–2026years
80% recommend20% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Legacy Fleet Trilogy
Fun easy read, Sourdough / 24 hr library (Robin Sloan)
- I would expect nothing less from Robin Sloan! I absolutely loved reading "Sourdough." https://www.robinsloan.com/books/sourdough/
- Lab-grown lembas? Excellent news. (See also: "Sourdough", by Robin Sloan.)
- Seems like most of the discussion here is focused on everyone's own experience with this, but can I just recommend Robin Sloan as a human in general for folks to follow in their lives?
His 2 novels, "Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore" and "Sourdough", are both really engaging reads. His 3rd novel is in progress and it seems like it's going to be more of the same quality. He also has a couple of novellas and a bunch of great short stories (some of which he did limited printings of and mailed out and one of which was procedurally generated and unique to the person who purchased it).
His newsletter is constantly filled with great media recommendations and he's always working on something interesting in that bridges the media and tech worlds.
He also makes great olive oil (Fat Gold).
- I loved Sourdough by Robin Sloan, will check out this one too.
- Thank you for the Robin Sloan link, I've been a fan of his ever since I read Sourdough for a book club a few years ago (incidentally while learning how to make my own by total coincedence) and his style really resonates with me. That blog was an interesting take and I've definitely experienced some of his frustration while making a small browser extension - it took an hour to code, and about 3 hours to wrangle it to conform to the chrome web store requirements before giving up and switching to Firefox ;)
Love the achievements section too, neat idea!
