Food, Glorious Food! Five SF Approaches to a Balanced Diet

https://www.tor.com/2022/11/22/food-glorious-food-five-sf-approaches-to-a-balanced-diet/

What it says on the tin.
--
My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
My tor pieces at https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/
My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll

On Wednesday, November 23, 2022 at 8:10:47 AM UTC-6, James Nicoll wrote:
> Food, Glorious Food! Five SF Approaches to a Balanced Diet
>
> https://www.tor.com/2022/11/22/food-glorious-food-five-sf-approaches-to-a-balanced-diet/
>
> What it says on the tin.
> --
........."Why pay out hard cash for bad food when good food is included in your basic dividend?"

"Because one more balanced ration would unbalance me. Come on."

Peter Wezeman
anti-social Darwinist

On 2022-11-23, James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:

> Food, Glorious Food! Five SF Approaches to a Balanced Diet
>
> https://www.tor.com/2022/11/22/food-glorious-food-five-sf-approaches-to-a-balanced-diet/

"To Serve Man"

_Soylent Green_ (movie)

_The Stuff_ (movie)

That _Futurama_ episode where a delicious food turns out to be the
young of an advanced alien species who don't take lightly to this.
Or something like that.

We're all descended from Slaver food yeast.

I think it was in Greg Egan's _Diaspora_ where our protagonist has
dinner at a restaurant where you get a discount for trying and
rating newly created foodstuffs.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

On 11/23/2022 8:10 AM, James Nicoll wrote:
> Food, Glorious Food! Five SF Approaches to a Balanced Diet
>
> https://www.tor.com/2022/11/22/food-glorious-food-five-sf-approaches-to-a-balanced-diet/
>
> What it says on the tin.

I am 1 for 5, The Space Merchants.

There is also The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress where inmates in the Moon are
mining water and growing wheat to be shipped to Earth.

Lynn

James Nicoll wrote:
> Food, Glorious Food! Five SF Approaches to a Balanced Diet
>
> https://www.tor.com/2022/11/22/food-glorious-food-five-sf-approaches-to-a-balanced-diet/
>
> What it says on the tin.

There's no need for a menu at the restaurant in "The Tooth" (Dewey)
<https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v003n04_1952-08/page/n31/mode/2up>
because you can order whatever you want for the price of one dollar per
person. The service is fast. You receive your fill of uncanny biscuits
and no matter how much you eat any after-dinner heaviness disappears
within minutes.

PR's "fat-moss" creates an opposite effect - you never feel hungry
because you constantly "eat" very high calorie food:

This moss, which grew profusely, continually released spores
into the atmosphere which had a fantastic effect upon all
living creatures that inhaled them, voluntarily or not. The
spores contained as much as 80% highly active fats which
deposited rapidly in the body. One gram of this fat developed
a value of approximately 10 kilo-calories when burned by the
body. The remaining 20% of the spore was made up of carbohydrates
and protein.

Six novellas within PR's "Posbis Zyklus" develop the fat-moss theme:

"118 Sgt Robot"
"119 Seeds of Ruin"
"120 Planet Mechanica"
"121 Heritage of the Lizard People"
"130 Volunteers for Frago"
"139 World Without Mercy"

Posbis is a pluralized portmanteau of positronic and biologic, with the
latter revered as the "innermost." Planet Mechanica is the Posbi home
world.
The Azgons on planet Azgola are Arkonide descendants. They're
nominally thin and lanky. But Department III agents arrive and see
Azgons die, crushed to death under their own obesity.
Behind the scenes lurk less recent arrivals: Springers, who plan to
profligately profit as proprietors of the galaxy's bread basket. The
Springers remain blissfully ignorant about how fat-moss also threatens
them.
Solar Imperium scientists hypothesize an alien lizard race
originally created the fat-moss food production process: scoutships to
seek out oxygen rich planets, followed by a seedship, then ultimately a
harvestship.
The lizards behind the scheme disappeared but their scoutships,
seedships, and harvestships remain on autopilot as an artifact. And the
ships now threaten Solar Imperium planets with oxygen atmospheres.

Danke,

--
Don.......My cat's )\._.,--....,'``. https://crcomp.net/reviews.php
telltale tall tail /, _.. \ _\ (`._ ,. Walk humbly with thy God.
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.' Make 1984 fiction again.

On 23/11/2022 08.10, James Nicoll wrote:
> Food, Glorious Food! Five SF Approaches to a Balanced Diet
>
> https://www.tor.com/2022/11/22/food-glorious-food-five-sf-approaches-to-a-balanced-diet/

I'm a bit late to the party, but a benefactor to humanity
finds a novel way to address this issue in "A Statue for Father":

<https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?68271>

--
Michael F. Stemper
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

On Saturday, 3 December 2022 at 19:46:14 UTC, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
> On 23/11/2022 08.10, James Nicoll wrote:
> > Food, Glorious Food! Five SF Approaches to a Balanced Diet
> >
> > https://www.tor.com/2022/11/22/food-glorious-food-five-sf-approaches-to-a-balanced-diet/
> I'm a bit late to the party, but a benefactor to humanity
> finds a novel way to address this issue in "A Statue for Father":
>
> <https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?68271>

That was a YASID recently, and I don't remember
if we IDed it? Was it elsewhere than here?

Spoiler - It is the one where a time machine
delivers dinosaurs from the past and they're edible.

On Wednesday, November 23, 2022 at 11:30:08 AM UTC-7, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> On 2022-11-23, James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> > Food, Glorious Food! Five SF Approaches to a Balanced Diet
> >
> > https://www.tor.com/2022/11/22/food-glorious-food-five-sf-approaches-to-a-balanced-diet/
> "To Serve Man"
>
> _Soylent Green_ (movie)
>
> _The Stuff_ (movie)
>
> That _Futurama_ episode where a delicious food turns out to be the
> young of an advanced alien species who don't take lightly to this.
> Or something like that.
>
> We're all descended from Slaver food yeast.
>
> I think it was in Greg Egan's _Diaspora_ where our protagonist has
> dinner at a restaurant where you get a discount for trying and
> rating newly created foodstuffs.

Then there is "They're Made out of Meat" by Terry Bisson which I read and there is a video adaptation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

On 04/12/2022 10.27, Robert Carnegie wrote:
> On Saturday, 3 December 2022 at 19:46:14 UTC, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
>> On 23/11/2022 08.10, James Nicoll wrote:
>>> Food, Glorious Food! Five SF Approaches to a Balanced Diet
>>>
>>> https://www.tor.com/2022/11/22/food-glorious-food-five-sf-approaches-to-a-balanced-diet/
>> I'm a bit late to the party, but a benefactor to humanity
>> finds a novel way to address this issue in "A Statue for Father":
>>
>> <https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?68271>
>
> That was a YASID recently, and I don't remember
> if we IDed it? Was it elsewhere than here?

I don't recall it coming up here.

> Spoiler - It is the one where a time machine
> delivers dinosaurs from the past and they're edible.
Not just edible:

[...] A meal without dinachicken is a meal we choke
down to keep body and soul together. Only dinachicken
is _food_.

--
Michael F. Stemper
Deuteronomy 24:17