Food and Science Fiction: Part 1

by Buddha with a Camera
Food and Science Fiction: Part 1
Article by Javamano

Food and Science Fiction: Part 1 - Food












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What was the first sci-fi story to feature food? I really had no idea. I thought this would be easily answered and a nice neat list would emerge. Before I could answer that question I had to answer another: what is the first science fiction story? There is no consensus on this that I can find. People don't even agree on what science fiction is. Which lead, annoyingly, to another question; what is science fiction?Asimov is quoted as saying "true science fiction could not really exist until people understood the rationalism of science and began to use it with respect in their stories". If I accept this (I do not) there is no sci-fi until the 1650's or as late as the 1800's. But I also recognize the science of the natural world and empirical investigation, that of classical antiquity. So in my search for the first sci-fi with food references this gives me a starting point thousands of years in the past and a broad definition of sci-fi.Daedalus and Icarus (ca 1325 BCE)The myth of Daedalus and Icarus may qualify as the first recorded sci-fi because of these elements: description of the invention of wings held together by wax (technology), the alteration of the natural order by allowing men to fly, and the warning theme of man's all too limited science proving to be his undoing. But where's the food? The honeycombs from which came the bee's wax? They got the feathers from one kind of bird or another; did King Minos ever wonder why Daedalus and Icarus ate so much fowl?There are a few oblique references as father and son take flight Daedalus looks back at the island of Crete and sees a fisherman catching fish, a shepherd with his flock and a ploughman in the field. Then, before poor Icarus plummets into the Aegean, they fly by the island of Calymne which is "rich in honey".True History (ca 150 CE)Many have called True History (by Lucian of Samosata) the first sci-fi story. Regardless of your personal view on this, there are food references in True History as the protagonists travel on a sea of milk, cross a river of wine and find an island of cheese. They catch and eat the wine-fish which makes them drunk.They enter a vineyard made up of women who are half grapevine (women above the waist and below rooted to the earth) who's grapes the men try to pluck to the displeasure of the grapevine women. The protagonists later take sides in the war between the inhabitants of the Sun and the Moon. Some of the combatants are Millet-shooters and Garlic-fighters; some wear helmets of giant beans, and the Stalk-mushrooms who use mushroom caps as shields and stalks of asparagus for spears. Also we

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