Future Food Is Artificial: Difference between revisions

'''Digger''': Drek, I'd be happy to know I was eating every night.|'''''[[Shadowrun]]''''': Shadowtech Sourcebook }}

 

 

Future Food Is Artificial is a staple of [[Cyberpunk]] and other [[Dystopia|Dystopias]] because [[Only Electric Sheep Are Cheap]], and is often first clue that the [[Utopia]] we see isn't quite what it seems. However, it is also common in the [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness|Harder]] varieties of science fiction, particularly [[Space Opera|Space Operas]]; [http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/gardening-in-space gardens on spaceships] are [[Truth in Television]], but [[Let's Meet the Meat|battery farms]] on board anything less than a [[Generation Ship]] strains just about everyone's [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]].

If you discover to your horror that '''''[[Soylent Green|the artificial food is people!]]''''', that's [[Human Resources]].

 

{{examples}}

 

* In ''[[Alien]]'' the crew eats synthetic "food" which resembles spagetti or cabbage. In the movie, there is not much talk of what it is actually made of. In the novelization however, Parker says something to the effect of "Why would you care what it's made of? It's food now." - and it's strongly implied that the "robochef" actually uses [[Squick|the crew's waste]] to produce the meals.

* Humorously depicted in ''[[Brazil (Film)|Brazil]]'', in which meals at a fancy restaurant after an extravagant ordering ritual turned out to be scoops of mush along with a picture of the original meal they were intended to simulate.

** That's pretty obvious -- they grow it there on Pandora. After all, in a setting where the uncurable-on-Pandora medical cases are euthanized in place, they surely won't ship the food from the Earth. And having an automated chicken farm and a couple of greenhouses isn't all that expensive.

*** Possibly, but the trope still applies on Pandora. In the extended version, there is a scene in which Grace is forcing Jake to eat some food they have at the mobile station, and Jake mentions how at least he knows what he is eating when he is with the Na'vi.

* In the novel ''The Space Merchants'' (by [[Frederik Pohl]] and C.M. Kornbluth), there's a giant growing fleshy lump called "Chicken Little" (it was originally a piece of chicken heart tissue) that they carve slices off: the working man's "meat".

** Even better yet, it's fed by hundreds of tubes carrying raw yeast in from a multi-story yeast farm above it, tended by hordes of perpetually abused sweatshop workers.

*** Mostly because no one was crazy/dedicated enough. Living tissue cultures are nothing new, and growing the complete organs is a cutting-edge medical technology -- mostly for transplants, though, not food.

* One of Kilgore Trout's stories in [[Kurt Vonnegut]]'s ''[[Breakfast of Champions]]'' tells of a planet where all food is made from petroleum and coal, because its animal and plant life had been destroyed by pollution. The planet's dirty movies showed [[Food Porn|vivid color footage of people eating fruit, meat, vegetables, and other such foods]] that didn't exist any more.

* In ''[[The Goodness Gene]]'' by Sonia Levitin, synthetic food is part of the [[Government Conspiracy]]; dictator Hayli claims it's supposed to protect people from bacteria found in natural plants & animals {{spoiler|but really it's to protect ''him'' from a deadly allergy to peanuts and his severe germophobia, as well as to keep the populace dependent on the government.}} Still, people living in fringe communities are allowed to eat farmed food, though it's discouraged.

* Averted in ''The Parafaith War'' by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. The main character eats a lot of algae crackers and drinks a lot of Sustain (like a cross between an energy drink and a protein shake), and a breakfast with real eggs, real juice, and real bread for toast costs him about a month's salary. But that's just because shipping foodstuffs between solar systems is incredibly expensive and he's posted on a planet undergoing [[Terraform|terraforming]], so it can't support its own food production yet. When he visits home, on the capitol world of his society, he has plenty of real food available. The problems in Utopia are a bit deeper than what's in the fridge.

* Subverted in [[Peter F Hamilton]]'s ''Fallen Dragon'' - most food is created artificially, but there is plenty of room for farmland. It's just that synthetic foodstuffs are indistinguishable from the real thing and natural food [[Squick|Squicks]] the hell out of most people. The protagonist innocently eats a non-vat steak and vomits when he is told it came from a cow.

* Larry Niven's short story ''Vandervecken'' makes reference to a substance called "Dole Yeast"

 

== Real Life ==

 

 

[[Category:Cyberpunk Tropes]]

[[Category:We Will Not Use an Index In The Future]]