Food in Science Fiction: Someone Else's Opinion

Understanding the many meanings of food and meals in literature is one of my favorite indoor sports. Aside: I don't care for any outdoor sports at all!

I guess I'm not the only one. Lizzy Saxe has written a very amusing article on this subject for LitHub:

ON THE FREAKY FOODS OF 
FICTIONAL WORLDS

FROM ABUNDANCE TO SCARCITY, WHAT EATING IN SCI-FI SAYS ABOUT THE REAL WORLD

After calling out several famous favorite foods of fictional people and creatures -- like honey and Winnie-the-Pooh  or madeleines and Proust's narrator -- she says "But in modern sci-fi, no one ever seems to have a good meal."

Saxe observes that science-fiction in the 1950s and 1960s often portrayed an abundance of food without exactly explaining where it came from or who cooked it. She hints that this was due to the predominance of male authors who by implication didn't need to know how meals appeared on the tables in their own conventional wife-run homes, so "Robbie the Robot can make anything at any time for anyone."

A next step in the role of food in speculative fiction reflects environmentalism, with awareness of how a planet -- not necessarily earth -- could be ruined by overconsumption, Saxe suggests. She offers examples of stories where food is scarce and a cause of friction or war, stories of starvation and apocalypse, imagined worlds where there are privileged diners and those on scarce rations, and more. She writes: "in imagining the future, writers use food as a symbol not only of hope and good luck, but of death, environmental warning, and class."

Saxe's conclusion is a bit over-optimistic, in my opinion, but it's an interesting conclusion to an article that explores many of the ideas that I'm fond of looking for when I read:

"If science fiction at its best provides a prism through which to examine the present, then we’re being sent a very clear message by authors as far back as Bradbury and as recent as Jemisin. Treating our planet—and each other—with disrespect will be our doom, but if we work hard to take care of both the people and the world around us, we can find ways to keep going in the years to come."

Illustration from the LitHub article. Odd choice, since Star Trek wasn't mentioned.