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"This category [science fiction] excludes rocket ships that make U-turns, serpent men of Neptune that lust after human maidens, and stories by authors who flunked their Boy Scout merit badge tests in descriptive astronomy."
- Robert Heinlein

Yeast Steak  
  Growing custom strains of yeast as food.  

...These strains of yeast have each their peculiar properties. The beef steak you thought you ate today was yeast. The frozen fruit confection you had for dessert was iced yeast. We have filtered yeast juice with the taste, appearance, and all the food value of milk.

It is flavor, more than anything else, you see, that makes yeast feeding popular and for the sake of flavor we have developed artificial, domesticated strains that can no longer support themselves on a diet of salts and sugar. One needs biotin; another needs pteroylglutamic acid; still others need seventeen different amino acids...

Technovelgy from The Evitable Conflict, by Isaac Asimov.
Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1950
Additional resources -

Compare to scop from Bruce Sterling's 1988 novel Islands in the Net and the yeast-beast machine from David Brin's 1994 novel Natulife and crop algae from James Blish's 1957 novel Cities in Flight. And don't forget protine from Philip K. Dick's 1955 novel Solar Lottery.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Evitable Conflict
  More Ideas and Technology by Isaac Asimov
  Tech news articles related to The Evitable Conflict
  Tech news articles related to works by Isaac Asimov

Articles related to Food
A Beautiful Visualization Of Compact Food
Thermostabilized Wet Meat Product (NASA Prototype)
Edible Meat-Like Fungus Like Barbara Hambly's Slunch?
Holland Factory 3D Printing 500 Tons Of Steak Per Month

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Science Fiction in the News

The New Habitable Zones Include Asimov's Ribbon Worlds
'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'

Atlas Robot Makes Uncomfortable Movements
'Not like me. A T-1000, advanced prototype. A mimetic poly-alloy. Liquid metal.'

Boring Company Drills Asimov's Single Vehicle Tunnels
'It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'

Humanoid Robots Tickle The Ivories
'The massive feet working the pedals, arms and hands flashing and glinting...'

A Remarkable Coincidence
'There is a philosophical problem of some difficulty here...'

Cortex 1 - Today A Warehouse, Tomorrow A Calculator Planet
'There were cubic miles of it, and it glistened like a silvery Christmas tree...'

Perching Ambush Drones
'On the chest of drawers something was perched.'

Leader-Follower Autonomous Vehicle Technology
'Jason had been guiding the caravan of cars as usual...'

Golf Ball Test Robot Wears Them Out
"The robot solemnly hit a ball against the wall, picked it up and teed it, hit it again, over and again...'

Boring Company Vegas Loop Like Asimov Said
'There was a wall ahead... It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'

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