Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"Science fiction is really sociological studies of the future, things that the writer believes are going to happen by putting two and two together."
- Ray Bradbury
 |
| Compact Food Pastilles | ||
| One small tablet is a month's worth of food. |
As far as I know, this is the first instance of the concept of the "food tablet", which later became an sf standard.
| He took from his waistcoat pocket the small gold box, scarcely larger than a watch, and opened the cover. In the palm of her white hand he placed one of the little pastilles.
"Eat it," said he. "It will satisfy your hunger." She put the morsel into her mouth. "I would do as you bade me," she said, "even if it were poison." "It is not poison," he rejoined. "It is nourishment in the only rational form." "But it is tasteless; almost without substance." "Yet it will support life for from eighteen to twenty-five days. This little gold box holds food enough to afford all subsistence to the entire Seventy-sixth Congress for a month." She took the box and curiously examined its contents. "And how long would it support my life- for more than a year, perhaps?" "Yes, for more than ten- more than twenty years." "I will not bore you with chemical and physiological facts," continued Wanlee, "but you must know that the food which we take, in whatever form, resolves itself into what are called proximate principles- starch, sugar, oleine, flurin, albumen, and so on. These are selected and assimilated by the organs of the body, and go to build up the necessary tissues. But all these proximate principles, in their turn, are simply combinations of the ultimate chemical elements, chiefly carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen. It is upon these elements that we depend for sustenance. By the old plan we obtained them indirectly. They passed from the earth and the air into the grass; from the grass into the muscular tissues of the ox; and from the beef into our own persons, loaded down and encumbered by a mass of useless, irrelevant matter. The German chemists have discovered how to supply the needed elements in compact, undiluted form- here they are in this little box. Now shall mankind go direct to the fountainhead of nature for his aliment; now shall the old roundabout, cumbrous, inhuman method be at an end; now shall the evils of gluttony and the attendant vices cease; now shall the brutal murdering of fellow animals and brother vegetables forever stop- now shall all this be, since the new, holy cause has been consecrated by the lips I love!" |
| From The Senator's Daughter,
by Edward Page Mitchell. Published by Not known in 1879 Additional resources -
|
This is a very early reference to this sfnal idea. Food Pills are mentioned in The Patchwork Girl of Oz, a 1913 Oz novel by L. Frank Baum. The Jetson family would sometimes eat convenient pills for dinner in the 1960's first showing of that cartoon series. Compare to the wine pellets from Redmask of the Outlands (1934) by Nat Schachner.
For more modern examples that are more like real food, see synthetic food from Unto us a Child is Born (1933) by David H. Keller,
syntho-steak from Farmer in the Sky (1950) by Robert Heinlein,
vat meat from The End of the Line (1951) by James Schmitz,
Chicken Little from The Space Merchants (1952) by Frederik Pohl and CM Kornbluth,
animal tissue culture vat from Uller Uprising (1952) by H. Beam Piper,
carniculture plants (factories) from Four-Day Planet (1961) by H. Beam Piper,
butcher plant from Time is the Simplest Thing (1961) by Clifford Simak.
Compare to the chemically produced food from Mizora: A Prophecy (1881) by Mary E. Bradley Lane.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 1 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Senator's Daughter
More Ideas
and Technology by Edward Page Mitchell
Tech news articles related to The Senator's Daughter
Tech news articles related to works by Edward Page Mitchell
Compact Food Pastilles-related
news articles:
- Never Eat Food Again - Just Soylent
- AeroLife Inhalable Food Powder
| OK, NASA 3D Printer Of Food Not Yet Star Trek Food Synthesizer |
| BlueNalu Yellowtail Might Be Your First Lab-Grown Meat |
| Beijing HaiDiLao Robotic Hotpot Restaurant Now Flavored By Artificial Intelligence |
| Plants of the Future - What Should They Be Like |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
Okay, sf fans. If you could have some art created from a science fiction sentence, what sentence would you pick?
'There were the cleaners, with large padded feet, who were apparently polishing their way the whole length...'
It's fascinating to me how the Apollo program forced people to think outside their usual boxes.
'Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures, like excavators or centipedes.'
'the hair-fine wire going deep into Owen's brain, down into the pleasure center.'
'There was a dim whirring, and the spheres tipped and began to rotate...'
'The houses are prefabricated units... and they sell at the flat rate of five hundred dollars a room — set up.'
