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"SF looks towards an imaginary future, while fantasy, by and large, looks towards an imaginary past."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Synthetic Food | ||
| Edible food for humans, grown in the laboratory. |
| He had earned that position by his inventions which made possible the artificial production of all food supplies in the individual home. Prior to his work in this dietary field, large laboratories in every city had produced synthetic food and meats, grown in large test tubes. The method was adequate in every way to the needs of the populace, but the manner of distribution was still antiquated. Hubler perfected a small but complete production laboratory, not much larger than the electric refrigerators of the past century. His product in its preparation was entirely automatic and practically foolproof. It would generate, day by day, and year by year, a complete and attractive food supply for a family of two. It not only created the food, but there was an auxiliary machine which prepared it for the table in any form desired by the consumer. All that was necessary was the selection of one of the twenty-five menus and the pressing of the proper buttons. |
| Technovelgy from Unto Us A Child Is Born,
by David H. Keller. Published by Amazing Stories in 1933 Additional resources -
|
Simpson Stokes expresses this same sentiment in his tongue-in-cheek story Down on the Farm, published in Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1937:
“Don’t be coarse, Elbert,” Mrs. Geary said.
“Well, I’ve been to outlandish countries where they still have such awful habits, haven’t I? It nearly made me sick to see the way they depended on vegetation being transmuted through the filthy stomachs of animals, for meat and milk.
Compare to artificial food from The World Set Free (1914) by H.G. Wells,
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,
pseudoflesh from Whipping Star (1969) by Frank Herbert,
vat-grown meat from Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson and
ChickieNobs from Oryx and Crake (2003) by Margaret Atwood.
Arguably, one of the first people to talk about synthetic meat was Winston Churchill. In 1931 in an essay Fifty Years Hence he wrote:
“I think that the greatest blessing has been the abolition of edible animals,” said Farmer Geary, adjusting a recliner and settling himself at the most comfortable angles. “Imagine the horrible animal smells and the dirt; the sweating skins and salivating mouths; the flies.”
"We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium."
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Unto Us A Child Is Born
More Ideas
and Technology by David H. Keller
Tech news articles related to Unto Us A Child Is Born
Tech news articles related to works by David H. Keller
Synthetic Food-related
news articles:
- In Vitro Meatballs For SciFi Spaghetti
- Mmm, Tasty Duck From A Petri Dish
| Garçon! A Menu For Artemis II, S'il Vous Plaît |
| A Beautiful Visualization Of Compact Food |
| Thermostabilized Wet Meat Product (NASA Prototype) |
| Edible Meat-Like Fungus Like Barbara Hambly's Slunch? |
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'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
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