Antique Eel Spear
Food and Science Fiction: Part 1 by Javamano
What was the first sci-fi story to feature food? I really had no idea. I thought this would be easily answered and a nice neat list would emerge. Before I could answer that question I had to answer another: what is the first science fiction story? There is no consensus on this that I can find. People don’t even agree on what science fiction is. Which lead, annoyingly, to another question; what is science fiction?
Asimov is quoted as saying “true science fiction could not really exist until people understood the rationalism of science and began to use it with respect in their stories”. If I accept this (I do not) there is no sci-fi until the 1650′s or as late as the 1800′s. But I also recognize the science of the natural world and empirical investigation, that of classical antiquity. So in my search for the first sci-fi with food references this gives me a starting point thousands of years in the past and a broad definition of sci-fi.
Daedalus and Icarus (ca 1325 BCE)
The myth of Daedalus and Icarus may qualify as the first recorded sci-fi because of these elements: description of the invention of wings held together by wax (technology), the alteration of the natural order by allowing men to fly, and the warning theme of man’s all too limited science proving to be his undoing. But where’s the food? The honeycombs from which came the bee’s wax? They got the feathers from one kind of bird or another; did King Minos ever wonder why Daedalus and Icarus ate so much fowl?
There are a few oblique references as father and son take flight Daedalus looks back at the island of Crete and sees a fisherman catching fish, a shepherd with his flock and a ploughman in the field. Then, before poor Icarus plummets into the Aegean, they fly by the island of Calymne which is “rich in honey”.
True History (ca 150 CE)
Many have called True History (by Lucian of Samosata) the first sci-fi story. Regardless of your personal view on this, there are food references in True History as the protagonists travel on a sea of milk, cross a river of wine and find an island of cheese. They catch and eat the wine-fish which makes them drunk.
They enter a vineyard made up of women who are half grapevine (women above the waist and below rooted to the earth) who’s grapes the men try to pluck to the displeasure of the grapevine women. The protagonists later take sides in the war between the inhabitants of the Sun and the Moon. Some of the combatants are Millet-shooters and Garlic-fighters; some wear helmets of giant beans, and the Stalk-mushrooms who use mushroom caps as shields and stalks of asparagus for spears. Also we meet the Puppycorns and dog-faced men who fly on winged acorns.
We are told that the moon men all eat the same food; smoke from flying frogs cooked over coals. And all they drink is dew squeezed from the air. We learn that their noses run with honey and they sweat milk from which they make cheese.
During their travels they eat a lot of fish and meet the Broilers, an eel-eyed-lobster-faced people, the Mergoats (men above and catfish below), and the Crabclaws, the Codhead, Solefeet and the Clan Crawfish.
True Story is an outlandish satirical yarn, the spiritual parent of Gulliver’s Travels and Hitchhikers Guide.
Theologus Autodidactus (ca 1268 CE)
May have the first description of food broken down to sustain life – metabolism. Not sure if this qualifies as proto sci-fi or just a new scientific postulate. It is at least about food. Theologus Autodidactus also criticizes the idea of wine being used as self-medication, an idea held by Ancient Greek physicians as well as some unorthodox Muslim physicians in his time, despite the Islamic prohibition of alcohol. The novel further argues that the consumption of alcohol, along with the prevalence of homosexuality among a small minority of Muslims at the time, were the cause of the Mongol invasions. Not much of a postulate coming more than a century before the advent of “Occam’s Razor”.
The Golem of Prague (ca 1560)
Are the elements of the Golem folktales (there are numerous versions) science fiction? Is there any science in the stories? Is there a connection to food? On the surface, no, no and no. But I cannot stop thinking of this spiritually motivated object-lesson also as a tragedy of hubris and misguided human manipulation of the natural order with profound if misused knowledge. Ok, that does sound a little like sci-fi. What about the food? There are the vicious and ludicrous claims underlying the “Blood Libel”, that Prague Jews were using the blood of Christian babies for rituals. In the story the libel is the inspiration for Judah Loew ben Bezalel, (chief rabbi of Prague) to create a golem to defend the ghetto from anti-Jewish attacks and avenge the libel. There is also the sacred scroll that in some versions of the tale is placed in the mouth of the golem, and this symbolic manna that brings the lumpen clay behemoth to life. The history of imbuing the inanimate with life is long – Pygmalion, the Golem, Frankenstein. I think it is the implacable and mute irresistible force of the Golem that makes it scary and reminiscent of the silent and all-powerful Gort.
Somnium (1620)
In Somnium (“The Dream”) a fantasy, by Johannes Kepler, a young man (Duracotus) is transported to the Moon by magic. The story describes how earth looks when viewed from the moon, and is considered the first scientific treatise on lunar astronomy. In the story the boys’ mother, the Icelandic witch Fiolxhilda gives her son (banished for prying into her magic) a drowsing draught to help him survive his journey to the moon during a solar eclipse. Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov have called this the first science fiction story.
The New Atlantis (1627)
I hesitated including this in the list. Although it has all of the criteria necessary to be counted as early science fiction: a speculative discussion of what science might be in the future, descriptions of an “idealized” society, ruminations on food, drink, horticulture, animal husbandry, and a description of a “eugenics” program. Frances Bacon also anticipates many inventions that did not appear for centuries. The New Atlantis is almost a definition of “speculative fiction”. Still, at times it seems like a big list as the “Atlanteans” enumerate the wonders of their society to the visiting Englishmen.
One redeeming quality of the work is the frequent mention of drink, brew-houses, cider, ale and wine; the pursuit of piety and the social ideal is thirsty work:
“I will not hold you long with recounting of our brewhouses, bake-houses, and kitchens, where are made divers drinks, breads, and meats, rare and of special effects. Wines we have of grapes; and drinks of other juice of fruits, of grains, and of roots; and of mixtures with honey, sugar, manna, and fruits dried, and decocted…We have drinks also brewed with several herbs, and roots, and spices; yea with several fleshes, and white-meats; whereof some of the drinks are such, as they are in effect meat and drink both: so that divers, especially in age, do desire to live with them, with little or no meat or bread.”
Man does not live by drink alone and the story has much to say about cooking and baking and food of all kinds:
“Breads we have of several grains, roots, and kernels; yea and some of flesh and fish dried; with divers kinds of leavenings and seasonings: so that some do extremely move appetites; some do nourish so, as divers do live of them, without any other meat; who live very longâ
