Food in SF and F

[sartorias]

I have an entry included with today's Mind Meld.

Comments

[asakiyume]

I *do* distinctly remember food from the fantasy stories--and science fantasy (remember that term? it was used for books like A Wrinkle in Time) stories--from childhood. I can *very* much remember the food from the Narnia books: Turkish delight in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, apples and bear meat in Prince Caspian, precious water when they were becalmed in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the terrifying cookery book in in The Sliver Chair and the residents of Bism talking about drinking freshly squeeze ruby and diamond juice--and then the bacon when they finally break free back to the surface again. Hmm, not coming up with much from The Horse and His Boy, though I remember how excited Shasta was with all the food the Narnians fed him when they thought he was Prince Corin. In The Magician's Nephew there were the toffees that grew into a toffee tree--and of course the healing apple. Nothing from The Last Battle, but that's the one I reread the least.

Maybe kids' books are better about food?

[sartorias]

I think kids' books were better about food. Who can forget the fake turkey dinner in Wrinkle in time--or the delicious-sounding turkish delight of the Narnia books? (And I remember someone bringing Turkish Delight to a Mythie meeting in the late sixties, and how disappointing it was to discover it was just marzipan. Glarg!)

[asakiyume]

I think you must have gotten a different sort of Turkish delight from the stuff we got in England--there it was chewy and rose flavored and dusted with confectioners sugar and quite nice! (Well, if you like rose flavoring)

[sartorias]

I found out later that there are apparently many different flavors. I just remember at that time thinking that the imagined stuff was much preferable to the real thing!

[dsgood]

I think science fiction writers tend to underestimate how much a "normal" diet will change. I belong to the first generation of Americans to grow up eating pizza (outside Italian neighborhoods.) A grocery about a block from me will soon have Thai vegetable pasties. White Castle didn't use to have fish tacos. Gas stations didn't use to offer espresso coffee. Et cetera.

[sartorias]

Good point.

[anna_wing]

There's also the problem of the amount of explanation that would be needed for food in a science fiction context. If it's reasonably near-future, or with some connection to Earth than you could just use current human cuisines, but if it's something like the Culture or Vernor Vinge's Zones of Thought, then you would have to spend time describing truly alien things in some detail for them to make sense to the reader, which might or might not suit the novel. Though Somtow Sucharitkul did quite well with describing meals in his Inquestor novels. But then, he'e Thai. Lois McMaster Bujold does quite well too. Who could forget the butterbugs?

Patricia McKillip's fantasy "The Book of Atrix Wolfe" had some fabulous descriptions of meals. Quite a large chunk of it was set in a medievalish kitchen, and she paid a lot of attention to the details of its management, organisation and output.

[princesselwen]

When I think of food in fantasy, the first books I think of are the Redwall series. Characters spend a lot of time preparing their food, there's at least one (if not more) magnificent mouth-watering feasts per book, and even when they're on journeys what they eat gets mentioned. Jacques even released a cookbook. I remember reading that he did it for similar reasons to what you mentioned--he always read stories where there were feasts, but no one described what they were eating. He also grew up in WWII during rationing, so when he wrote his own books he filled them with food descriptions. Just reading them is enough to make me hungry.
Narnia is good about food, as well.

[sartorias]

Thanks for the data about Jacques!