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"…we store information differently, reading a science fiction story, to make it make sense."
- Samuel R. Delany

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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  More Ideas and Technology from The Evitable Conflict
  More Ideas and Technology by Isaac Asimov
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Science Fiction in the News

AI Operates An Excavator
'So far as I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at all.'

US Army IBEX Exoskeleton Walks Troops Out Of Danger
'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'

Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'

Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'

Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'

Grok And The City Fathers From 'Cities In Flight' By James Blish
'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.'

Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?'

Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'

Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'

I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'

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