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"The first thing that's wrong with being a science-fiction writer today is that the present has caught up with the future and surpassed it."
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How will we feed ourselves as our population grows out of control? After we've cut down every rainforest to graze more cows, where will the fast food burgers of the future come from ?
Vats, probably. Chicken Little, a huge mass of cultured chicken breast, was kept alive by algae skimmed by nearly-slave labor from multistory towers of ponds surrounded by mirrors to focus the sunlight onto the ponds.
On January 17, 1912, Nobel prize-winning physician Dr. Alexis Carrel placed a part of a chicken's embryo heart in a nutrient medium in a glass flask of his own design. Every forty-eight hours the tissue doubled in size and was transferred to a new flask. Twenty years later, it was still growing.
In his 1941 story Methuselah's Children, Robert Heinlein paid homage to his work by referring to the famous chicken as a research tool for the long-lived Howard Families:
However, the chicken was not used for food; so it really doesn't count as "vat-grown food."
This quote from The Space Merchants is the earliest one I've found yet. See the comments for additional references; take a look at Frank Herbert's pseudoflesh for another example of a vat-grown meat.
Compare to artificial food from The World Set Free (1914) by H.G. Wells,
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,
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.
Thanks to readers asmohr, Daz and others for contributions to this item. Comment/Join this discussion ( 3 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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