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"I share the view of Pythagoras that the world is number. The ultimate substrate of the universe is math. There's no way to test that - it's pure metaphysical speculation."
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![]() Very early example of the idea of vat-grown meat.
This seems to have been inspired (just my guess, mind you) by "Mrs. 'Awkins" from Heinlein's 1941 story Methuselah's Children.
Lazarus found her servicing the deathless tissue of chicken heart known to the laboratory crew as "Mrs. 'Awkins." Mrs. 'Awkins was older than any member of the Families save possibly Lazarus himself; she was a growing piece of the original tissue obtained by the Families from the Rockefeller Institute in the twentieth century, and the tissues had been alive since early in the twentieth century even then. Dr. Hardy and his predecessors had kept their bit of it alive for more than two centuries now, using the Carrel-Lindbergh-O'Shaug techniques and still Mrs. 'Awkins flourished.
However, the chicken was not used for food; so it really doesn't count as "vat-grown food."
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,
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, and
vat-grown meat from Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson. Comment/Join this discussion ( 1 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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