Latest By
Category:
Armor
Artificial
Intelligence
Biology
Clothing
Communication
Computers
Culture
Data Storage
Displays
Engineering
Entertainment
Food
Input Devices
Lifestyle
Living Space
Manufacturing
Material
Media
Medical
Miscellaneous
Robotics
Security
Space Tech
Spacecraft
Surveillance
Transportation
Travel
Vehicle
Virtual
Person
Warfare
Weapon
Work
"...in fifty years, do you believe that people will be recognizably human?"
- Greg Bear
 |
| Chemical Production of Food | ||
| Creation of food in the laboratory rather than in the field. |
| At the National College, where it is taught as a regular science, I witnessed the chemical production of bread and a preparation resembling meat. Agriculture in this wonderful land, was a lost art. No one that I questioned had any knowledge of it. It had vanished in the dim past of their barbarism. With the exception of vegetables and fruit, which were raised in luscious perfection, their food came from the elements. A famine among such enlightened people was impossible, and scarcity was unknown. Food for the body and food for the mind were without price. It was owing to this that poverty was unknown to them, as well as disease. The absolute purity of all that they ate preserved an activity of vital power long exceeding our span of life. The length of their year, measured by the two seasons, was the same as ours, but the women who had marked a hundred of them in their lifetime, looked younger and fresher, and were more supple of limb than myself, yet I had barely passed my twenty-second year.
I wrote out a careful description of the processes by which they converted food out of the valueless elements—valueless because of their abundance—and put it carefully away for use in my own country. There drouth, or excessive rainfalls, produced scarcity, and sometimes famine. The struggle of the poor was for food, to the exclusion of all other interests. Many of them knew not what proper and health-giving nourishment was. But here in Mizora, the daintiest morsels came from the chemists laboratory, cheap as the earth under her feet. |
| From Mizora: A Prophecy,
by Mary E. Bradley Lane. Published by Cincinnati Commercial in 1881 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the compact food pastilles from The Senator's Daughter (1879) by Edward Page Mitchell and artificial food From The World Set Free (1914) by HG Wells.
Compare to 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,
animal tissue culture vat from Uller Uprising (1952) by H. Beam Piper,
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 and
ChickieNobs from Oryx and Crake (2003) by Margaret Atwood.
Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |
Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Mizora: A Prophecy
More Ideas
and Technology by Mary E. Bradley Lane
Tech news articles related to Mizora: A Prophecy
Tech news articles related to works by Mary E. Bradley Lane
| OK, NASA 3D Printer Of Food Not Yet Star Trek Food Synthesizer |
| BlueNalu Yellowtail Might Be Your First Lab-Grown Meat |
| Beijing HaiDiLao Robotic Hotpot Restaurant Now Flavored By Artificial Intelligence |
| Plants of the Future - What Should They Be Like |
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
Get the name of the item, a
quote, the book's name and the author's name, and Add
it here.
| <Previous | Next> |
|
|
|
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
|
Okay, sf fans. If you could have some art created from a science fiction sentence, what sentence would you pick?
'There were the cleaners, with large padded feet, who were apparently polishing their way the whole length...'
It's fascinating to me how the Apollo program forced people to think outside their usual boxes.
'Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures, like excavators or centipedes.'
'the hair-fine wire going deep into Owen's brain, down into the pleasure center.'
'There was a dim whirring, and the spheres tipped and began to rotate...'
'The houses are prefabricated units... and they sell at the flat rate of five hundred dollars a room — set up.'
