At the Helsinki World Science Fiction Congress, which ended on August 11 this year, American writer N. K. Jemisin won the 75th Hugo Award for Best Feature Story for his "The Obelisk Gate" to beat the much-anticipated "Three-Body Death Immortal" by Chinese readers. "Obelisk's Gate" continues the era of Jemisin's last award-winning work, Season Five: on the supercontinent The Stillness, a catastrophic climate sweeps the globe and human civilization descends into icy darkness. Some species forcibly hibernate to escape predators; Stone Eaters make a living from marble and sand, and alien alliances invade other continents because of the depletion of food resources... The depletion of resources, especially food resources, is the fuse for the dark side of society to counter humanity. Climate change and darkness are common settings in science fiction. Since human beings have relied on solar radiation energy for thousands of years to obtain food, how to feed their stomachs in catastrophic climates in the future has become a topic that science fiction writers and screenwriters talk about.
Of the thousands of science fiction works, at least some of them more accurately portray the future of the universe. In that strange time and space, what do we eat, how do we eat, and where does the food come from?
In fact, as an omnivorous animal, human beings adapt to new foods quickly and have a strong ability to domesticate edible species, I am afraid that no other species can be right. From this point of view, the "future" of human food always comes sooner than imagined.
For example, the corn that nurtured the Civilization of South America actually originated from the pitifully thin little lynx (Latin name: Zea mays subsp. Parviglumis), after humans continued to choose breeding that was conducive to harvesting and retention, our understanding of corn expanded to today's "sweet corn", "waxy corn", or "butter corn cob".
From left to right, learn about the evolution of female ears of corn.
For example, both cherries and cherry blossoms belong to the rose plum subfamily, but we wouldn't imagine a wave of cherry picking after the cherry blossom season in Japan; that's because the vast majority of cherry subspecies don't have fruit value.
For example, bananas sold in the United States — no matter which supermarket you buy them from — all have the same genes. They all belong to the Cavendish variety, which are not affected by yellow leaf virus and black stripe virus and have no seeds, eliminating the sexual reproduction of bananas. Imagine that all the bananas we eat now are just replicas of each other, identical brothers — doesn't that sound sci-fi in itself?
Now, close your eyes and imagine that you came to the "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" and chose a booth by the window to sit down. Outside the window, a few asteroids explode in silence, and the light of the fire shines on the silver fork in front of you - the waiter (probably not human) brings you the futuristic world menu, and the chefs of various countries - the science fiction writers - will present you with a series of signature dishes...
Quick Business Package: Small green pills, minimalist energy intake
"Green food is made by people!"
- "Green Food" (Hong Kong translation of "Super Century Spy Murder Case")
Some dietary minimalists believe that the fundamental need to "eat" lies in the intake of energy and nutrients used to keep the body functioning. Even in extreme cases, as long as the nutrient intake is sufficient, the act of "eating" itself can be ignored. Humans imagining a future world, we may develop other energy intake organs: such as some kind of "charging" organ; for example, the "wax bath" in the "Wanted Order" that can heal wounds after soaking overnight. Factory-style food manufacturing plants with the lowest marginal costs will be the best choice for this way of eating, perhaps in the form of a power plant.
Soylent is a representative of dietary minimalism. In just four years since 2013, Soylent has grown into a $100 million company. This "magic potion" scientifically compares protein, carbohydrates, fats and other nutrients into a light brown powder or paste-like drink, which minimizes the time and economic cost of "eating". Three bottles of Coffeest plus three energy bars a day can sustain an adult's calorie intake requirement of 2,000 dollars, and the price is only less than twenty US dollars, which is said to have won the hearts of many mental workers and investors.
The "food" represented by Soylent seems to be a bottle of nutrition that gathers many ingredients, but is food really just a nutrient element?
The word Soylent is not original, it comes from a seventies American science fiction novel, "Soaring! Vacate! 》（Make Room! Make Room)。 The novel was later adapted into a film under the title Green Soylent. In the film, global warming and overpopulation lead to the depletion of resources, vegetables and fruits become extremely expensive, and strawberry jam becomes a symbol of wealth. Soylent's concentrated food "Soylent Green", made from soy (Soy) and lentils, became a food that people competed for. After a series of murder mysteries are unlocked layer by layer, the protagonist discovers that "green food" is actually made of human flesh.
A food similar to the concept of Soylent Green is "Soap" in British author David Mitchell's novel "Could Atlas" and the film of the same name. This drink is the only food available to waiters at neo seoul's clone restaurant in the epoch of the future. The biggest wish of these clones is to excel in the restaurant and enter the "Paradise". The waiter "Xingmei-451" once had the desire to enter the "Paradise" like his sisters, but eventually found that the so-called Paradise was only a dumping ground for clones; the sisters were crucified here after losing their use value, processed into protein, and made into food "quick supplements" for the Stars, to provide for the daily consumption of the exploited class.
In the movie "Cloud Atlas", adapted from the novel of the same name, the restaurant waiter clone Star Mei-451 (center) is a cheap labor force like all other clones before forming self-awareness, living by drinking "quick supplements", living a repetitive life every day, hoping that one day he can also be promoted to "paradise" because of his excellent "assessment scores".
Appetizers: honey-stained locusts and pickled peacock tongues, seen instead of what is gained
"...... Our manufacturer simply selects the most popular pre-synthesized foods for example, and then reproduces their taste and characteristics... They eventually processed an unlimited amount of ideal food for human beings from natural matter... It can only be enjoyed (at the moment) by a few foodies. ”
—Arthur Clarke, "God's Food"
True foodies scoff at minimalist diets. For them, the ultimate task of food is to provide humanity with a feast for the senses, not just a pool of abominable paste. In the Novel The Food of the Gods by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, the taste buds of future humans are much happier than those of the Star Beauty. Although still burdened with the pressure of food depletion, under the tireless exploration and creation of food giants and scientists, humans can finally synthesize various foods with water, air and rock. Food is created in a way that shifts from agriculture and animal husbandry to automating the production of "animal and plant products." People also won a "moral victory" – animal slaughter ceased to exist, and bloody butcher shops became history.
In the novel, the food company has a huge taste database, "as long as it is something that humans have ever eaten, even some of them are strange and strange things that you have never heard of, such as fried squid, honey locusts, pickled peacock tongues... We can select the data and mix several of these flavors or characteristics. ”
When it comes to synthetic foods, reality once again outperforms science fiction. Last summer in Washington, I personally tasted a lab-grown plant beef burger — and I was a bit split when I typed the word — Beyond Burger. This "beef" is made from carefully selected plant and seed proteins, and the taste is no different from that of beef, and even mimics the caramel taste produced by the Mellard reaction of oil heating. On the other hand, as early as 2013, Maastricht University in the Netherlands developed the world's first laboratory-grown hamburger, which is composed of 20,000 strips of beef stem cell tissue, and each tissue begins with a stem cell and takes several weeks to form.
After dominating Chinese vegetarian food for thousands of years, "fake meat" has finally entered the field of Fast Food in the United States with a "high-tech" attitude. If you really want to protect the earth and just go vegetarian, why fool yourself into eating a "fake beef burger"?
Can synthetic foods be an option for resource-intensive and delicious enjoyment? At a time when global demand for meat continues to rise, agricultural non-point source pollution, energy consumption and the greenhouse effect continue to deteriorate, eating synthetic meat may be a solution to the appetite and environmental dilemma.
However, Arthur Clark does not have a rose-colored imagination for this – at the end of "God's Food", the protagonist reveals that the commercially successful "Ambro's Delicious Spice Food" has a delicacy that no other synthetic food can match because they use the human genetic craving for real meat to process human corpses into food. And consumers have to face up to their true identity: "cannibals".
The first main course: silkworms and mussels, asking for resources from the sea
"I saw all kinds of snails, sea urchins and hermit crabs creeping on the sands on the seabed, as well as masonry worms, water extinguishers, oyster tendons, scallops and golden clams attached to the rocks, as well as pike crabs, sea earthworms and cicada crabs drilled out of the ground..."
——Han Song, "Red Ocean"
As the resources on land deplete, the oceans, which make up 71 percent of the earth's surface, become the next granary. Currently, 16% of the protein ingested by humans comes from the ocean. But fishing and farming are not enough, and intelligent humans still have to create, to synthesize, to turn all kinds of whimsical substances into ingredients – from jellyfish to spider crabs to seaweed.
If you want to compare, seaweed can probably be regarded as "sea wheat". The annual growth of seaweed in offshore waters is equivalent to 15 times that of the current annual wheat production in the world, and the reproduction rate of artificially farmed kelp is more than 2,000 times higher than that in the wild. Science fiction works such as Michelle Anderson's film Logan's Run and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake both set the stage for making future meat from algae — and admittedly, the data suggest that a new variety of algae produced on one hectare of water is equivalent to the nutrients of soybeans produced on 40 hectares of land.
Leaving aside whether the use of seaweed to make food is pleasing to the eye, consider one question alone: Can predatory eating, which does not work on land, be able to continue in the ocean? Human exploitation and pollution of the oceans has led to the extinction of countless species. Tuna only entered the mainstream diet at the end of the Edo period in Japan, no more than 200 years ago, and many populations have become endangered species. For example, the number of bluefin tuna, which is advertised by many Japanese stores, has plummeted by 80%-90% in decades, and has now been assessed as "critically dangerous" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Antarctic krill, for example, is said to produce up to 5 billion tons per year, and taking a fraction is more than double the amount of fishing in the world in a year. However, studies have shown that krill densities in the Antarctic Peninsula and Scotia Sea have decreased by as much as 80 percent since the 1970s as fishing and climate warming (average sea temperatures have risen by 5-6 degrees Celsius over a period of seven decades).
In our country, offshore fishery resources are almost depleted. The first reason is the extinction of species caused by environmental pollution, and the other is that the fishing method causes the biological population to be unable to iterate. Driven by the cost and benefits of fishing, not only are conventional fish fish caught, but even trash fish and "garbage fish" that are less than the length of a finger are also fished up by extremely fine mesh, pressed into frozen fish plates, and made into protein powder for animal feed – perhaps one day, it will also be used as human food.
Chinese science fiction writer Han Song's "Red Ocean" depicts the depletion of marine resources as eerie and terrifying. In his pen, the "Seafood Feast" is full of bloody and sinful tastes. There are about 50,000 "aquatic people" living in the ocean in the book, and once "there was a rich food source on the gentle slopes". The ocean is delightful: conch, shrimp, sea urchin, hermit crabs, oysters thrive and nourish the empire of aquatic people. However, with the pollution of heavy metals and isotopes, tens of thousands of "aquatic people" who once fed on marine life were forced by starvation, ethnic divisions, cannibalism, and massacres stained the oceans red. The moral code of human society collapsed, and everyone lived together in groups and multiplied, but not to raise offspring, but to feed the baby.