Eating and food in SF

This is a list of SFnal works in which eating or food play a central part, with an emphasis on feminist or gender-oriented works, but also including other interesting or significant works, and listing major takes on food in SF.

"Recipe" works

Not necessarily including recipes, but works which centrally feature food and/or recipes as part of the characters' life.

• Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate (and the movie)
• Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Fistful of Sky
• Robin McKinley, Sunshine
• Josephine Saxton, The Queen of the States

Sieges, starvation, food supplies

• Tanya Huff, "Slow Poison" in In the Shadow of Evil
• Stephen King, Thinner
• Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett in "Alien"

Eliminating need for food

• Suzette Haden Elgin, Earthsong (Native Tongue v.3)
• Nancy Kress, Beggars' series

Future food

• super-dense protein etc bars of food that are like gold in "Firefly"
• numerous SFnal stories in which food is made of various compressed algal forms, often because of destruction of Earth's environment; see, e.g., Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper
• lots of vat-grown meat not taken from animals in SF; see, e.g., Rudy Rucker, hardware/software/wetware series, with cloned flesh of various sorts
• replicator food, as in "Star Trek"

Magic or special food

• Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist
• Joanna Russ, "Little Dirty Girl" (ghost)
• fairy food in many stories; see, e.g., "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti;
• vampirism & blood
• Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time - she can't eat the food of the future

Food magic

• The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

Food taboos

• cannibalism
• eating animals and animal products: see, e.g., "Carnival" by Elizabeth Bear

See also

• Breastfeeding, nursing, breast milk
• Cannibalism
• Fat
• Body image and beauty standards