I’ve always been surrounded by food culture. I grew up in a diner family. My parents started Lakey’s Cafe just before I was born. My first jobs as a kid were in that restaurant. After that, I worked in restaurants as a server for more than 10 years of my life. When the opportunity presented itself to throw in the napkin and become a writer, I did. My writing now as a professional writer centers around the food and beverage industry. One topic that I don’t see discussed enough is the role that food plays in science fiction and fantasy novels. Food in novels has a way of showing us something about ourselves.
I wrote
The Girl Who Fell Into the Sky: The Noah and Clare Chronicles Book 1
You can’t get much more food-oriented in science fiction than a novel called The Hunger Games, and true to its name, food and food politics play a central role in the book’s theme. The book’s author, Suzanne Collins, uses juxtaposition and food politics throughout the series to highlight the difference between the haves and the have-nots. While all the books in the Hunger Games series highlight these discrepancies, it’s Collins’s second book Catching Fire where the differences are most pronounced. The feast in the Capitol, along with its potions to induce vomiting (and by extension, encourage more eating), stands out in particular: The reaction of the book’s main character, Katniss Everdeen, herself a poor girl from the Seam of District 12 makes this scene both comical and revolting.
The second book in the ground-breaking Hunger Games trilogy.
After winning the brutal Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta return to their district, hoping for a peaceful future. But their victory has caused rebellion to break out ... and the Capitol has decided that someone must pay.
As Katniss and Peeta are forced to visit the districts on the Capitol's Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. Unless they can convince the world that they are still lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.
Then comes the cruellest twist: the contestants for the next Hunger…
I first got introduced to the character Paul Atreides and the book Dunewhen I was 23 years old. Back then, I had little understanding of food politics, ecology, and the lengths that people are willing to go to control both of these resources. Today, as I reread the book for the second time, some 30 years later, I recognize that the book’s food themes are more relevant today than ever before. Paul’s journey as the person who eventually controls the spice is a lesson to all who are interested in food politics and diplomacy.
Before The Matrix, before Star Wars, before Ender's Game and Neuromancer, there was Dune: winner of the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards, and widely considered one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written.
Melange, or 'spice', is the most valuable - and rarest - element in the universe; a drug that does everything from increasing a person's lifespan to making interstellar travel possible. And it can only be found on a single planet: the inhospitable desert world of Arrakis.
Whoever controls Arrakis controls the spice. And whoever controls the spice controls the universe.
Milo Hastings’s book, The City of Endless Night, written right after the end of WWI, foretells Germany’s eventual rise to power again. The book’s main character Lyman De Forrest takes us through a socially stratified underground Berlin, where 300,000,000 people live. In the lower strata, every aspect of life, including how much a person gets to eat each day (based on their weight), is controlled. Despite being more than 100 years old, this book is surprisingly modern and the food politics are just as relevant.
When most people think about Orwell’s War of the Worlds, they rightfully think about invasion fiction. But what stands out to me as a food writer is how Orwell uses food—or the lack of access to it— to show us how quickly society would deteriorate in the event of an invasion—an alien invasion, in this case. One of the book’s most telling lines for a foodie like me was the last line of chapter 7. After having raced home to save himself from the invasion and to have dinner with his wife, the Narrator (who isn’t named in the book) states: “I did not know it, but that was the last civilised dinner I was to eat for very many strange and terrible days.” For him and many others, dinner with family and friends is the epitome of civilization.
But planet Earth was not only being watched - soon it would be invaded by monstrous creatures from Mars who strode about the land in great mechanical tripods, bringing death and destruction with them. What can possibly stop an invading army equipped with heat-rays and poisonous black gas, intent on wiping out the human race? This is one man's story of that incredible invasion, from the time the first Martians land near his home town, to the destruction of London. Is this the end of human life on Earth?
It’s hard not to talk about the boy who lived without talking about the role that food plays in the Harry Potter books. It is a vehicle for so many storytelling elements. It highlights Harry’s malnourished state at home with his aunt and uncle; it sets the tone for life at Hogwarts; and it conveys British culture in a very real, though maybe not obvious way. The cultural aspect of food in Harry Potter is particularly of interest to me as a foodie and as a translator. The Potter novels are some of the most challenging books to translate, partly due to the culturally specific food that JK Rowling highlights in her books. Pretty delish, all in all.
Galloping gargoyles ... 2022 is the silver anniversary of J.K. Rowling's magical classic Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone!
The boy wizard Harry Potter has been casting a spell over young readers and their families ever since 1997. Now the first book in this unmissable series celebrates 25 years in print! The paperback edition of the tale that introduced us to Harry, Ron and Hermione has been updated and dressed in silver to mark the occasion. It's time to take the magical journey of a lifetime ...
Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping…
It’s the 22nd century, and America is ravaged by a dangerous new disease called Sudden Onset Anorexia (SOA). People who get this disease can eat and eat and eat and yet, they waste away to nothing.
At the center of this story is Clare King, a reality TV star. Her every move is recorded live… When she sleeps… Who she dates… And what she eats, or more importantly, what she’s not allowed to eat. In true miracle-in-disguise fashion, Clare manages to escape her life in front of the camera and find happiness and love for the first time. SOA, Clare’s life as a reality star on the run, and food politics come crashing together when Clare stumbles upon the horrifying origins of the 22nd century’s most deadly disease.
Unlike the typical tales of a flawless fighting unit, this story follows Commander Kami Trenn and her ragtag squad of mixed-race space marines.
Dog Squad fights a mysterious adversary whose presence remains shrouded in secrecy. The fate of the universe hangs in the balance, but will they be able to make enough of a difference?
Can they hope to uncover the enemy’s plans for galactic dominance before the Alliance falls? Maybe. If they can stop fighting each other.
Across the void formed by two galactic spiral arms, vast forces face each other.
The tenuous Alliance, sixty civilizations united only by fear of invasion, prepare to resist the encroachment of their as-yet unseen enemy, known only as the Creeps.
The Void has become a battleground. Three thousand light years across, and populated by a scattering of ten thousand ‘dark’ worlds, it is the Alliance’s last chance to protect their way of life. Self-destructive, robotic drones pour across the Void in ever-increasing numbers, testing the Alliance fleets to breaking point.
