For the SF&F writers among us: describing food

[UsuallyPresent]

-snip-

Hmmm ... now what to do with that decorative pumpkin left over from Halloween beyond toasting the seeds...?

Got enough rope and lumber to go pumpkin chuckin'?

 

[MetaBob]

Got enough rope and lumber to go pumpkin chuckin'?

Engineering is fun!

 

[AllenWoody]

I agree that this kind of thing can be fascinating for the writer, but it's very easy to bog down a narrative with a side discussion about hydroponic farming or something.

I find I get more mileage out of creating that backstory and spelling out those details for myself, so that they "exist" in my world, but leaving everything more opaque in the narrative so that it flows well. I'm telling a story, not writing a treatise.

I took that idea from Tolkien; LOTR references hundreds of things that were fully fleshed out in the author's mind, but at that point none of it had been published. It still "existed" on some level, and all those references helped deepen the narrative without needing to be explained in any kind of detail. The reader senses that depth without needing to fully understand it. Herbert does something similar in Dune.

Don't be ridiculous! I'm confident that my three-chapter dissertation on the growth, processing, and injection-molding of algae burgers will fascinate my readers!

 

[Voboy]

Don't be ridiculous! I'm confident that my three-chapter dissertation on the growth, processing, and injection-molding of algae burgers will fascinate my readers!

She slid my cock into her swollen pussy. "Oh fuck!" she sighed, fulfilled at last.

Her body was on me, but her mind was on algae. So I got vocal, as I knew she liked. "Remember," I panted, flexing my dick within her, "the early history of algae-burning required the burners to use fossil fuels for ignition. Then along came Henry Holland, who pioneered solar/stellar combustion amplifiers."

"Goddamn!" she raved, her brain racing through a past choked with the fumes of seaweed and petrolum, "so dirty. They were such dirty sluts."

"Yeah." I was holding back, my teeth gritted. "It's a good thing Holland came along. His innovations made planetary colonization possible in... fuck, your cunt feels so good... years instead of centuries. The station on Cestus III was, of course, the site of the lab where those innovations took place."

"So hot." Her body slammed down onto mine, her nipples swinging in circles (not unlike the power turbines outside the algae-distro chutes). "You gonna cum in me, baby? Like the outflow after the chlorophyll-distillation stage?"

"The stage that backfeeds the algae pond, thus improving ecosystemic health and ensuring biodiversity?" I panted. We were close, so close, waiting only for the thought of the heaving algae-blooms to push us over the edge.

"Yeah, baby. That stage!" Her skin was flushed, like the alert lighting on the overflow/overheat systems invented by Maknacorp just two years after Holland's patents. "Cum in me!"

___

Exposition, Lit-style. Your readers will dig it.

 

[Voboy]

She slid my cock into her swollen pussy. "Oh fuck!" she sighed, fulfilled at last.

Her body was on me, but her mind was on algae. So I got vocal, as I knew she liked. "Remember," I panted, flexing my dick within her, "the early history of algae-burning required the burners to use fossil fuels for ignition. Then along came Henry Holland, who pioneered solar/stellar combustion amplifiers."

"Goddamn!" she raved, her brain racing through a past choked with the fumes of seaweed and petrolum, "so dirty. They were such dirty sluts."

"Yeah." I was holding back, my teeth gritted. "It's a good thing Holland came along. His innovations made planetary colonization possible in... fuck, your cunt feels so good... years instead of centuries. The station on Cestus III was, of course, the site of the lab where those innovations took place."

"So hot." Her body slammed down onto mine, her nipples swinging in circles (not unlike the power turbines outside the algae-distro chutes). "You gonna cum in me, baby? Like the outflow after the chlorophyll-distillation stage?"

"The stage that backfeeds the algae pond, thus improving ecosystemic health and ensuring biodiversity?" I panted. We were close, so close, waiting only for the thought of the heaving algae-blooms to push us over the edge.

"Yeah, baby. That stage!" Her skin was flushed, like the alert lighting on the overflow/overheat systems invented by Maknacorp just two years after Holland's patents. "Cum in me!"

___

Exposition, Lit-style. Your readers will dig it.

...now I kinda want to write this story...

 

[UsuallyPresent]

...now I kinda want to write this story...

Better algae than sewage, surgical waste, or politics!

 

[Voboy]

Better algae than sewage, surgical waste, or politics!

Well... I mean, shit.

Why not just use all four?

And, of course, I'd describe the meals in some detail. So that it stays on-thread.

 

[Duleigh]

Let's hear your suggestions!

My last attempt took place on the discworld and when Nick and Octavia were in the field they usually ate fish, rabbit, whatever wild fruit and vegetables was available but that was dinner only. During the day they ate dried meat, dried fruit and whatever they could find. Nick usually left the food for octavia, turned into a horse, and grazed (that solved a lot of problems)

Later when he became king I went to great pains describing the Hogswatch feast because that was the big event of the year in the kingdom of Lancre. Everything was pork, usually four or five courses, and they were wild but real concoctions that I found on line, but I would always leave one main course and side disk pork free for anyone who was planning to remain kosher.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I don't think I covered any meals in First Contact #1: The Strigoi. I only made mention of the First Officer wanting to have a late supper with Captain, and she came down hard on him for even asking.

 

[RetroFan]

In my science fiction story 'Cindy's Close Encounter' the unfriendly, somewhat octopus-like aliens fly their UFO from their home within the Jupiter moon Europa to Earth several times a year for 'the gathering' which is then followed by 'the feeding', concepts they are obsessed with. These aliens have an egg-larvae-pupae-adult lifecycle like many insects, and capture homo sapiens which they paralyse with a sting and return to Europa to feed to the grubs, the adults themselves unable to consume and digest solid food.

During this particular foraging expedition the aliens capture the miserable spinster English teacher - a cruel and cranky old bitch - and take her away to feed their larvae. Who didn't have 'that' teacher in high school that one wished would meet a similar fate?

With the story taking place in the 1950s, I describe the characters eating food at a local diner that one would expect teenagers of the era to eat, and also Coronation Chicken - a dish specific to the era. It is the Coronation Chicken that is blamed for 'food poisoning' that led to some students hallucinating about flying saucers and aliens on Halloween night, but this of course is a cover-up by the government (who send three MIB operatives to the New England town where this story is set) and the military, with it noted that some who ate the Coronation Chicken were not affected, but some who didn't eat it were.