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I'm often disappointed in Fantasy/SF settings that completely ignore the most critical question "what the hell do people eat"?. It's one of the most basic func

by Pxtl 10y ago

I'm often disappointed in Fantasy/SF settings that completely ignore the most critical question "what the hell do people eat"?. It's one of the most basic functions of life, but because we're blessed to be removed from the frustrating process of avoiding starvation, so many works just ignore the question altogether when discussing a "life is hard" setting.

tannhauser23 10y ago
I'm reading "Farnham's Freehold" by Robert Heinlein which is basically a thought experiment in how to build a pioneer-like society in a post-nuclear war world. It's not a great book, honestly, but it has a lot of material on building shelter and finding food.
- hguant 10y ago
  Farnham's Freehold was the book that made me lose a lot of respect for Heinlein. I started reading him as a 13-14 year old - books like "Have Space Suit, Will Travel", "Farmer in the Sky", and "Starman Jones" - and ate them up. I got older and my dad recommended "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and "Starship Troopers"; I really liked reading him alongside Asimov, who did such a great job of going into __how__ people/societies would exist in the future; Heinlein was much better at going into the __why__. The ideas he put forward in "Starship Troopers" and "Stranger in a Strange Land" formed the basis for some of the best conversations I've had with friends. However. Farnham's Freehold was just ubermensch porn coupled with some really weird racism. He used more hackneyed "I can do everything" stereotypes than an Ayn Rand novel, which is something he was always guilty of but it really came to a head here. The multiculturalism and openness that was so explicitly prevalent in Starship Troopers, Stranger, and Harsh Mistress (the main character of Starship Troopers is a bisexual South American) vanishes, replaced with this weird fear of black people - "they seem nice, but they'll turn on you when they get the chance" is the message the Joe character imparts. Just a very weird book.
  - drak0n1c 10y ago
    Freehold was about trying to get into the mind of a post-apocalyptic survivalist - life in lower states of humanity and tribalistic instincts. The other books were about life in higher states of society and humanity. You can't assume that Heinlein was making a value judgement pro diverse militarism or pro racial survivalism in either book. It's science fiction. The only common attitude that his stories seem to clearly reward and respect is grit.
    - lsc 10y ago
      Point taken, and yes, that is a big difference, but specifically the actions of the black elites were super weird. More weird than you would expect from someone who just postulates that when the chips are down, we run with our race brothers. It was the weirdly sexualized race and gender based cannibalism that I think puts it over the line, not the actions of Joe, except in the context of the former. I mean I see what he was trying to do, but rather than basing his African elites on anthropological evidence, or on real white cultures that were horrible to other races, (which would have gotten his point across better, I think,) he based them on the most disturbing (and to me, last believable or sympathetic) racial fears of the time, and because of that, it is kinda uncomfortable.
      - ethbro 10y ago
        Curious to read it now, especially in the context of its time. 1964 was the same year the Civil Rights Act was passed. I imagine ideas of baser racial instincts were different when there were still lynchings and fear of sexual racial mixing. :(
        hguant 10y ago
        Reading this reminded me of another great author who had an episode of weird racial views - Stephan King, in The Stand (which is absolutely one of my favourite books), had a chapter where he's detailing the horrors of society breaking down, and one of the events he catalogued was the mutiny of a bunch of black soldiers who then started killing their white compatriots in a grotesque gameshow. That very explicit fear of militant black men dates the book more than anything else. As someone born in the very early 90's, it's weird seeing evidence of people taking seriously these thoughts I've only seen caricatured.
- angersock 10y ago
  So, I'd suggest a few different books on that topic--Farnham's Freehold not being one of them. Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle goes into a bit of the politics and aftermath of a comet striking the Earth. It talks about survival, civil defense, and a few other things that would be spoilers to mention. That said, it has some points that are weirdly racist when viewed decades after publication--if you can look past those, though, it's a solid read. One Second After by William Forstchen talks about the aftermath of an EMP first-strike on the US. Perhaps the one of the more interesting things is that he does specifically pay attention to both the food and medicine logistics--specifically, what happens when we lack ability to run refrigerators and move around grain. It's a bit cheerful in the end, but a good read. Warday by Strieber and Kunetka takes place 5 years after a "limited" nuclear exchange with the USSR. The premise of the novel is that a pair of researchers are traveling through the US and interviewing folks, reading documents, and generally piecing together both the initial conflict as well as the efforts to survive and recover. It's a really good bit of speculative fiction, but is pretty depressing. ~ One of the biggest things that makes nuclear war difficult to imagine today is that we have the Internet and cell phones, things which at once are utterly integral to most of the non-rural folks and which are completely vulnerable to any sort of honest nuclear strike. The lack of books, CB radios, and basic practical knowhow and repairable goods brought by the rise of technology and international trade might well yield a situation where a theoretical 2020s United States would have a more difficult time recovering than a 1980s US. At least as far as the 'net stuff goes, the short story "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" by Doctorow is maybe one of the only ones that treats the tech angle seriously in a modern light.
  - tannhauser23 10y ago
    Good suggestions, will check them out. Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed with Farnham's Freehold. I picked it up at a used book store for a dollar - Heinlein! Post-apocalyptic society! - but I haven't enjoyed it very much, and yes, it does get weirdly racial as it goes on. The other books you mention sound much better! Heard great things about Lucifer's Hammer - that'll go to the top of the list.
the_af 10y ago
"The Road" has already been mentioned as a piece of fiction that focuses almost exclusively on food and starvation. Not sure it's explicitly about nuclear war, however. It's also way too hopeless for me. I can't say I enjoyed reading it. A better -- and recent favorite of mine -- sci-fi book about scarce resources and food is "The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi. It's not about nuclear war either, but not only is the actual story very engaging, it focuses on how energy is generated and stored, what people eat, and how food is delivered in a post-oil world. Bacigalupi calls this crisis "the Contraction". Warning: more than a few digs at Monsanto as well, not so much from the "transgenics are bad" angle but from the "copyrights and patents on food oppress people". Strongly recommended!
- craigyk 10y ago
  Windup girl was an amazingly imaginative extrapolation. I do have a bit of a problem with how fatalistic most post-apocalypse works are. I think what would actually emerge would be very messy, but still far more hopeful than depicted. For example, in a The Walking Dead scenario, the first real settlement they found that was semi-secure would have probably grown into a fairly stable city-state. They work hard on that show to keep the rollercoaster going. IMO, tiring and not very realistic.
- scrumper 10y ago
  You'll enjoy his later book The Water Knife which is exactly about a water-scarce world and the rather grim social sructures that result.
- swombat 10y ago
  Very much loved The Windup Girl and would recommend it too. Powerful book.
- sjg007 10y ago
  We will actually have this problem in 50 years... well the developing world will. Too many people and not enough food.
mrob 10y ago
I first saw that question in MrBtongue's YouTube video comparing Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas (relevant to discussion of post-nuclear war settings). New Vegas is the better game, and one of the reasons is that it actually does answer the question of what people eat. The rest of the video is also interesting, but "what do they eat?" discussion starts here: https://youtu.be/wvwlt4FqmS0?t=559 https://youtu.be/wvwlt4FqmS0?t=559
anigbrowl 10y ago
The grimmer your story, the smaller the market. Thus even though famines are often disastrous human events that can mean the death of millions and frequently alter the course of history, hardly anyone makes movies about them because watching people starve unnecessarily is hardly anyone's idea of a good time. At least in war stories someone gets to be winner, even if it's temporary. In a famine everything gets worse and the only people likely to profit are the people who were already winning at the outset, so there isn't really a story arc. You can do movies like this (The Road, Schindler's List, Dallas Buyer's Club, Hotel Rwanda are all good examples) but if the world of the story is crushingly awful then you're basically reduced to one plot - moral individual risks/sacrifices self to provide glimmer of hope to others. Offhand I'd say you can only put out a truly grim a-list movie about once every 5 years.
- ethbro 10y ago
  I've always thought this is one of the reasons the zombie survival genre is so popular. For all the dramatic hand wrangling over finding supplies, the survivors are essentially living in a world of plenty -- enough arms, ammunition, canned food, and supplies for a world population, >50% of which presumably no longer have an interest in such things. It's the antithesis of all that "we should compromise for the good of all, saving the planet, etc" (because how does that sound fun?).
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    Absolutely. The physical anxiety is more than made up for by the blissful simplicity of the new moral calculus.
gozur88 10y ago
From a writer's perspective the problem is a story that mostly consists of people scrabbling for food isn't very interesting, so either you ignore the question or you create a story element that allows you to ignore the question - giant roaches, say, or some kind of food-from-algae technology.

by Pxtl 10y ago

tannhauser23 10y ago

I'm reading "Farnham's Freehold" by Robert Heinlein which is basically a thought experiment in how to build a pioneer-like society in a post-nuclear war world. It's not a great book, honestly, but it has a lot of material on building shelter and finding food.

hguant 10y ago
Farnham's Freehold was the book that made me lose a lot of respect for Heinlein. I started reading him as a 13-14 year old - books like "Have Space Suit, Will Travel", "Farmer in the Sky", and "Starman Jones" - and ate them up. I got older and my dad recommended "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and "Starship Troopers"; I really liked reading him alongside Asimov, who did such a great job of going into __how__ people/societies would exist in the future; Heinlein was much better at going into the __why__. The ideas he put forward in "Starship Troopers" and "Stranger in a Strange Land" formed the basis for some of the best conversations I've had with friends. However. Farnham's Freehold was just ubermensch porn coupled with some really weird racism. He used more hackneyed "I can do everything" stereotypes than an Ayn Rand novel, which is something he was always guilty of but it really came to a head here. The multiculturalism and openness that was so explicitly prevalent in Starship Troopers, Stranger, and Harsh Mistress (the main character of Starship Troopers is a bisexual South American) vanishes, replaced with this weird fear of black people - "they seem nice, but they'll turn on you when they get the chance" is the message the Joe character imparts. Just a very weird book.
- drak0n1c 10y ago
  Freehold was about trying to get into the mind of a post-apocalyptic survivalist - life in lower states of humanity and tribalistic instincts. The other books were about life in higher states of society and humanity. You can't assume that Heinlein was making a value judgement pro diverse militarism or pro racial survivalism in either book. It's science fiction. The only common attitude that his stories seem to clearly reward and respect is grit.
  - lsc 10y ago
    Point taken, and yes, that is a big difference, but specifically the actions of the black elites were super weird. More weird than you would expect from someone who just postulates that when the chips are down, we run with our race brothers. It was the weirdly sexualized race and gender based cannibalism that I think puts it over the line, not the actions of Joe, except in the context of the former. I mean I see what he was trying to do, but rather than basing his African elites on anthropological evidence, or on real white cultures that were horrible to other races, (which would have gotten his point across better, I think,) he based them on the most disturbing (and to me, last believable or sympathetic) racial fears of the time, and because of that, it is kinda uncomfortable.
    - ethbro 10y ago
      Curious to read it now, especially in the context of its time. 1964 was the same year the Civil Rights Act was passed. I imagine ideas of baser racial instincts were different when there were still lynchings and fear of sexual racial mixing. :(
      - hguant 10y ago
        Reading this reminded me of another great author who had an episode of weird racial views - Stephan King, in The Stand (which is absolutely one of my favourite books), had a chapter where he's detailing the horrors of society breaking down, and one of the events he catalogued was the mutiny of a bunch of black soldiers who then started killing their white compatriots in a grotesque gameshow. That very explicit fear of militant black men dates the book more than anything else. As someone born in the very early 90's, it's weird seeing evidence of people taking seriously these thoughts I've only seen caricatured.
angersock 10y ago
So, I'd suggest a few different books on that topic--Farnham's Freehold not being one of them. Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle goes into a bit of the politics and aftermath of a comet striking the Earth. It talks about survival, civil defense, and a few other things that would be spoilers to mention. That said, it has some points that are weirdly racist when viewed decades after publication--if you can look past those, though, it's a solid read. One Second After by William Forstchen talks about the aftermath of an EMP first-strike on the US. Perhaps the one of the more interesting things is that he does specifically pay attention to both the food and medicine logistics--specifically, what happens when we lack ability to run refrigerators and move around grain. It's a bit cheerful in the end, but a good read. Warday by Strieber and Kunetka takes place 5 years after a "limited" nuclear exchange with the USSR. The premise of the novel is that a pair of researchers are traveling through the US and interviewing folks, reading documents, and generally piecing together both the initial conflict as well as the efforts to survive and recover. It's a really good bit of speculative fiction, but is pretty depressing. ~ One of the biggest things that makes nuclear war difficult to imagine today is that we have the Internet and cell phones, things which at once are utterly integral to most of the non-rural folks and which are completely vulnerable to any sort of honest nuclear strike. The lack of books, CB radios, and basic practical knowhow and repairable goods brought by the rise of technology and international trade might well yield a situation where a theoretical 2020s United States would have a more difficult time recovering than a 1980s US. At least as far as the 'net stuff goes, the short story "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" by Doctorow is maybe one of the only ones that treats the tech angle seriously in a modern light.
- tannhauser23 10y ago
  Good suggestions, will check them out. Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed with Farnham's Freehold. I picked it up at a used book store for a dollar - Heinlein! Post-apocalyptic society! - but I haven't enjoyed it very much, and yes, it does get weirdly racial as it goes on. The other books you mention sound much better! Heard great things about Lucifer's Hammer - that'll go to the top of the list.

the_af 10y ago

"The Road" has already been mentioned as a piece of fiction that focuses almost exclusively on food and starvation. Not sure it's explicitly about nuclear war, however. It's also way too hopeless for me. I can't say I enjoyed reading it. A better -- and recent favorite of mine -- sci-fi book about scarce resources and food is "The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi. It's not about nuclear war either, but not only is the actual story very engaging, it focuses on how energy is generated and stored, what people eat, and how food is delivered in a post-oil world. Bacigalupi calls this crisis "the Contraction". Warning: more than a few digs at Monsanto as well, not so much from the "transgenics are bad" angle but from the "copyrights and patents on food oppress people". Strongly recommended!

craigyk 10y ago
Windup girl was an amazingly imaginative extrapolation. I do have a bit of a problem with how fatalistic most post-apocalypse works are. I think what would actually emerge would be very messy, but still far more hopeful than depicted. For example, in a The Walking Dead scenario, the first real settlement they found that was semi-secure would have probably grown into a fairly stable city-state. They work hard on that show to keep the rollercoaster going. IMO, tiring and not very realistic.
scrumper 10y ago
You'll enjoy his later book The Water Knife which is exactly about a water-scarce world and the rather grim social sructures that result.
swombat 10y ago
Very much loved The Windup Girl and would recommend it too. Powerful book.
sjg007 10y ago
We will actually have this problem in 50 years... well the developing world will. Too many people and not enough food.

mrob 10y ago

I first saw that question in MrBtongue's YouTube video comparing Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas (relevant to discussion of post-nuclear war settings). New Vegas is the better game, and one of the reasons is that it actually does answer the question of what people eat. The rest of the video is also interesting, but "what do they eat?" discussion starts here: https://youtu.be/wvwlt4FqmS0?t=559 https://youtu.be/wvwlt4FqmS0?t=559

anigbrowl 10y ago

The grimmer your story, the smaller the market. Thus even though famines are often disastrous human events that can mean the death of millions and frequently alter the course of history, hardly anyone makes movies about them because watching people starve unnecessarily is hardly anyone's idea of a good time. At least in war stories someone gets to be winner, even if it's temporary. In a famine everything gets worse and the only people likely to profit are the people who were already winning at the outset, so there isn't really a story arc. You can do movies like this (The Road, Schindler's List, Dallas Buyer's Club, Hotel Rwanda are all good examples) but if the world of the story is crushingly awful then you're basically reduced to one plot - moral individual risks/sacrifices self to provide glimmer of hope to others. Offhand I'd say you can only put out a truly grim a-list movie about once every 5 years.

ethbro 10y ago
I've always thought this is one of the reasons the zombie survival genre is so popular. For all the dramatic hand wrangling over finding supplies, the survivors are essentially living in a world of plenty -- enough arms, ammunition, canned food, and supplies for a world population, >50% of which presumably no longer have an interest in such things. It's the antithesis of all that "we should compromise for the good of all, saving the planet, etc" (because how does that sound fun?).
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  Absolutely. The physical anxiety is more than made up for by the blissful simplicity of the new moral calculus.

gozur88 10y ago

From a writer's perspective the problem is a story that mostly consists of people scrabbling for food isn't very interesting, so either you ignore the question or you create a story element that allows you to ignore the question - giant roaches, say, or some kind of food-from-algae technology.