Clarkesworld Anthology 2012 (19 page)

For most contemporary readers, especially those in more developed areas of the world such as North America, the notion of a food shortage is so distant that fantasies of abundance have little power. What has taken their place is the imagining of food that is not just free but
guilt-free
— such as meat that can be eaten without killing animals. This, too, may be played straight or satirically, but it is the satirical examples that have endured. For instance: the vat-grown meat found in Ferderik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth’s
The Space Merchants
and William Gibson’s
Neuromancer
; the Chickie Nobs in Margaret Atwood’s
Oryx and Crake
, genetically engineered to have no heads and therefore feel no pain; and of course the sentient Meat served in Douglas Adams’
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
, which introduces itself to diners and, in an effort to soothe their consciences, tries to reassure them by insisting, “I’ll be very humane.”

One place the fantasy of an endless food supply is still alive is children’s fiction. Food is a major part of the power dynamic between adults and children, who learn early that the pleasures of dessert only come after the sacrifice of eating vegetables. This dynamic is reproduced in Suzanne Collins’
The Hunger Games
series, where the impoverished Districts make do with fish and greens stew (and, no doubt, broccoli and Brussels sprouts) while the rulers in the Capitol enjoy such exotic treats as a purple-fleshed melon. With a few exceptions (such as foie gras, surely chosen for its associations with gluttony and cruelty), nearly all of the foods associated with the Capitol are sweets: melon, pancakes, marmalade, and orange juice — as close to candy as is possible in the world of the series. Because it is controlled, withheld, and only occasionally doled out by adults, candy is a natural focus for children’s fantasies. When British author Roald Dahl’s
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
was published in 1964, many readers had vivid memories of wartime shortages (the rationing of candy had only ended in England in 1953), making the image of endless chocolate extra appealing. But the novel’s fantasy goes beyond mere abundance: It also imagines that all the restrictions adults place on eating candy may be removed by such magical treats as caramels that fill the dental cavities they create.

The most lasting images from Dahl’s book (and its film versions) are not the visions of plenty, however, but those of transformation — such as Violet Beauregarde’s metamorphosis into a giant blueberry as a result of chewing experimental gum. The notion that food can change us has a long history; as the adage has it, “You are what you eat.” In some cases this means that food acts essentially as a drug. To the cyborgs in Kage Baker’s
Company
series, chocolate is
literally
a drug, intoxicating them as alcohol does normal humans. More often, though, food is seen as having a medicinal effect — a common feature of many medical beliefs, such as the medieval theory of humors and the central tenet of the health-food movements of the last two centuries. Soylent green is in part a satire of health food; so, too, is the deadly yogurt in the movie
The Stuff
, which is also a critique of the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too mentality that has produced low-fat versions of ice cream and mayonnaise.

In fantasy, the transformative effects of food tend to run deeper, altering the soul as well as the body.
Lembas
, the Elven bread in
The Lord of the Rings
, resembles a food pill in its physical effects, but it is also shown as lightening the souls of good people while being inedible to evil creatures such as Gollum. Underlining its healing power, Tolkien also refers to lembas as
waybread
— the Anglo-Saxon name for plantain leaf, an herb whose healing and protective powers were so revered that it was numbered among Woden’s Nine Herbs in the medieval English tradition. Food can also be the cause of a negative transformation, and in some cases may change a character’s identity entirely: In some Norse sources, Loki turns from mischievous to truly evil only after eating the heart of a witch. Similarly, visitors to fairyland are typically warned to avoid eating any food there, or else they will be forced to lose their humanity and remain forever — as the Greek goddess Persephone was bound to remain in the underworld for half of every year after eating six pomegranate seeds.

While Loki brought his transformation on himself, Persephone was tricked by someone she should have been able to trust — her host Hades, the god of the dead. For the ancient Greeks,
xenia
— the responsibility of a host to a guest (and vice versa) — was one of the highest values. The relationship between guest and host is symbolized by food. To break bread with someone is to accept them as a guest, essentially considering them a part of the family for the length of their stay. Because of this, meals are often used in fiction to bring antagonists together in a situation where their conflict must be restrained; think of all the dinners Dracula has served his guests over the years. But they may also serve as symbols of reconciliation or restoration, as the meals served at Beorn’s and Elrond’s houses in
The Hobbit
and
The Lord of the Rings
do, or of a restoration of the natural order. An example of the latter is the ending of every one of René Goscinny’s
Asterix
stories, where Asterix’s Gaulish village joins together in a feast that shows all is once more right with the world.

The ultimate expression of the idea of feast-as-reconciliation is a wedding, in which two unrelated groups are permanently joined; this is why comedies traditionally end with weddings. The symbolic power of weddings makes it doubly powerful when those attending betray the ethic of
xenia
, as in the Red Wedding in Martin’s
A Storm of Swords
. (The link between food and
xenia
here is underlined by Robb Stark’s request to be fed just bread and salt, which symbolize the host’s duty to his guest in the world of the series.) A similar use of
xenia
in play is the scene in
The Empire Strikes Back
where Lando Calrissian ushers the heroes to dinner with Darth Vader. This serves as a dramatic betrayal of
xenia,
as Calrissian is violating his duty to his guests. Placing Vader at the head of the table makes the scene a parody of
xenia
as well, by having a host who presumably cannot eat.

To the Greeks, the greatest offender against
xenia
was Tantalus, who failed as both guest and host. After stealing ambrosia from the gods’ table, he served them his own son for dinner. For this he was punished by being made to stand in a pool of water that drained whenever he tried to drink it, near a fruit tree whose branches pulled away whenever he tried to pick from it — which gave rise to the English word
tantalized
, something which may happen to you when you read about some of the meals described in SF and fantasy.

About the Author

Matthew Johnson lives in Ottawa with his wife Megan and their sons Leo and Miles, where he works as a media educator and writes fantasy and SF when time and circumstances permit. His novel
Fall From Earth
was published in 2009, and his short fiction, which has appeared in places such as
Asimov’s Science Fiction, Fantasy & Science Fiction
and
Strange Horizons,
will be collected in 2013 in
Irregular Verbs
from Chizine Publications. Many of his stories involve food in some way, in particular “Long Pig,” which may be the only fantasy story ever written in the form of a restaurant review.

Everything’s Surprising: A Conversation with Lev AC Rosen

Jeremy L. C. Jones

In
All Men of Genius
by Lev AC Rosen, Violet Adams doesn’t necessarily want to be a man, but she does want to attend the prestigious, all-male Illyria College. Denied what she desires by social convention, she does what Viola in Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night
and the male leads in Wilde’s
The Importance of Being Earnest
do: she changes her external identity in order to get what she wants.

In the process, Violet learns about herself, the society she lives in, and the way that society attempts to define her. At its heart, you see,
All Men of Genius
is a book about identity.

“Identity,” said Rosen, “how it’s formed, what it means, how it shifts and how we feel about the labels put on us. It’s also about invention — of identity, of course, but also of art and science and what it means for us, as people to create. Yeah, that sounds crazy-pretentious enough, I think.”

As you can imagine, there is nothing simple about Violet — her character or her situation — and there lies the beautiful heart of this book: the lead character.

“The truth would come out sooner or later,” Rosen writes early in the novel, “[Violet] just needed to make sure it was later, after she had made her genius so clear that the world could no longer scorn or punish her for what lay between her legs.”

Rosen captures Victorian England and academia with elegance, with plenty of stained glass, gears, and arched ceilings; mistaken identity, alter egos, and love triangles; human ambivalence, murderous automata, and mad science.

Through all this dances Violet and a charming ensemble of characters. And they, like Rosen, dance with great elan, plenty of gracefulness with just enough reckless abandon to keep each other and readers off-balance. The truth, the novel promises, will come out sooner or later.

Below, Rosen and I talk about style, gender roles, and the joy of writing about a large ensemble cast and the ways they are shaped by their world.

How would you describe your style?

This is hard one. I like to say every book writes itself. In
All Men of Genius
, I very consciously imitated a Victorian Style while still trying to stay true to my own voice and keeping it accessible to a modern audience. And I also tried to stay true (or at least lovingly pay homage to) the voices of Shakespeare and Wilde (although I also lovingly mocked their voices in the form of two rabbits, but that’s another story…).

But now, I’m working on a
noir
, and I’m trying to stay true to that hardboiled, pulpy noir style/voice. It’s extremely different from
All Men of Genius
, because the story is so different that the style is has to be told in has to be different, too. The story tells itself, and shapes its own style. That said, I like to think that I have some sort of style and it is present in everything I write. But if you asked me to pin down what that was, I don’t know if I’d be able to. I think someone else is going to have to come along and say what the Lev AC Rosen Style is.

Where did you start with
All Men of Genius
? What came first — image, character, situation, something else all together?

An image of the wall of gears in Illyria. I’m a big fan of the aesthetic of gears, though I couldn’t say why. But I especially love them
en masse
, huge clanking arrays of them, and when I first set out to write something Steampunk, this image of a wall of rotating gears was the first thing that came to mind. It was almost like a church in my mind, with spots where the gears parted for stained glass, and huge arched ceilings. I think that image pretty much stayed the same in the book.

What is the secret to writing such beautiful descriptions?

Ha. Thank you for saying that the descriptions are beautiful. As for how to write them, I think you have to find those images beautiful first and just keep writing and rewriting them until you feel like you’ve done as best credit as you can to what’s in your head. Not everyone is going to think they’re beautiful — the key is that you think they’re beautiful.

How closely does the book follow
Twelfth Night
?

Well, the inclusion of
The Importance of Being Earnest
as another inspiration does create some deviations — though not very many, as both plays have similar themes. There’s cross-dressing, though this time to prove something, as opposed to doing it for a job, and there’s a love triangle, of course… it’s difficult to answer this one without spoiling the book, since the changes I made primarily effect the ending. But there are more characters, and the more minor characters from
Twelfth Night
get more screen time, as it were. Sorry, I don’t think I’m answering this one very well — I really don’t want to give too much away.

Is there a moment in the book that stands out for you?

A moment? I love the parts where Miriam stands in the rain. Miriam was inspired by Mary, from
Twelfth Night
, but I decided to really expand her character because I wanted to explore women’s roles in Victorian London — not just the upper classes, but the lower classes and outsiders as well. Miriam is a Persian Jew, so she’s visibly “other” and culturally “other” and I really enjoyed writing her and her place in society.