From Soylent Green to Slusho!, Okja to Isserley, food is an often central, if not always visible, aspect of SF/F world-building. How human societies feed themselves characterises futures as dystopian or utopian as scarce or abundant, as just or exploitative – imbricating issues of climate change, bioethics, animal rights and the rights of nature, systems of labor and resource distribution. While food and food webs are often associated with structural violence in SF/F, the genre also provides examples of ‘model’ futures through feminist utopias such Woman on the Edge of Time, technological imaginaries such as Star Trek’s replicators, and the various agricultural and societal revolutions posited by an entire genre: solarpunk. 

For its 301st issue, the Vector editorial team is seeking contributions that explore the multifaceted and nuanced ways that speculative genres imagine the future of food. As we try to implement technologies that enable us to make food out of air,¹ plastic,² or, more prosaically, algae, as we 3-D print steaks or make ‘beef rice’³ (without a single cow), what role does science fiction play in shaping attitudes or conversations around such technologies? When we try to figure out how to provide for a growing global population in the face of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss (largely driven by agriculture), should we turn to science fiction for help with reimagining food cultures?

Suggested questions / topics
Food products of the future   
Synthetic, lab-grown meat 
Animal farming and ethics 
Terraforming for agriculture 
Growing food in space 
Eating practices 
The human body 
Health 
Slaughtering practices  
Imagining post-scarcity futures
Eating others 

Please submit your proposal by Dec 14, 2024 to vector.submissions@gmail.com, including:

A 150-500 word proposal, including estimated length;
Something about yourself, either a 50-100 word bio or a CV.

Articles should be between 1,000 and 8,000 words. Please let us know your estimated word count. We seek articles that are carefully grounded in scholarly research, while also being clear, engaging, and suitable for a broad audience (including non-academics). Articles will be due by March 30th, 2025.  

Please also feel free to make queries about other formats, e.g. reviews, interviews, curated reading lists, roundtable discussions, unusual / innovative formats. 

1.  https://www.esa.int/Applications/Technology_Transfer/Food_out_of_the_thin_air
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2. https://www.mtu.edu/magazine/research/2022/stories/plastic-trash-protein/ ↩︎
3. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/14/lab-grown-beef-rice-could-offer-more-sustainable-protein-source-say-creators
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