Devouring Tomorrow, edited by Jeff Dupuis and A.G. Pasquella
Reviewed by Naomi MacKinnon
There are not many of us who can say that food does not play a big role in our lives. Much of our time is spent thinking about food, shopping for food, preparing food, and eating food. Devouring Tomorrow is a collection of short stories that imagines what food or food culture might be like in the future. The way climate change is progressing, it is not a far-fetched notion that anything food-related is going to have to change, if it is not changing already. Devouring Tomorrow has asked a selection of accomplished Canadian authors to contribute a story exploring what they imagine the future of food might look like.
In this collection of 16 stories, you will find a wide variety of voices and ideas, with plenty of food for thought! These stories explore scarcity of food, changes in food, memories of food, and even the sentience of food.
In Marianne Is Not Hungry, Marianne’s unhealthy relationship with food is told from the point of view of the food. “Marianne neglects me when she is in love… But I am patient. I know that Marianne’s happy states don’t last forever, and that there will be a time when Marianne, again, will spend most of her time with me, thinking of me; when she will count calories instead of wondering how to tell Felix how to trim his beard without hurting his feelings, which is what she’s thinking about right now, her belly filled with tonkotsu ramen, at a thousand calories.”
It’s 2182 in I Want Candy, and Jenny F. is reviewing Vancouver’s eating establishments online while Nic B., the troll, disparages everything she says and stands for. Après Afloat specializes in “micromolecular gastronomy,” offering up “prosecco ventilator” and “protein foam.” They also offer “premium vintage heroine in the powder room.” At Brunch Babe, the French-toast mini crackers were so filling that Jenny couldn’t touch her “ketamine-infused egg bite.”
A View Worth All the Aqua in the World is set far in the future where “aqua” is a currency and books are unrecognizable. When Bee finds “some kind of oldtech artifact,” something that “appears to be several soft screens in a hard outer case [and] lines and lines of old code on each screen,” she hopes it will fetch her a month’s worth of aqua with enough left over to take her son to a “Virtual Nutrition Station.”
Prince Edward Island is the setting for Food Fight; it’s sometime in the not-too-distant future and there is a protest happening at the bridge. The story is narrated by three characters: Obsidian, owner of one of the last productive farms on the island, reflects on how things got to his point – the protest against MacEnDish and the nightly robotic garden thieves. Sawyer, Obsidian’s child, knows this much: “if you could harvest and compost people’s bullshit, you might actually salvage this cracked-sand desert moonscape,” and is on their way to the protest with a trailer full of machine guns they printed off at home on their 3D printer. And Landon, Obsidian’s uncle, is heading to the protest with his daughter Isabel (legal counsel for MacEndish Atlantic). Suffering from dementia, events of the day prompt Landon’s memories from the past.
Other stories in the collection include: a scientist trying to “save the world” by experimenting with moth pollination now that the bees are gone; a self-sustaining retirement cruise ship that has been at sea since the rest of the world was bombed 10 years ago; a world where it is illegal to eat over 2000 calories a day unless you have a license to get pregnant; and a world in which you wear “halos” of memories that are at risk of being stolen, food memories being especially sought after.
Each story drives you on to see what the next author has dreamed up for you. Highly compelling.
Contributing authors: Sifton Tracey Anipare, Carleigh Baker, Gary Barwin, Chris Benjamin, Eddy Boudel Tan, Catherine Bush, Jowita Bydlowska, Lisa de Nikolits, Dina Del Bucchia, Terri Farvo, Elan Mastai, Mar Sampson, Ji Hong Sayo, Jacqueline Valencia, Anuja Varghese, and A.G.A. Wilmot
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Book Details
Publisher : Rare Machines
Publication date : March 25 2025
Print length : 240 pages
ISBN-10 : 1459754980
ISBN-13 : 978-1459754980
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