A few days ago I received a pleasant
surprise in the form of a Goodreads message from Shelley. She wanted to know if
I would be willing to talk about the food in my story and the significance and
story behind it. Immediately I thought of one meal that stands out in The Exile Empire. It took an invasion,
thousands of lives, and the formation of an entirely new economy for the new
recipe to exist.
One of the primary components in The Exile Empire is obviously the fact
that humans have been dispersed from their old area of space. The problem with
such diaspora in the vastness of interstellar space filled with hostile enemies
is the relative lack of resources, and chief among them food! This had become
more than an inconvenience by the time the major events of the story began to
unfold and the human exiles were getting quite desperate.
But that was when they found a new system
with edible plants and animals a-plenty. There was only one catch. The planet
was in a system crawling with hostile enemies that had just conquered the
natives on a nearby planet and the humans would have to fight their way to the
new food source.
After the initial scouts are attacked the
remaining human fleet springs into action, moving to protect both their people
and the precious food on the planet below. After the carnage that ensues there
is still a major problem in that most of the edibles are either in raw,
indigestible form, or spread around the planet in roaming herds that weren’t
big enough to feed everyone.
That is when Karen, an economic and
business savant from the old civilization, was brought in. Over the course of
several chapters she takes the rag-tag remnants of a mixed civilian and
military fleet and is able to create a fully functioning economy and foodstuffs
supply chain in only a few days. Now, of course such a supply line would be
highly limited in what it could produce. The two main foods that resulted from
this endeavor are a grain called a sand nut and meat from a creature called an
Abe.
The sand nuts had to be refined because in
their raw form they contain a powerful laxative (something a few of the initial
colonists lacking caution found out in humorous fashion). The Abes were similar
to earth cattle and because of this similarity people started calling them
Alien Bison when they first encountered them. This lead to the abbreviation ‘A’
‘B’ which Wen said aloud sounds like “ABE” and after a few rounds of repetition
the name stuck. The end result of all these shenanigans was a pita-bread-like wrap
around an Abe meat filling.
These resulting Sh’in Wraps (named for the
planet) quickly became a staple in the new civilization and they appear in
subsequent stories throughout the series. It is amazing how much history and
work can go into the simplest of foods, and science fiction, since it involves
people and supply chains, should be no exception. I think that the Sh’in Wraps
are an excellent example of simple food created by a complex setting.
Thanks for stopping by to share your food for thought,
Joshua!
You can find Joshua here:
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