Panel review: Food Communicating Culture in Literature.

[avivasedai.livejournal.com]

I thought, since I write up my Arisia experience anyway, I'd put some panel reviews here in case people might be interested who didn't attend. Also, if other audience participants (good phrase, right?) or panelists want to comment/add, that would be great. Here's the first thing I attended, cut-tagged for your pleasure:

Food Communicating Culture in Literature. (link goes to program description) What I took away from this panel: the good storytellers are the ones that think about their worlds as a whole and have internal logic. A walled city doesn’t have bacon for breakfast because pig farming takes a lot of space, but egg-laying chickens can be stacked on a rooftop; a world with animal gods might not eat meat, post-apocalyptic tales might not have fresh bread... An author should take into account where their food comes from. Also, how does food effect the economy and/or job market; how does your transportation structure accommodate having exotic fruit at the ready 24/7, how much time needs to be spent on home food production... Off-topic, we agreed that such a panel in the future should include snacks, and that there might could be call for a panel on home crafting. (I think that there’s more call for that in fantasy than SF, but I note an overabundance of SF or SF/F in descriptions...)

Comments

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

You have some fakey quotes around the URL, which result in a mis-formatted link. Might want to fix that.

BTW, a series that does this well is the Emberverse series, by S.M. Stirling. The first book is Dies The Fire.

Thanks; fixed!

[avivasedai.livejournal.com]

I've heard of that series; thanks for the suggestion.