Abstract
While it is still some way from commercial production, in vitro meat (IVM) is drawing significant media coverage. IVM’s promise is meat without suffering, with a diminished ecological footprint and potential for addressing global food shortages. For all its novelty, IVM (or something very like it) has been present in creative literature since at least 1881, with a particular concentration of references appearing in Cold War science fiction. After an initial survey of the literary pre-history of in vitro meat, this chapter focuses on Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth’s 1952 novel The Space Merchants, a stinging critique of post-war programmes of agricultural intensification that revolves around Chicken Little, a decades-old “hundred-ton lump of grey-brown rubbery flesh”. Although the novel nostalgically valorises a lost pastoral world of purportedly authentic human–animal relations, The Space Merchants is not a straightforwardly conservative text, however, but one which raises crucial questions about the cultural meaning and ideological function of IVM.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Works Cited
Adams, Cody. “Frankenmeat: Growing a Burger in a Petri Dish.” http://bigthink.com/floating-university/frankenmeat-growing-a-burger-in-a-petri-dish. Accessed 9 March 2018.
Amis, Martin. New Maps of Hell. London: Penguin, 2012 (1960).
Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. London: Virago, 2004.
Belasco, Warren. Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2006.
Brennan, John P. “The Mechanical Chicken: Psyche and Society in The Space Merchants.” Extrapolation 25, no. 2 (1984): 101–114.
Calarco, Matthew. Thinking Through Animals: Identity, Difference, Indistinction. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015.
Catts, Oron, and Ionat Zurr. “Growing Semi-Living Sculptures: The Tissue Culture & Art Project.” Leonardo 35, no. 4 (2002): 365–370.
———. “The Tissue Culture and Art Project: The Semi-Living as Agents of Irony.” In Performance and Technology, edited by S Broadhurst and J Machon, 153–168. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
———. “Disembodied Livestock: The Promise of a Semi-Living Utopia.” Parallax 19, no. 1 (2013): 101–113.
Clarke, Arthur C. “Food of the Gods.” In The Wind from the Sun, 3–7. London: Victor Gollancz, 1964.
Cooper, Melinda. Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008.
Dienst, Richard. The Bonds of Debt: Borrowing Against the Common Good. London: Verso, 2011.
Friedrich, Bruce. “‘Clean Meat’: The ‘Clean Energy of Food’.” http://www.gfi.org/clean-meat-the-clean-energy-of-food. Accessed 7 March 2018.
Hopkins, Patrick D., and Austen Lacey. “Vegetarian Meat: Could Technology Save Animals and Satisfy Meat Eaters?” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 21, no. 6 (2008): 579–596.
Huxley, T. H. On the Physical Basis of Life. New Haven, CT: Charles C. Chatfield, 1870.
Lane, Mary Bradley. Mizora: A Prophecy. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2007 (1881).
Lasswitz, Kurd. Two Planets. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971 (1895).
Lestel, Dominique. Eat This Book: A Carnivore’s Manifesto. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.
Liem, Emma. “Memphis Meat Scientist: The World Is Ready for Clean Meat.” https://www.fooddive.com/news/memphis-meats-scientist-the-world-is-ready-for-clean-meat/445892/. Accessed 9 March 2018.
McGrath, Matt. “Cultured Lab Meat May Make Climate Change Worse.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47283162. Accessed 23 April 2019.
McHugh, Susan. “Real Artificial: Tissue-Cultured Meat, Genetically Modified Farm Animals, and Fictions.” Configurations 18, no. 1 (2010): 181–197.
Miller, John. “In Vitro Meat: Power, Authenticity and Vegetarianism.” Journal for Critical Animal Studies 10, no. 4 (2012): 41–63.
Milner, Andrew John, and Robert Ian Savage. “Pulped Dreams: Utopia and American Pulp Science Fiction.” Science Fiction Studies 35, no. 1 (2008): 31–47.
The National Chicken of Tomorrow Committee. The Chicken of Tomorrow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPYYwdI0tIc. Accessed 7 March 2018.
New Harvest. “Mission & Vision.” http://www.new-harvest.org/about. Accessed 23 April 2019.
Niven, Larry. “Assimilating Our Culture, That’s What They’re Doing!” In The Draco Tavern, 17–24. New York: Tor, 1978.
O’Riordan, Kate. Unreal Objects: Digital Materialities, Technoscientific Projects and Political Realities. London: Pluton Press, 2017.
Parry, Jovian. “Oryx and Crake and the New Nostalgia for Meat.” Society and Animals 17, no. 3 (2009): 241–256.
Pearce, David. “Give Up Eating Meat.” https://www.singularityweblog.com/david-pearce-hedonistic-imperative/. Accessed 7 March 2018.
Pick, Anat. Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Film. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
Piper, H. Beam. Space Viking. London: Sphere, 1961.
———. Four-Day Planet. Cabin John, MD: Wildside Press, 1961.
Pohl, Frederik. The Slave Ship. London: Four Square, 1957.
———. The Merchant’s War. London: Victor Gollancz, 1984.
Pohl, Frederik, and Isaac Asimov. Our Angry Earth. New York: Tor, 1991.
Pohl, Frederik, and Cyril Kornbluth. The Space Merchants. London: Penguin, 1984 (1952).
Popper, Nathaniel. “You Call That Meat? Not So Fast Cattle Ranchers Say.” New York Times, February 9. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/09/technology/meat-veggie-burgers-lab-produced.html.
Seed, David. “Take-Over Bids: The Power Fantasies of Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth.” Foundation (Autumn 1993): 42–57.
Shapiro, Paul. Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World. New York: Gallery, 2018.
Simak. Clifford D. Time Is the Simplest Thing. London: Pan, 1961.
Smith, Frederick Edwin. The World in 2030. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1930.
Squier, Susan. Poultry Science, Chicken Culture: A Partial Alphabet. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012.
Stephens, Neal. “In Vitro Meat: Zombies on the Menu?” SCRITPed: A Journal of Law, Technology & Society 7, no. 2 (2010): 394–401.
Twine, Richard. Animals as Biotechnology: Ethics, Sustainability and Critical Animal Studies. London, Earthscan, 2010.
Varley, John. The Ophiuchi Hotline. London: HarperCollins, 1977.
Vint, Sherryl. Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012.
Weiss, Jason. “ICYMI: Here’s a Recap of #NewHarvest2017.” http://www.new-harvest.org/icymi_heres_a_recap_of_newharvest2017. Accessed 7 March 2018.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Miller, J. (2019). The Literary Invention of In Vitro Meat: Ontology, Nostalgia and Debt in Pohl and Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants. In: McCorry, S., Miller, J. (eds) Literature and Meat Since 1900. Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26917-3_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26917-3_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-26916-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-26917-3
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)