Sci-fi Books with a vegan message

Hi,
I've been reading a lot of activism books, and a lot of sci-fi books, I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for books that mix the genre? A sci-fi book with a message of veganism or animal activism? Thanks for any suggestions!

Probably not Day of the Triffids.

A lot of people see a vegan message in The War of the Worlds, given that the Martian/human relationship is analogized to humans and prey animals.

Many 'Golden Age' sf writers talked about food being created from vaguely-defined "synthetics", but that was usually in a context of future over-population and the supply/demand equation rather than moral or ethical considerations. And there were short stories of the same era (roughly) which hinged on finding that humans were being treated as food animals by aliens, but that was either done for the horror effect or (in the case of the 1950 Damon Knight short story, later turned into a 'Twilight Zone' episode, 'To serve Man') for the twisted humour inherent in the premise.

Perhaps I can widen the debate a little. What is the vegan position on meat (or other ostensibly animal products) that has never been near an animal?

In 'Star Trek', for example, food is, for the most part, replicated - using the same pattern scanning and replication technology that the transporter uses, replicators can turn out exact copies of a thing based on a pattern taken years, or possibly even decades or (eventually) centuries before. So if a piece of meat for consumption is created out of thin air and basic molecular components, with no exploitation of animals other than the last animal to be exploited for food fifty years before, is that still morally unacceptable?

(I have a feeling that there have been characters in Trek who, at some time or another, have expressed revulsion at eating real meat when happily consuming replicated food, but that may just be a false memory on my part. And no-one in the show has ever expressed outrage at the Klingon dish of Gach, which has to be consumed live; but then again, would you criticise a Klingon's culinary choices to their face?) (The question as to whether Gach can be replicated has never been addressed, AFAIK...)

Perhaps closer to our time and abilities; if we can genetically manipulate living matter to breed organisms that consist purely of meat, with no nervous system, let alone higher cognitive functions, is that still exploiting animals? If we have created a "creature" that has no possible means of achieving sentience, that lacks sensory organs, but was created purely to be a lump of protoplasm that grows meat that can be harvested without killing the creature, and without inflicting any pain because the creature has neither a nervous system to feel pain or the cognition to be aware of its situation or even its very existence, is that cruelty?

(This hasn't been addressed much in sf, though there was an episode of 'Torchwood' that touched on it, and it's a thing in Fred Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth's The Space Merchants in the form of "Chicken Little".)

Am I right in recalling a short story that touched on anthropophagy? I recall that the only food available were humanely killed cabbages, and a company was producing synthetic food that replicated human flesh...

Personally, I think there is no moral difference between killing plants or killing animals - both are living creatures, both can feel pain, both are being exploited for humanity's benefit.

There is a short story by John Wyndham in which the protagonist finds himself on another world, and gets work on a farm. He is shocked to find that the livestock look human to him, but is assured that this is just an appearance; they lack speech, any signs of abstract intelligence, and opposable thumbs - in short, any of the features that we are taught distinguish humans from animals. They are just dumb beasts. He gets used to treating them as cattle.

But they LOOK like human women, so he has sex with one of them - secretly, since he realises that the farmer would be disgusted by this 'bestiality', and in due course he delivers the baby himself. (He has affection for his sexual partner, and notes that she seems to enjoy his attentions.)

He is discovered, and scolded the farmer for his cruelty - why did he not transfer the female to a birthing chamber, instead of forcing her to give birth on the concrete floor? But he was disturbed to notice that the baby has thumbs... The farmer tends the female and makes her comfortable, then collects the baby, deftly removes its thumbs and tongue with his equipment, and places the infant in a sensory deprivation tank. There it will be grown, devoid of all stimuli, to stultify its intellect.

The farmer did not lie about how the "cattle" differ from "humans". What he did not mention was that biologically they are the same species; the differences are induced by how the babies are raised. When settlers arrived on this planet, they found there was no indigenous wildlife, nor could they grow crops that they could eat. This was their solution.

I'm sorry that I can't remember the name of the story, but I think it was in the Consider Her Ways anthology.

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Douglas Adams also addresses the issue through humour in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe with the dish that is bred to be eaten, so that it desires to be eaten, and is capable of saying so clearly and distinctly.

Michel Farber's Under the Skin is about an alien woman disguised as a human who kidnaps men, fattens them up, butchers them and then ships them back to the homeworld.

>6 Guanhumara: A precursor to Douglas Adams’ co operative meal.

Lil Abner comic strip Shmoo.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmoo

>6 Guanhumara: Interesting. That plot is very close to "In The Barn" by Piers Anthony, originally in Again, Dangerous Visions. An agent is exploring a cross-time world, and enters one of many barns, to discover humans treated like animals, stunted at birth much like in the Wyndham story, and used to produce milk. IIRC, Anthony says in his afterword that it's meant to be an argument for vegetarianism.

The Deep Range by Arthur C. Clarke: whales are herded like cattle and slaughtered for their meat; at the end, the world plans to stop killing them and switch to vegetable-based sources of food.

Bete by Adam Roberts begins with an uplifted cow arguing for its life with the human who is about to carry out its slaughter. Haven't read the rest of the book.

"Zoomen" by Fred Hoyle: a group of humans are kidnapped from Earth by unknown aliens; they eventually realize that they were chosen because of their various associations with cruelty to animals.

There's a funny moment in the Black Panther movie concerning vegetarianism.

>1 VeganDad80: I'm conflating vegetarian and vegan in some of these, sorry.

>9 dukedom_enough: I sincerely hope that I am not mis-attributing, but I don't think so. I have never read any of the Dangerous Visions anthologies, and relatively little by Piers Anthony, whose style I do not enjoy.

Wyndham's style is rather more understated, but almost always with a very strong philosophical message. I have no doubts that the story I read was intended to raise the animal rights' awareness. He died in 1969, so (assuming that I have the authorship correct), his story will predate Anthony.

>8 DugsBooks: Thank you for introducing me to the Shmoo!

>13 Guanhumara: I think you are right about the Wyndham.

>13 Guanhumara: based on your description the stories are substantially different, and I'd be willing to assume that Wyndham influenced Anthony, possibly unconsciously.

I found In the Barn to be a very unpleasant story, probably intentionally so, but it's written in a much more mature style than Anthony's other work, even his supposedly "adult" stuff, which all feels to me like light fantasy. Ellison says that it's the story which inspired the second volume of Dangerous Visions, so I guess he thought it had some merit.

>1 VeganDad80: Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake deals with the topic as well. Crake's new breed is explicitly vegan.

Well, there's always checking out related tagmashes, such as "science fiction" + "vegan" (http://www.librarything.com/tag/science+fiction%2C+vegan).

>18 karenb:

Of course, in SF "vegan" could well refer to aliens from a planet around the star Vega....

>18 karenb: Michael Pollan is a SF writer now. Who knew? Maybe the Hugo's should have a cookbook award.

Best related dish? ;)

>17 vwinsloe: I was going to suggest The Sparrow . This duology was my favourite fiction for many years, way before I went vegan. Her style of writing is absolutely beautiful and made my hairs stand up on end. I read and re read these books. Religion and faith are the main themes, explored with a story of first contact and pain.

The Wess'har Wars by Karen Travis is a vegan dream come true. I am not a military type person, BUT imagine an army of vegans. This is exactly what these books are about. I can't believe I read this series five times before I went vegan, a testament to how badly meatpoison clouded my brain. As soon as you realise who Aras is and what he does, you will be in love. By the end of it you will be jumping up and down wishing for it all to come true.

I forget the title, but there’s a Lem story where humanity are applying to join some sort of galactic community, and the chief argument against is that we eat meat.

>22 Jollyahimsa: I was already vegetarian when I read The Sparrow so it didn't change me much in that regard. But I did become an atheist after reading it.

>23 Jollyahimsa: I'm putting The Wess'har Wars on my wish list. Thank you.

>1 VeganDad80: for animal activism, I would suggest The companions by Sheri Tepper. One of the few Tepper I found worth a reread.

>19 lorax: I recently read And Call Me Conrad and it was very hard to shake "vegan" from my head whenever I read "Vegan."

Author Margaret Atwood describes her MaddAddam trilogy of novels as speculative fiction, not science fiction, but it does present a group of human survivors of a pandemic who follow a vegan diet.

There's also the science fiction novel A World Out of Time, my favorite of all of the works of US writer Larry Niven. In it, the author presents the concept of a "zero time jail," a large box where one can store anything to be protected against the passage of time. What a great device that would be for preserving vegan cookathon dishes. The protagonist of A World Out Of Time adapts to a vegan diet.