Fiction Anthologies (multiple Authors)
Devouring Tomorrow
Fiction from the Future of Food
- Publisher
- Dundurn Press
- Initial publish date
- Mar 2025
- Category
- Anthologies (multiple authors), Short Stories, Horror
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781459755000
- Publish Date
- Mar 2025
- List Price
- $12.99
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781459754980
- Publish Date
- Mar 2025
- List Price
- $24.99
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Description
An anthology of speculative short fiction imagining the possibilities of our food-insecure future.
Our lives, our culture, our community all start with and revolve around food and eating. Sharing meals with family and friends has been a hallmark of human society from our earliest beginnings. But we are entering an era of unprecedented change. Climate, technology, the global spread of crop diseases, droughts, and the loss of pollinators threaten to change not only how much food we eat, but what we eat and how we eat it.
Devouring Tomorrow explores this strange new menu through the eyes and palates of some of Canada’s most exciting authors. See a world with no bees left to pollinate our crops. Encounter lab-grown meat so advanced that it becomes sentient. Visit a land where diseases wipe out a common fruit and the society of a nation changes around its loss. This is not the world of the distant future — this is tomorrow.
Featuring stories from:
Sifton Tracey Anipare • Carleigh Baker • Gary Barwin • Chris Benjamin • Eddy Boudel Tan • Catherine Bush • Jowita Bydlowska • Lisa de Nikolits • Dina Del Bucchia • Terri Favro • Elan Mastai • Mark Sampson • Ji Hong Sayo • Jacqueline Valencia • Anuja Varghese • A.G.A. Wilmot
About the authors
Jeff Dupuis is the author of the Creature X Mystery series. When not in front of a computer, he can be found haunting the river valleys of Toronto, where he lives and works.
A.G. Pasquella’s writing has appeared in various spots including McSweeney’s, Wholphin, The Believer, Black Book, Broken Pencil and Utne Reader. A.G.’s story “I Was a Teenage Minotaur,” originally published by Joyland, was included in Imaginarium 2013: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing. Pasquella has published three novellas: Why Not a Spider Monkey Jesus? (which also appeared as a thirty-page excerpt in McSweeney’s #11), NewTown and The This & The That. He is the co-editor (along with Terri Favro) of PAC’N HEAT: A Noir Homage to Ms. Pac-Man. A.G.’s three crime novels in the Jack Palace series – Yard Dog, Carve the Heart and Season of Smoke – were published by Dundurn Press. When he’s not writing, A.G. makes music with the bands Miracle Beard and Lasergnu. A.G. was born and raised in Dallas, Texas, and now lives in Toronto, Ontario, with his wife and their two children.
Excerpt: Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction from the Future of Food (edited by Jeff Dupuis & A.G. Pasquella)
INTRODUCTION
To say “you are what you eat” is both the oldest of clichés and the most accurate of observations. Food is not only the key to human survival, but the bedrock of human culture. What we eat, how we procure it, how we prepare it, and how we consume it has helped define our species from our earliest days. Our ancestors left us cave paintings of game and the legacy of the hunt. Our farming forebears built our holidays around the seasons and our civilizations around the storage of grain and gave us pottery as both tool and art form. We have always been shaped by food.
In an era of rapid change on a swiftly warming planet, it’s anyone’s guess how food and food culture will evolve. This very question sparked a conversation on Facebook Messenger one morning, and we soon realized we had the glimmer of an anthology on our hands. So we set out to assemble a killer roster of Canadian writers, tasking them with answering a very important question: As the future unfolds, how will food change and how will it change us?
How will we grow the number of crops necessary to feed the planet’s population if the pollinators we rely on go extinct? In her piece, “Pollinators,” Carleigh Baker gives us a glimpse into that very possible future. When lab-grown meat develops far enough to achieve sentience, what will it think, and what will it want to tell us? Catherine Bush takes on this tricky subject in her story, “Pleased to Meet You.” What food and drinks will be served when water becomes so rare it is both currency and means of survival? Anuja Varghese pours out a possible solution in her story, “A View Worth All the Aqua in the World.” Elan Mastai’s “Succulent” tackles a heavy moral question in a very funny way: Is it cannibalism to eat a clone?
Devouring Tomorrow explores these questions and many more, taking us down an all-too-possible road based on the world’s current trajectory of climate change denial, unmitigated consumption, and greed. From authors who have shaped Canadian fiction for decades as well as the hottest up-and-coming talents, Devouring Tomorrow offers a smorgasbord of stories that show us who we are and who we will be, through our stomachs. Everything we are begins with food, and perhaps that is how it will end. You’ll have to read all the way through to find out. So grab a knife and fork and dig in. Bon appétit!
A.G. Pasquella and Jeff Dupuis
Editorial Reviews
The earth's climate in the twenty-first century is an altered and oft-troubling phenomenon, and the stories we tell about this unsettling new place are vital for helping us learn to navigate it. This cornucopia of dietary dystopias is a welcome addition to the conversation about how we will feed ourselves in this radically changed climate.
Chris Turner, author of How to Be a Climate Optimist
Devouring Tomorrow is a collection of strange futures filled with warning tales of extinction and innovation, survival versus indulgence, all while exploring the cannibalistic nature of humans and what we might do for a taste of nostalgia, of home.
Ai Jiang, Bram Stoker and Nebula award-winning author of LINGHUN and I AM AI
Reading the evocative, deeply imaginative anthology Devouring Tomorrow left me alternately awed and unsettled; its vivid imaginings of humanity's future sparked both a deep appreciation for its creativity and an urgency to confront the issues therein. From Catherine Bush's haunting "Pleased to Meet You," which gives voice to sentient lab-grown meat, to Carleigh Baker's "Pollinators," a poignant exploration of survival without bees, each story offers a chilling yet hopeful glimpse into a world shaped by climate change, innovation, and our primal relationship with sustenance. Blending humour, pathos, and razor-sharp insight, the raw emotional resonance of these stories lingered long after I turned the final page.
Christine Estima, author of The Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society
Like an Alpine train hurtling through the mountains, Devouring Tomorrow insists to be heard in all its ominous augury and undeniable beauty. Through sixteen stories, it conceives a world of food insecurity — chilling and unprecedented — that will make us question everything we know about food and where our food comes from, now. It might also make us relish our food better, and not take a bite for granted.
Deepa Rajagopalan, Giller-shortlisted author of Peacocks of Instagram
From designer cannibalism to post-apocalyptic food insecurity, this collection is a harvest of sinister possibilities featuring a killer crop of locally sourced writers. Devouring Tomorrow serves up a fresh, culinary twist on classic dystopian themes.
Greg Rhyno, author of Who By Fire
Each story in Devouring Tomorrow is evocative and memorable in its own way: Some satisfy our darkest and most primal curiosities; others experiment with form and point-of-view, serving up food for thought that will leave readers ravenous for more; all lead us away from what we think we know about ourselves and our world, stomachs bursting with the kind of laughter and anguish and awe that only the best of books can provide.
Sydney Hegele, author of The Pump and Bird Suit
