To an extent, all novelists need to build the world their characters inhabit. Since I write Sci-Fi I’ve got more work to create alien planets and believable futures. While writers have wrestled with this problem since Jules Verne, I have a new approach – planet as food.
The idea came from a conversation with my daughter about our Solstice Celebration menu. We’ll have Cosmic Soup (recipe yet to be determined) with cheese for the sun and various baked goods for the planets. We discussed the composition of the planets and how that could translate into a cracker or muffin. Mercury, for example, had to be oyster crackers – so crunchy they practically eat themselves. Mars is a pumpernickel cracker – the reddish-brown color is a perfect match. Jupiter, a gas planet, will be a popover. Earth, the watery planet, could be water crackers, but I’m going with Goldfish Crackers.
As I jotted notes for our celebration, I considered thinking of my fictional planets as foodstuffs as a way to spice up my descriptions. What if I wrote about clouds rolling about like dumplings in an alien sky the color of chicken soup? What if my human visitors smelled liver and onions on the breeze? And who could resist a description of running through a swamp the consistency of rice pudding?
I’ll need more details that won’t work with a food-based approach, but now that I’m thinking in new ways I may find it easier to imagine the light, the air, the cities, the songs of my fictional planets. With any luck, I may even come up with a recipe for Cosmic Soup.