biscuits;
scones;
fruits;
grilled meats on wooden platters;
salads;
juices.
American correspondent William Dreiser, "...buttering a scone...," found that:
"It was excellent as usual; he had not had a bad meal since Dakar. The meat dishes were a little too highly spiced, as always. It was a sort of Scottish-Austrian-Indonesian cuisine, with a touch of Louisiana thrown in." (Marching Through Georgia, p. 69)
When Dreiser's host "...raised his cup slightly...":
"Hands appeared to fill it, add cream and sugar." (ibid.)
- like Asimov's robots responding to their masters' every wish, except that these domestic servants are not robots but human serfs.
6 comments:
I am always intrigued by things like this, and Stirling's deft touch at worldbuilding is, I think, one of the reasons the series became as popular as it is. Not the only reason--Tanya von Shrakenberg and even Gwendolyn Ingolffson are not infrequently mentioned in the same sentence with the word "waifu" in certain circles in skiffy fandom, and one wonders whether Stirling fully intended that.
But I certainly would be intrigued by a collection of Draka recipes. I wonder how much of that passage is based on the way European colonists and their descendants in places like Rhodesia and South Africa ate. Is piri piri chicken--a fiery chicken dish marinated in a mix of cilantro, garlic, lemon, and flamethrowing African birdseye peppers--something the Draka would recognize? What about rogan josh, or chicken vindaloo? Is our ketchup something they'd describe as a sweet tomato chutney?
One also notes the absence of refined sugar. Are the Draka on a keto diet? Is there some dim subtext implying the Draka regard a taste for sweets as a sign of decadence and weakness, further proof of their authoritarian inclinations and contempt for our norms? I am, perhaps, reading too much into a single passage.
Kaor, Anonymous!
Thanks for leaving such a solid comment. Alas, I'm not as familiar as I should be with how SF fans talk among themselves, so I don't know what "waifu" means in such circles.
But, yes, it has been noted more than once how carefully Stirling describes meals in his stories. I agree, I can see European settlers and their descendants mixing imported with local foods, recipes, styles, etc.
One reason for not seeing much mentioned of refined sugar would be to reduce chances, among the Draka, of getting obese and coming down with diabetes. We do see Gwen eating a "revoltingly sweet" cake in DRAKON because it provided some useful carbs or energy at a moment of high stress.
Ad astra! Sean
Thank you. And I was being a bit facetious. "Waifu" is a word used among anime fans in Japan. It is the English word "wife" but rendered as it would be pronounced written phonetically with the most similar available Japanese characters, then borrowed back by American anime fandom. A fictional character described as a "waifu" is one for whom the speaker feels an infatuation, or even regards as an ideal mate.
Anime fandom being what it is, the term gets applied to many characters, sometimes ironically or sarcastically, sometimes not. Gwendolyn Ingolfsson and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Tanya von Shrakenberg, are rather frightening people, for all that they are described as possessing great beauty. Despite this there is more than a little fanfiction about them, particularly the former, in which they are depicted in a manner suggesting the authors are infatuated at the very least despite the fact that Gwen and Tanya are by our standards violent psychopaths. I am not sure how Stirling feels about this, though a cynic might suggest that he was not entirely unaware of how enthusiastic some readers might be about beautiful, stern, no-nonsense women who like to unwind after a long day of global contest by smoking hashish in the hot tub with their harems of doe-eyed slave girls. I was speaking tongue in cheek, but these people are real enough.
If I may go on a tangent, one also wonders whether the Drakensis palate is significantly different from that of baseline humans. The conventional wisdom is that we evolved to desire sweet things because it encouraged our ancestors to gorge themselves on fresh fruit before it could spoil, and that this trait is much older than humanity. Might the Draka geneticists have edited it out, accidentally or intentionally? There is a cultural association in the West--I am not sure that "stereotype" is the word I'm looking for--that a great desire for sweets is a childish trait, and, even more so, a feminine one. Could it have been a deliberate choice the geneticists made, as a statement about "purging the New Race of all weakness?" One notices how vehemently the Draka reject traditional gender roles generally and particularly anything connected to the traditionally feminine role.
Kaor, Anonymous!
Thanks for an even more solid comment!
I appreciate your explanation of "waifu." I find it rather disturbing, some fans of Stirling being INFATUATED with "females" (can they be called women?) like Tanya von Shrakenberg or Gwen Ingolfsson. These creatures might be beautiful, but they are also monstrous. To me, that would be like being infatuated with rattlesnakes!
I recall reading of Stirling impatiently telling readers that his Draka books were DYSTOPIAN, meant to show how disastrously badly history might have turned out. The Draka and their Domination are not supposed to be admired!
Yes, I agree humans evolved, in past ages, a strong desire for fatty, salty, and sweet foods, because for most our existence as a species, they were rare treats and it made sense to gorge on them if the chance for that came. We do know from the Draka books that the "Master Race" was big on genetic engineering, so it is possible Draka genetic engineers tinkered with the palate and taste buds.
I believe men and women are different, and it's no shame for women to be feminine and to favor feminine "roles." Nor is it possible, short of reversing the DNA patterns of men amd women, for them to change sexes. Which means I deny Bruce Jenner is a woman!
Ad astra! Sean
You're most welcome. There are people out there who take such an interest in anything you can imagine and plenty that you can't. Even in the dialup days much was on display that even people who regarded themselves as jaded might find alarming if they stumbled across it. There was an entire Usenet newsgroup devoted to erotic Lovecraft fanfiction, for example, and much of its content was parodies and black humor, but not all of it. Erotic fiction on this specific theme has a long history. Before the Internet, when people who sought a type of visual stimulation had to find it in dilapidated theaters in the bad part of town, there was a subgenre of film set in a concentration camp, in which a pneumatic blonde wearing an SS-Einsatzgruppen uniform would pretend to whip actors pretending to be inmates as a prelude to the main event. "Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS" was but one such. We can dismiss it as tasteless Seventies kitsch, but people put up the money to make those films and people paid to see them. There were novels exploring the premise, too. There has been an enthusiastic audience for this kind of thing for a very long time. "Venus in Furs" predates motion pictures. And the cynic in me, as I said, wonders whether Stirling might have included these characters and described their deeds in such loving detail in order to make what is, viewed objectively, a rather disturbing novel about a very unpleasant premise, more saleable rather than because this was his artistic vision. Certain people in skiffy fandom have been calling him "S&M Stirling" for thirty years. As the author, the universe and characters are his to create. There could have been no female characters among the Draka who had speaking roles, or they could have been crones, or fat grotesque, or repellently stupid. Instead almost every one we see is youthful, beautiful, fit, intelligent, skilled, resourceful, strong-willed, quick-witted, determined. They have heroic qualities yet are simultaneously violently insane and devoted to a cause that is evil and destructive. They are every bit as aggressive, militarily, personally, and sexually, as any of the men, usually more so. Yolande Ingolfsson makes Eric von Shrakenberg look like the very soul of reason and good nature. Looking back on it I suppose also it's possible that the gorgeous oversexed supervillainesses were Jim Baen's idea. Another thought: a central concept in Draka culture is an affected stoicism. They make much of their discipline, their mastery of every passion, their devotion to one another, their willingness to sacrifice. We see them punishing themselves with grueling calisthenics, spending hours daily practicing martial arts. They believe themselves to be the true heirs of Sparta, or so they tell you. But they do not behave like the disciplined, iron-willed, warrior monk brotherhood they want the world to perceive. They gorge themselves with sex, power, and cruelty like a fat kid at an all-you-can-eat buffet. You'd think they'd feel sated at some point. You'd think they'd look inward and ask themselves some questions about the compulsions that drive them as mercilessly as they drive their serfs, but no. Long ago I read a Draka fanfiction in which a much older Gwendolyn who had gone off to explore the stars angrily lectures a younger Drakensis, telling him that everything their people had been doing for centuries was a waste, that they devoted all the energies of their society day after day after day to intimidating a world that hated them, that all that effort could have been used to accomplish more meaningful things, and that she had come to find it all tiresome. One last tangent: the Draka reject traditional gender roles so completely that their women don't even rear their own children. They even outsource childbearing to serf women as soon as technology permits. What would Freud make of that, I wonder?
(From Unknown.)
Kaor, Anonymous!
Again, a very solid comment. Thanks!
Yes, I have heard of S&M porn of that kind, using fake Nazis.* Albeit I never got the impression of Stirling himself favoring that kind of thing. Now that you've mentioned it, most of the Draka females do seem implausibly "perfect."
And compared to many of the other Draka Eric von Shrakenberg was far more reasonable and even "moderate," capable of at least having doubts about the rightness of his people. And we do see mention of Draka in THE STONE DOGS who accepted the logic of such doubts and defected to the anti-Draka Alliance.
Interesting, a fanfic about Gwen Ingolfsson who rejected the entire "ethos" of her people. There were moments, here and there in THE STONE DOGS and DRAKON, where that was thinkable.
I'm sure some shrinks would have a lot to say about women who hate their own bodies natural functions of pregnancy and childbearing as we see Draka "females" doing!
Ad astra! Sean
*But I know there were real Nazis who were indeed vicious sadomasochistic torturers.
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