Devouring Tomorrow - by Jeff Dupuis & A G Pasquella (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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

Review Quotes

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.

- authors yoke together satire, realism, and science fiction in winning ways to characterize future foodstuffs that may not be desirable but are undoubtedly interesting.

Devouring Tomorrow is an intriguing, intermittently humorous if uneven short story collection edited by Jeff Dupuis and A.G. Pasquella.

Devouring Tomorrow will leave you thinking about what the future holds, who gets to survive and thrive and just what food might mean at the end of time. Some of the stories are truly bizarre, but all will leave you pondering the coming days and what surprises the future of food might hold.

Extractive capitalist systems ensure that we thirst for escape - to a somewhere, someone, or sometime else. And this is the marrow of Devouring Tomorrow, which is less about possible futures than it is about pasts full of painfully disconnected and alienated consumption. Grow something instead, these stories suggest, if you want to be fed. Grow something that matters. And savour it, so it knows it is loved.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

- authors yoke together satire, realism, and science fiction in winning ways to characterize future foodstuffs that may not be desirable but are undoubtedly interesting.

-- "Quill & Quire"

Devouring Tomorrow is an intriguing, intermittently humorous if uneven short story collection edited by Jeff Dupuis and A.G. Pasquella.

-- "The BC Review"

Devouring Tomorrow will leave you thinking about what the future holds, who gets to survive and thrive and just what food might mean at the end of time. Some of the stories are truly bizarre, but all will leave you pondering the coming days and what surprises the future of food might hold.

-- "The Miramichi Reader"

Extractive capitalist systems ensure that we thirst for escape -- to a somewhere, someone, or sometime else. And this is the marrow of Devouring Tomorrow, which is less about possible futures than it is about pasts full of painfully disconnected and alienated consumption. Grow something instead, these stories suggest, if you want to be fed. Grow something that matters. And savour it, so it knows it is loved.

-- "Literary Review of Canada"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

About the Author

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 is the author of the Jack Palace series. When he's not writing, he makes music with the bands Miracle Beard and LaserGnu. Born in Dallas, Texas, he now lives in Toronto, Ontario.