eating disorders in SFF?

[kate_nepveu]

Are there any science fiction or fantasy novels that contain eating disorders, besides Buckell's Sly Mongoose?

Comments

[justinelavaworm.livejournal.com]

In Pretties, the second book of Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series, one of the methods they use to fight the changes to their brains is anorexia to the point where I think it morphs into anorexia nervosa.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

There's a Jane Yolen short story, possibly called "Names," in which the daughter of a concentration camp survivor develops anorexia and eventually starves herself to death. Though maybe that wasn't actually fantasy.

Mark Vorkosigan is a binge eater, and was also abused into a form of bulimia.

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

I was gonna mention Mark Vorkosigan but you beat me to it.

[kate_nepveu]

I knew I was missing something incredibly obvious!

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

IIRC, Mark Rogers' Zorachus(1986) had an evil high priest who binged.

Again IIRC, Nancy Springer's Apocalypse has Famine as an anorexic.

And C.S. Lewis's Pilgrim's Regress has Pride as an anorexic.

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

Again IIRC, Nancy Springer's Apocalypse has Famine as an anorexic.

Oh, and Famine in Good Omens made his living writing diet books.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Famine also owned restaurants offering minimalist cuisine, if I recall correctly.

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

Now that I think about it more, I remember him owning fast food chains and a line about junk food made from real junk.

[kate_nepveu]

Both of those.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

The X-Factor comics had Famine as an anorexic teenage girl whose mutant power was to make food turn to dust.

[kate_nepveu]

For some reason I find that particularly creepy.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I think somethingorother by Charles De Lint has a character with an eating disorder. Can't remember which though...a lot of them blend together.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

When I read this post, I thought, "Charles de Lint must surely have an eating-disordered character!" But I can't think of one off-hand.

[mikeda.livejournal.com]

One of his Newford short stories has an anorexic main character.

Can't recall the title right now.

[kate_nepveu]

Google says "Wishing Well" in _The Ivory and the Horn_, which I've read but couldn't remember the title.

[ejmam.livejournal.com]

Robin Hobb has a series where the protagonist is magically affected to overeat and become really fat. Which makes everyone hate him, of course. I think it's the Soldier's Son trilogy.

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

I assume you're not looking for a list of zombie novels...

More anorexia in Carole Nelson Douglas' Counterprobe, a diabetic in Piers Anthony's Killobyte, and magical obesity in Hobb's Forest Mage. Normally in this sort of discussion I'd name my favorite books that fit the criteria, but this time I could only think of books I hated (I love everything Hobb wrote [under that name] except for that trilogy, and CND's Probe was very good).

[kate_nepveu]

Heh. Nah, the zombies weren't eating, just biting . . .

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

David J. Skal, Antibodies, sf/horror, major subplot with anorexia/body dysmorphic disorder, not recommended.

Sage Walker, Whiteout - character is so focused on online life he neglects food to the point of starvation.

I feel like there must be some YA/urban fantasy on this topic but cannot think of any examples.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Maybe Francesca Lia Block?

[yendi]

I feel like there must be some YA/urban fantasy on this topic but cannot think of any examples.

Kim Antieu's Mercy, Unbound comes to mind. I'm sure there have to be others, though.

[lbmango.livejournal.com]

Mark VorKosigan and Famine from Good Omens spring to mind.

I'm sure there must also be some "Black Ribbon Vampires" (as in Pratchett) who have food issues... although in Pratchett it's taken as more Temperance and alcoholism than eating disorder... I'm sure someone else deals with it as an eating disorder.

Did this come out of Boskone? or are you planning a panel on it next year (it would be a great topic I think)

[kate_nepveu]

I just finished _Sly Mongoose_ and was thinking that there would might a Worldcon panel in it, but wasn't sure how many other books there would be to sustain such a thing. Plenty, it seems like.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

On a slightly related topic, Robert Silverberg's "The Iron Chancellor" is a satire of over-maniacal diet plans.

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

I haven't read it, but Reed's Thinner Than Thou sounds similar.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Do weird allegies count? I can think of a few characters who couldn't eat the usual stereoisomers. Maybe more than a few.

[kate_nepveu]

The things that interest me, personally, about portrayals of eating disorders are body image & control as influenced by society, so I wouldn't say so--psychology not physiology.

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

There's Meg Rosoff's not-quite-SF "How I Live Now," in which an anorexic girl goes to her cousins' house in England and gets caught up in terrorism and war -- um, I'm not doing a very good job describing it, but it's beautifully written and not at all problem-novely.

[janni.livejournal.com]

I was going to mention this one, too.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Francesca Lia Block, The Hanged Man. The main character is anorexic and IIRC bulimic. The book may be fantasy or may be magical-realist but either way is one of her best. I think she may also have had anorexia turn up in one of her outright fantasies but I can't remember off the top of my head.

It feels like Elizabeth Hand ought to have it somewhere.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

Tangent: In Octavia Butler's short story "The Morning, the Evening, and the Night" (maybe those are in a different order), there is an inherited disease that can be controlled in part by diet.

[redbird]

It's "The Evening, the Morning, and the Night." The diet that's necessary to control the disease is so extreme as to create social ostracism: basically, eating any normal food is a medical problem, and the special diet involves food that is obviously medical diet food (rather than, say, the people being able to tell classmates or coworkers that they don't want to trade sandwiches, or brought a salad from home today).

[kate_nepveu]

Huh. I take it that the disease itself is stigmatized? Because otherwise I'm not quite convinced of the plausibility.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Yes, the disease causes self-mutilation and occasionally homicidal psychosis if uncontrolled by diet, so I found the stigmatization very plausible.

[kate_nepveu]

Goodness, yes, that would do it.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Oh: Susan Palwick, Flying in Place. The narrator's dead sister died of pneumonia as a complicated by anorexia, and the narrator overeats in response to stress.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I'm not certain if it's quite sf or just horror (partly because I don't know where you draw the boundary and partly because I couldn't stand to finish it), but Richard Bachman's Thinner is very much about disordered eating.

[kate_nepveu]

I haven't read it either, but I feel like King has some other stuff too, and now I just have to think of it . . .

Thanks.

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

It's been a long time, but one of the Meredith Ann Pierce "Darkangel" books had hungerspice, which was used to keep the protagonist prisoner while happily starving herself to death on non-food. Not a body image issue, but a means of control certainly. And creepy.

I bet the author had eating disorders in mind when she wrote it, although I didn't have an eye open for that sort of thing back when I read it.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

You might try talking to wild_irises. She'd done lots of body image stuff both connected and not with sf. She and Laurie Edison have a blog called Body Impolitic (http://www.laurietobyedison.com/discuss/) which deals with these issues in Real Life.

Or if you don't know her, would you like me to nudge wild_irises to come take a look at this post and comments?

MKK

[kate_nepveu]

Thanks for the offer, but there's no urgent need; this was a trial balloon for a proposed Worldcon panel, and so if that goes anywhere, you could point her that-a-way then.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

"The Food Farm" by Kit Reed is an amazing SF story about food and body shape and pop idols and being a teenaged girl.

Yes, I could not get over the bulimia subtext in Sly Mongoose though I hated that the copyeditor chose to render it as "bulemia" throughout.