The Soylent Corporation has a lot to answer for.
You didn’t get the FDA memo about red #5 and yellow #15?
Don’t you remember the big flap? They tried to switch to gorillas and re-market Soylent Green as Soylent Yellow or the new Soylent. They say that they’re back to people, but people swear there is a change in the taste.
Soylent Redis a holiday flavor. How else do you propose the jolly one get rid of older elves?
Kittens.
You were warned.
Let me tell you about Soylent Mauve…
Nah, you’d never believe me.
There was a story in the news about a decade ago where a Japanese researcher figured out a way to make lunch meat substitute out of human waste. (really!)
I thought at the time the perfect name for this product would have been “Soylent Brown.”
What does “soylent” mean, anyway??
Soylent is an amalgam of soya and lentil.
In Harry Harrison’s original novel (upon which the movie was ostensibly based), “Soylent” came from Soybeans and Lentils.
It wasn’t an attempt to solace the population by making them think their foodstuff was really made from harmless grains – in Harrison’s book the soylent products really were made from vegetable matter. It was the movie that turned it into the sensationalistic cannibalism.
By the way, this wouldn’t work any better in the world of Sylent Green than it would in The Matrix. I see people get all upset about the idea of the Future getting all its power from recycled people in the latter, but it doesn’t seem to get people worked up about the former. But the thermodynamics are still the same.
Harrison has written long and lovingly about how he hates the many indignities heaped upon his work in transferring it to the screen. This is only one of the changes they made.
Seriously, I suspect that the other Soylents were exactly what they were supposed to be.
Soy and lentils with flavoring and other (non-human) additives.
Green was a pilot program. Soon they’ll be breeding us like cattle to support the rest of the “It’s People!” line.
Does anyone else know if the band Green Day took their name from the film? I remember watching the movie years back and being struck by a sign painted across several market windows- “Today is Soylent Green Day,” with “Green Day” in one window.
Now I can’t stop thinking about the guys who stock the shelves of Soylent Green Day—
The “Green Day Packers”.
Wow, that pun’s worthy of CandidGamera. Excuse me a second.
(adds "Calmeacham" to the hit list.)
I think the fact that it doesn’t work thermodynamically is the point. There is no other food availabale except for dead people. But those won’t last forever either.
Humans are doomed to die of starvation. doomed.
(I thought SG was advertised as coming from algae)
Brian
Thermodynamically soylent green doesn’t make sense if it is the only food source available. Clearly, that wasn’t the case. There were other soylent products, plus meat and vegetables were still available for those with money. I look at it as the decision-makers saw a resource (human bodies) that was too valuable to simply waste.
I believe the term “Green Day” in the context of this band’s name is a slang term for a day spent smoking marijuana.
The coincidental tie-in with notorious bad movie “Soylent Green” would probably make Billy Joe quite happy though (by the way, it’s his birthday today).
Ah, I see. That’s a more likely and less obscure explanation. Well, tell Billy Joe happy birthday and please send me some money.