Paul Theroux’s O-Zone is a sci-fi satire of the decline of American civilization caused by environmental degradation. It opens as a New Year’s Eve celebration in the degraded O-Zone, a no-go area contaminated by radiation, noxious chemicals, and inhabited by savage survivors of the environmental holocaust. Gathered in the O-Zone, or Outer Zone, are eight picnickers, each encased in self-contained radiation-proof spacesuits, who are sucking Noodle Gluten, Hollandaise Whitefish, Shrimp Paste, Oyster Pellets, Textured Lobster, Crab Strings, Meat Butter, Spinach Sauce, and Non-alcoholic Wine.
It’s a glum meal, and when Willis Murdick, his name is a sarcastic pun, says,” This is a memorable meal. We’ve got our vitamins, we’ve got our bulk, our fiber, and our taste.” No one is enthused. When Moura Albright says, “I like it. I just wish I didn’t have to squirt it into my mask to eat it.” Murdick corrects her, “You don’t squirt it, you squeeze it—pressure means everything with space food. And use your suckhole—didn’t I give you one?” When Holly chimes in, “We ought to eat like this back in New York—we’d be a whole lot happier, and we’d live longer.” Hooper replies, “I think I could be happy without forcing this parrot shit down my gullet.” It is not a déjeuner sur l’herbe, and when the picnickers ironically name the picnic site Paradise, we know that this picnic is laden with ulterior motives, none of them good.
See: Paul Theroux. O-Zone (1986)
Featured Image: NASA Food for Space shuttle Atlantis (2011)