I'd like to try an experiment - building a world here, adding a new (hopefully interconnected) piece each week. I don't have a story in mind - that's sort of the point, seeing what emerges just from the creation of the world itself. At some point this is going to need a name, but that feels rather premature for the moment. It is, however, getting to the stage where it's rather silly to link posts individually, so I'm just going to link to the tag lookup result here.

I think my post publishing dates have gone skewiff, here, but anyway.

What's for lunch?

We have settled convicts living mostly-underground on an iceworld gathering phosphorescent light and guarding their sun. They are, at some point, going to get hungry, and their local environment is not (necessarily) going to be especially forthcoming with edibles.

Typically, Earth'sfrozen areas aren't abundant with life; while some plant life may survive, almost no animal life stays there permanently - and the few that do are generally just hanging on until a warmer, more fertile period returns. Even with adaptations, (and especially considering some of the adaptations life here will need to survive the gamma rays) it's unlikely this planet is going to be teeming with life like a rainforest. So what can our inhabitants eat? 

My brain isn't big on decisions, right now, so let's just look at our options:

Naturally self-sufficient

Our people can find enough food in the natural world to sustain their energy needs. Perhaps by:

• extensive farming and agriculture
• adaptations to require very little energy
• there's a particularly energy-rich food source - perhaps a plant that can make use of gamma radiation, or at least isn't harmed by it
• there's a great deal of life living underground, away from the sun, that our inhabitants hunt and eat
• our inhabitants can biologically convert the dangerous gamma radiation into a food source

Some of those are slightly wackier than others, and some are likely, I think, to be included in the final solution, if only because it's preposterous that food and energy are gained by only one way by absolutely everyone. Look at people on earth - we still hunt and grow potatoes, even though we've centralised our food production.

Technologically self-sufficient

There may not be enough natural resources to feed the population, but technology may be able to assist:

• vat-grown foods
• conversion of sun-energy into chemical energy (essentially, man-made photosynthesis)
• much automation to reduce energy needs
• engineering food life-forms

Several of these still have first-cause issues - where does the energy/food come to feed the vat grown or engineered life forms? It also depends greatly on the tech level of our civilisation - were they dumped with buckets and spades, or do they have technology that matches their history (ie space travel). Do they have technology that they don't know how to use or repair?

Naturally partially or fully supported

Grain shipments from Fwahoogwag'adz*. Permanent relief packages. Food being shipped in constantly. On the one hand, it's probably a good idea to keep your potentially-too-powerful-imprisoned-guardians-of-your-superweapon dependant on you, it keeps them subservient and less likely to get itchy trigger fingers. On the other hand, if they're the protectors of this weapon, it's not a great idea to have such a fragile defence. Stop one or two shipments of food, and suddenly the weapon's open for anybody.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. THe pwoer structure it could create would certainly be interesting - strict rules on population expansion, by the amount of food the agency in power is willing to spend money on. But I'd wonder if whichever Grand Vizier came up with that plan wasn't, perhaps, Too Stupid To Live. (TVTropes. Sorry.) Common problem with Grand Viziers, seemingly in direct proportion to the amount of power their schemes will net them.

*Random name I made up. Not a real place. Probably.

Technologically partially or fully supported

This answers the problems opened in the 'technologically self sufficient' section - the energy for the food vats or super-food comes from elsewhere. Shipped in, like grain. Still has the same problem as shipping food, in that it provides one very weak link in the chain, but if you're shipping in a growth enabler for food rather than the food itself, there's arguably more leeway. More time before a lost shipment results in starvation.

Arguably. Not necessarily. And who's to say the shipped-in food isn't being stored for six months anyway, like anyone sensible would organise. But still.

We're probably going to end up with a combination thereof - there are lots of ideas based on combinations thereof. It depends a lot on whether any ideas for fascinating and edible wildlife leap at me, really.