Soylent Red grew out of a simple observation: oppression is building around the world, freedom is becoming a hollow word, and somehow we need to find ways to expose what this does to us. Of course there is resistance, but I think we all need some help and support to understand how it works and how to engage in it. At its core, this is about living our lives the way we want to live them, regardless of whatever structures try to narrow that space. Becoming aware of how systems behave — and how they quietly hinder us — is one step in that direction, and I’m convinced that this is a central purpose of fiction. Humor in fiction even more so.
There is also an older warning hidden in the name. Soylent Red nods deliberately to the 1973 film Soylent Green — one of the earliest cinematic critiques of humanity’s willingness to exhaust the planet, ignore the consequences, and then accept the unthinkable once the bill comes due. The film’s world, overheated and overpopulated, feels disturbingly adjacent to ours. By shifting the colour, I wanted to signal both the connection and the distance: a continuation of the critique, filtered through satire rather than dystopia. Of course, one can read much more into the choice of colour, and you are free to do exactly that.
The inspiration for the whole spectacle came from several places at once. The fairy tales that reveal truth in the moment when everyone expects the opposite. Looking back, I think the spark was the idea of exposing the naked king (H.C. Andersen, you know). This was accompanied by the absurdities of Alice in Wonderland that built the second part of the story. It was though developed along with the first part which more than eludes to the journey in The Wizard of Oz, where each character discovers they already hold what they thought they were lacking. Although I also added the aspect of change, then came both deliberate themes but also per chance stupidities that I just liked. Some of the references hover close to the surface, and I hope my reuse of their ideas, and others, is not irritating but, if I’m lucky, a little inspiring.
And then there are echoes that feel less like fiction and more like unfinished history. The mechanisms that once animated Nazi Germany — the slow descent into hell on Earth — form part of the atmosphere in the early sections. At the same time, the long struggle for justice in the United States, especially the Black movement for equal rights, shows how persistent, fragile, and contested the idea of freedom remains. And then there is the pride embodied in a rainbow of colours, which I hope I do some justice. All these references coexist and blend into each other, just as life does on this planet, and we are here to honour that — not to say, secure it.
The characters stepped forward on their own, along with some wordplay. Babe Holder comes from being “the eyes of the beholder,” observing what is going on. Double Ception plays on deception and the theme of masks and gags. Dominatrix is more overt in intent — the name usually evokes a woman, certain power dynamics, and a particular kind of dress code. The spiked shoes arrived naturally from there. The small appearance of the Crazy Wigmaker is a nod to the Mad Hatter, but also to the wisdom that sometimes arrives in unexpected shapes and through unexpected species.
In short, Soylent Red emerged from watching how fairy tales, political tragedies, and contemporary absurdities share a grammar. This story is simply what happened when those threads were allowed to intertwine.
The book is published under CC BY-NC-SA, and you’re welcome to share it, adapt it, and pass it on, as long as you acknowledge its lineage and keep it non-commercial. Stories travel best when they aren’t held too tightly.
Download the book as a PDF:
soylent-red.pdf
If you want to cite you can do that by using ...
Harvard: TJISO (2025) “Soylent Red”. Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.17632214.
APA: TJISO. (2025). Soylent Red (1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17632214
A stable, citable version of Soylent Red is archived here:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17632214