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Posted on 05/09/2025 2:09:14 PM PDT by nickcarraway
“The Melville of science fiction” had a hand in bringing 1968’s most technologically advanced potato chip to the world.
Plenty of writers have made certain foods or drinks iconic: Marcel Proust had his Madeleines, Hemingway his namesake Daiquiri. C.S. Lewis made kids who’d never tried it crave Turkish Delight.
But there may be only one writer who helped create an iconic snack available in grocery stores everywhere: Gene Wolfe. This largely unheralded genius allowed generations worldwide to enjoy the Pringles Potato Crisp.
How Gene Wolfe helped create Pringles
Before he became a critically acclaimed writer of the Book of the New Sun series and was compared to Melville and James Joyce, Wolfe was a young engineer. Wolfe worked for Procter & Gamble in the 1960s, at the height of “food science.” These were the Jetsons years, when men in white lab coats with clipboards and pocket protectors worked to make everything better — which is to mean, mechanized and uniform.
Soon enough, a chemist named Frederick Baur turned his attention to the potato chip. They were a mess! Some were small, some were large, some were folded up and undercooked, or overcooked. And it seemed like there was always at least one green chip in the bag.
Baur’s designs would yield an ideal chip. He used a mixture of potato, corn, and rice flour to ensure each one was the exact same size and consistency. By rolling the dough out and forming it into the iconic “hyperbolic paraboloid” saddle shape, he made sure they were easy to stack, with good strength and plenty of snap.
It was exactly the kind of potato chip that the Jetsons would eat, and Procter & Gamble loved it. The company tasked Wolfe and several others with creating machines to mass-produce the chips.
He then stacked the chips into a futuristic tubular container shaped like a tiny missile silo so the chips wouldn’t bounce around and break. (Though anyone who’s dug to the bottom of a can will attest that the design does not work perfectly.)
It was exactly the kind of potato chip that the Jetsons would eat, and Procter & Gamble loved it. The company tasked Wolfe and several others with creating machines to mass-produce the chips.
In 2002, Wolfe spoke about his role:
“I was the engineer on the original Pringles cooker,” he said. “Pringles was invented by a German madman. He was making them with a kind of scissor-and-dip mechanism that wasn’t adaptable to mass production. There was a four-man team, and I did the cooker that closed around the future potato chips and dragged them through the hot oil and opened them up and dumped them out. The fourth guy, who did the canning machine, they literally drove crazy.”
To see the part of the process that Wolfe invented, check out this YouTube video of Pringles being made.
The rest, as they say, is history. After a slow start, and some questions about whether they were legally even potato chips, Pringles took off with snackers. It’s still the fifth-most popular snack brand, behind only Ritz in terms of salty things. Later in life, Wolfe would come to bear an uncanny resemblance to the Pringles Mascot, Julius Pringle, though there's no evidence to suggest one ever inspired the other.
Some thoughts on Pringles, and Wolfe So, what does it mean that the same mind who developed the complex machinery necessary to create a massively popular “potato crisp” also created some of the most subtle and fascinating stories of the 20th and 21st centuries? I popped a can while reading one of my favorite Wolfe stories to see if I could figure it out.
If you haven’t had a Pringle in a while, especially the original flavor, it’s well worth buying a can just to get a sense of what food makers in 1968 considered innovative.
Pringles do achieve a certain perfection, the ones broken in transit notwithstanding. The potato crisp is a platonic ideal. It is not greasy, nor bland, and certainly not soft. Every bite snaps and crunches. (In fact, I did some damage to the roof of my mouth.)
Every bite delivers a uniform combination of starch and oil and salt — one could say an ideal amount. They really are, as the jingle reminds us, difficult to stop eating.
But they are also — and how to put this politely? — a little boring. Though I tried to eat them with some attentiveness, my mind wandered. I finished the can before I noticed I was done.
Consuming Wolfe’s writing is the exact opposite experience of consuming Pringles. His narratives are unlike any other and would be impossible to imitate. Every sentence is a surprise. I find myself, even re-reading, needing to pay close attention to what I’m ingesting.
This is less the case with a bag of actual potato chips, especially kettle chips made from fried and salted potato slices. They offer a lot more variety, and thus interest. The chips have different shapes and sizes, some large, some small. Some are folded up into weird shapes. They have slightly different textures. You have to think, even a small bit, about what you’re picking up and eating.
If you’re eating chips with dip, you have to hunt for ones that will hold dip better. And, of course, there’s always the green one, and the decision to eat it or not. (I eat it. it never really tastes any different. My 14-year-old daughter strongly disagrees.)
Consuming Wolfe’s writing is the exact opposite experience of consuming Pringles. His narratives are unlike any other and would be impossible to imitate. Every sentence is a surprise. I find myself, even re-reading, needing to pay close attention to what I’m ingesting.
Wolfe’s stories are meant to be savored, to make one consider where they are in a tangle of events, and how those events affect everything that happens thereafter.
Every moment, every sentence, every word feels integral. Nothing feels gratuitous. His stories function like an ingenious machine that takes readers on a Byzantine journey toward unseen ends.
Unlike the easy-eating potato crisps, readers who begin may quickly be tempted to stop. But for those who persevere, the results are most satisfying.
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I’ve read quite a bit of science fiction in my time. I’ve never heard of this guy. Just looked him up — never heard of any of his books. The “Melville” of science fiction? I don’ know ‘bout that.
Recently while getting my nails done at a Vietnamese nail salon I watched a cooking show that featured a contest challenging the chefs to make Pringles chips. Nobody got even close. Last week on a motorcycle ride through the hills of NC, we stopped at a gas station with a sign, bathrooms for patrons only. So I bought a can of Pringles just to see what’s on the label. Suffice to say there are a bunch chemicals in the Pringles recipe that the TV chefs didn’t have access to. They never had a chance.
The Book of the New Sun pentology is great stuff.
The “Melville” of science fiction? I don’ know ‘bout that.
—
He’s better. Much better.
The Book of the New Sun:
The Shadow of the Torturer (1980)
The Claw of the Conciliator (1981)
The Sword of the Lictor (1982)
The Citadel of the Autarch (1983)
The Urth of the New Sun (1987)
The Book of the Long Sun:
Nightside the Long Sun (1993)
Lake of the Long Sun (1994)
Caldé of the Long Sun (1994)
Exodus From the Long Sun (1996)
The Book of the Short Sun:
On Blue’s Waters (1999)
In Green’s Jungles (2000)
Return to the Whorl (2001)
Lexicon Urthus: Michael Andre-Druissi (Sirius Fiction, 1994) , a dictionary of the archaic words used by Wolfe in The Book of the New Sun
Gate of Horn, Book of Silk: A Guide to Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the Long Sun and The Book of the Short Sun: Michael Andre-Driussi (Sirius Fiction, 2012
Patrick O’Leary has credited Wolfe for inspiration. He has said: “Forget ‘Speculative Fiction.’ Gene Wolfe was the best writer alive. Period. And as Wolfe once said, ‘All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.’ No comparison. Nobody - I mean nobody - comes close to what this artist does.”
Ursula K. Le Guin is frequently quoted on the jackets of Wolfe’s books as having said “Wolfe is our Melville.”
Harlan Ellison, reviewing The Shadow of the Torturer, wrote: “Gene Wolfe is engaged in the holy chore of writing every other author under the table. He is no less than one of the finest, most original writers in the world today. His work is singular, hypnotizing, startlingly above comparison.
“The Shadow of the Torturer breaks new ground in American literature and, as the first novel of a tetralogy, casts a fierce light on what will certainly be a lodestone landmark, his most stunning work to date. It is often said, but never more surely than this time: This book is not to be missed at peril of one’s intellectual enrichment.”
“Pringles Original ingredients include dried potatoes, vegetable oil, degerminated yellow corn flour, cornstarch, rice flour, maltodextrin, mono- and diglycerides, salt, and wheat starch. The vegetable oil is typically a blend of corn, cottonseed, high oleic soybean, and/or sunflower oil. “
seed flour and seed oil = nutritional garbage ...
Are you in the mafia?
But Melville is a national treasure.
Pringles have potatoes and rice and wheat. So, no, they are not potato chips, but they are just as good and I think even tastier.
I grew up outside of Cincinnati Ohio in a small town named Finneytown. Two streets away was Pringle Ave and I was told the inventor lived on that street and that’s where he got the name.
Wolfe is seriously worth your time. He’s not exactly an easy read, but that’s what makes his work so interesting. You’ll find yourself having to take side trips to look things up.
I just remember the early ads: Pringle’s Newfangled Potato Chips!
Ping
Can you briefly describe what his books are like?
—
No not briefly like Moby Dick: 19th century whaler fanatically pursues white whale.
Its really not describable - Book is set millions of years in the future, where any future city you could imagine is fossilized. It follows one man for awhile, but then he enters a time line which is loops on itself, but changes.
The second set follows another man in a unimaginably huge generation ship, traveling to another solar system; the man is just an ordinary guy, an anti-hero if you will, who knows nothing of the Ship or its purpose until they arrive.
But all of that is just the surface story. Beneath is a rich realm of word play, allusion and illusion, drawn from the past history and the English language. Its a bit like reading Lawrence Durrell’s “Alexandria Quartet”. Or perhaps Lord Dunsany or Ruthven Todd’s “The Lost Traveler”
Which is why, to understand the deepest levels, you need to read Lexicon Urthus and Gate of Horn, Book of Silk
Before Wolfe, Durrell was the finest living writer of the English language. Now with both men gone, who knows who will pick up the mantle?
Saying he “helped invent” Pringles is a bit of a stretch.
After WWII, the USDA and the US Army Quartermaster Corps collaborated on a project to make dehydrated potato flakes, AKA “instant mashed potatoes.” This material was the basis for the development of Pringles. Lots of military websites conflate this into a claim and the US Army invented Pringles but that too is something of a stretch.
In the 1950s, consumers were complaining that bag potato chips were too greasy, went stale too soon, and got too broken up by the bottom of the bag. P&G engineer Fredric Baur invented the “saddle” shaped chip (technically known as a hyperbolic paraboloid) so they could be stacked and sold in a resealable can. But that was the end of his task and no one yet had given any thought to actually making them taste good.
Then in the 1960s (notice the 10-year-ish lapse here) another P&G guy tinkered with the potato flake recipe and made the chips made from it actually taste good.
Gene Wolfe invented the machine that would fry the chip already in its trademark shape. It was basically a die or metal mold that a glop of the reconstituted dehydrated potato flakes went into, the it got mashed into shape and submerged in hot oil.
In fact it would be a stretch to say anybody invented Pringles. Reminds me of the case of the lever-action rifle, which went through about eight sets of hands (some of them more than once) before it was evolved enough to take on the world.
https://www.glibertarians2019.link/2019/03/04/a-history-of-lever-guns-part-one/
I have some peripheral familiarity with the development, having designed an electronic control panel for P&G to be used in their factory. It was said by one of my P&G contacts that part of the processing of the Pringle raw material substance was borrowed from the wood-pulp industry.
The Book of the New Sun was one of the most memorable works of fiction I’ve ever read. Much of his writing takes its cue from classical Greek sources, both in the storytelling and in the words he chooses to use. It gives his stories a certain groundedness but also has its downsides (e.g. the disturbing amount of pederasty which gets mentioned in some of his books).
I have some friends from Finneytown High. Does it still exist?? Or is it Lakota.
I’ve read some of Wolfe’s stories - was not a fan, he was more “new wave” “soft” SF. Never read any of his novels - may have to try one.
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