Wow, I have just been transfixed by these short stories by a fellow named Paolo Bacigalupi - fantastic stuff, if you like noir science fiction.

Set in a post-oil future dominated by agricultural corporations who control all of society with their gene-hacked crops as the only available source of food and energy, it's quite a vision of a hot flat and crowded planet.

I found these stories on boingboing, and they are distributed with a creative commons license in an easily read .pdf, so they are free for story lovers to enjoy.

http://www.thinkgalactic.org/Bacigalupi-Think_Galactic_Reader.pdf

An IP man was on duty with his dog, blocking Lalji’s way as he returned
to his boat lugging the kink-spring. The brute’s hairs bristled as
Lalji approached and it lunged against its leash, its blunt nose quivering
to reach him. With effort, the IP man held the creature back. “I need to
sniff you.” His helmet lay on the grass, already discarded, but still he was
sweating under the swaddling heat of his gray slash-resistant uniform
and the heavy webbing of his spring gun and bandoliers.

Lalji held still. The dog growled, deep from its throat, and inched
forward. It snuffled his clothing, bared hungry teeth, snuffled again,
then its black ruff iridesced blue and it relaxed and wagged its stubby
tail. It sat. A pink tongue lolled from between smiling teeth. Lalji smiled
sourly back at the animal, glad that he wasn’t smuggling calories and
wouldn’t have to go through the pantomimes of obeisance as the IP man
demanded stamps and then tried to verify that the grain shipment had
paid its royalties and licensing fees.

At the dog’s change in color, the IP man relaxed somewhat, but still he
studied Lalji’s features carefully, hunting for recognition against memorized
photographs. Lalji waited patiently, accustomed to the scrutiny.

Many men tried to steal the honest profits of AgriGen and its peers, but
to Lalji’s knowledge, he was unknown to the protectors of intellectual
property. He was an antiques dealer, handling the junk of the previous
century, not a calorie bandit staring out from corporate photo books.

Finally, the IP man waved him past. Lalji nodded politely and made
his way down the stairs to the river’s low stage where his needleboat was
moored. Out on the river, cumbrous grain barges wallowed past, riding
low under their burdens.

Though there was a great deal of river traffic, it didn’t compare with
harvest time. Then the whole of the Mississippi would fill with calories
pouring downstream, pulled from hundreds of towns like this one.
Barges would clot the arterial flow of the river system from high on the
Missouri, the Illinois, and the Ohio and the thousand smaller tributaries.
Some of those calories would float only as far as St. Louis where they
would be chewed by megodonts and churned into joules, but the rest,
the vast majority, would float to New Orleans where the great calorie
companies’ clippers and dirigibles would be loaded with the precious
grains. Then they would cross the Earth on tradewinds and sea, in time
for the next season’s planting, so that the world could go on eating.

.