MAKE ROOM! MAKE ROOM!

Rating:
Summary: Prophetic
Review: This book scared the hell out of me when I read it as a young teenager back in the 60's, because it was so believable. I was sure this was what the future of America held. At the time, overpopulation was a big issue, what with books like Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb, The 20th Century Book of the Dead by Gil Elliot, and so on, dramatizing the issue. There seemed no doubt in many people's minds that something similar to the world portrayed in this novel would be the reality in 35 years if nothing were done to halt the population explosion, and since nothing really was being done in that regard, this seemed like a foregone conclusion.

Well, 35 years later the world hasn't quite worked out this way, which still amazes me no end, although David Brin's recent novel, Earth, is an updated reprisal of this theme. Harrison's book is still a great read. Another book on the same theme that came out a few years later was John Brunner's novel, Stand on Zanzibar, which won a Hugo award for that year. So if you enjoyed this book you might also want to try these two novels.

Rating:
Summary: A visionary take on where we've been and where we're heading
Review: This novel, in and of itself, is not a heavy piece of Literature. But, taken with the film, "Soylent Green," inspired by Harrison's work, it can be seen as an interesting commentary on the challenges we face in the near future.

The themes of environmental degredation, overpopulation, political and social impotency of the people, and the conflicting nature of human and machine (e.g., the over-urbanized hell-world that is NY in this novel) all combine to take a seemingly innocent sci-fi cop-story into a chillingly accurate account of where we, as humans, are heading in the world and bewteen eachother.

Without seeing the film, which takes the central figures and throws in a sinister twist ("Soylent Green is PEOPLE!"), this novel does tend to lose some of its verve in social criticism. I'd like to see a reissue of both and a marketing tie-in. It's an essential read for any sci-fi fan, or simply anyone wishing to find hidden nuggets of social commentary within the pages of a good summer read.

Rating:
Summary: A tale of the population explosion nightmare
Review: Widely unread, I've only ever met one person who has heard of it, it was made into a film in the seventies - Soylent Green. Make Room, Make Room tells of a future on the brink, over-populated and under-fed, where only the vey rich get food as we know it, and the rest get processed garbage, called Soylent, the most prized item of which is Soylent Steaks. Ruthless police enforce draconian laws on a desperate population whose daily struggle for food and shelter takes up their whole lives. There is a central plot for the main character to follow, but quite frankly, I've forgotten it, so long is it since I read this book. The reader discovers the truth about the source of the misleadingly named Soylent in the book's closing chapters, and may be amused to find The Netherlands portrayed as the Promised Land. Richard Barlow [e-mail]