Make Room Make Room

Rating:
Summary: Grim depiction of the future
Review: "Make Room! Make Room!" is an excellent sci-fi novel which envisions our overcrowded future. It is a very entertaining read, with vivid characters and a neat premise. The book will make you realize how much you take simple things like drinking water and living with only your family members rather than strangers. I think this book needs to be reprinted, and am saddened that more books of this nature aren't written today.

Rating:
Summary: Grim depiction of the future
Review: "Make Room! Make Room!" is an excellent sci-fi novel which envisions our overcrowded future. It is a very entertaining read, with vivid characters and a neat premise. The book will make you realize how much you take simple things like drinking water and living with only your family members rather than strangers. I think this book needs to be reprinted, and am saddened that more books of this nature aren't written today.

Rating:
Summary: Elbow room please
Review: Harry Harrison is normally a funny writer so reading this book from him was a bit of a shock. It's not funny at all and rather depressing actually, the ending isn't all that happy and nothing has changed, society keeps plugging along on the same path to oblivion, people have lived and died and in the end it's all the same. No wonder why it was taken out of print. But by the same token, it'll be one of the best books you've ever read. For those who watch movies, the film Soylent Green was based on this but the main point of that movie doesn't even come into play here. If anything it's a love story disguised as a mystery story, showing how people still try to live and love with too many people crammed into too many creaking, cold and leaky apartment buildings, the measures the police have to do to survive along with everyone and it submerges you completely in this world that makes you glad that you can go outside and not have to withstand the crush of millions of people. One of the best books in this line of reasoning, a very similar and probably better examination of this (though not by much) would be Thomas Disch's 334 and for a wider look at the entire planet with too many people try John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar. All three form some of the keystone books of thought on the matter of overpopulation in fiction and if you want to do even more exploring, look for The World Inside by Robert Silverberg, which I haven't read but I think deals with the same issues. Make room for it on your shelf today.

Rating:
Summary: ebook version loses a whole lot in translation.
Review: Harry Harrison, Make Room! Make Room! (Rosetta, 1966)

Folks who read this, having watched Soylent Green and wanting to get some perspective on the source material, are likely to find themselves extremely surprised. The subplot of Soylent Green that culminates in the film's infamous last line is completely absent. No, folks, soylent of any color really is soy and lentil. Harrison's book has twin foci on the effects of massive overpopulation on the world (specifically, New York City, the setting of this novel) and the adventures of a police detective named Andrew Rusch. Rusch, sent to investigate the death of a notorious gangster, finds himself drawn to the gangster's moll, and the two of them strike up a relationship, giving this otherwise relentlessly brutal tale an element of human drama.

Unlike many stories that have the same basic framework, the social commentary here is not in the background; the overpopulation of the planet becomes almost a character in itself in this novel. Also unlike many stories that have the same basic framework, Harrison never stops, turns to the camera, and begins an "overpopulation is bad" speech (nor has one of his characters do it); he allows the effects of overpopulation to speak for themselves. Sol's reminiscences about life before overpopulation, combined with his determination to make the best of life in this society in which he lives, do far more to communicate Harrison's message than any amount of political screed disguised as fiction. Would that more writers understood this; we'd have many better sociopolicitcally conscious novels being turned out than we presently do.

Rosetta's presentation leaves a number of thigns to be desired, however. The typos here are not quite as rampant as one finds in sefl-and vanity-published titles, but are enough to be noticed, and there are two sections where someone obviously placed some pages out of order and/or dropped pages, making for a rather interesting (not for the right reasons) reading experience.

A highly-recommended science fiction classic, but you may want another edition. ***

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: Originally written back in 1966, the book has been put on the big screen with actor Charlton Heston as "Soylent Green". But whereas the movie told a terrible crime story of a government creating "food" from corpses, the book is basically a love story between young cop Andrew and top callgirl Shirl. Andrew lives in the cruel world of an over-populated New York with 35 million inhabitants, whereas Shirl uses her exceptional beauty to live with the "upper class". Both are led together by the assassination of Shirls "lover", that Andrew has to investigate, and they fall in love with each other. But love is luxury in an over-crowded world that isn't affordable anymore... Basically, a very sad and pessimistic story, but definitely a milestone in non-technical SF.

Rating:
Summary: Make Room! Make Room! Read it! Read it!
Review: This book comes from a time when the environmental movement was just getting under way, and Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb" enjoyed pride of place on the bookshelves of environmentalists everywhere. It was also a time when it was easier to discuss overpopulation without drawing charges of racism. In the book (presumably), and in the 1973 movie Soylent Green (definitely), most of the characters and people seen in the street are white, as they would have been in 1966 and 1973. Hence there was no need to discuss issues of immigration and demographic shift, which are closely linked to America's soaring population today. As a result, in both the book and the movie, the issue of overpopulation is completely de-ethnicized, which makes it a universal, human problem. For that reason alone everyone should either read the book or see the movie.

Rating:
Summary: Make Room! Make Room! Read it! Read it!
Review: This book comes from a time when the environmental movement was just getting under way, and Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb" enjoyed pride of place on the bookshelves of environmentalists everywhere. It was also a time when it was easier to discuss overpopulation without drawing charges of racism. In the book (presumably), and in the 1973 movie Soylent Green (definitely), most of the characters and people seen in the street are white, as they would have been in 1966 and 1973. Hence there was no need to discuss issues of immigration and demographic shift, which are closely linked to America's soaring population today. As a result, in both the book and the movie, the issue of overpopulation is completely de-ethnicized, which makes it a universal, human problem. For that reason alone everyone should either read the book or see the movie.

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.