Make Room! Make Room!

by Harry Harrison

The world is crowded. Far too crowded. Its starving billions live on lentils, soya beans, and—if they're lucky—the odd starving rat.

In a New York City groaning under the burden of 35 million inhabitants, detective Andy Rusch is engaged in a desperate and lonely hunt for a killer everyone has forgotten. For even in a world such as this, a policeman can find himself utterly alone....

Acclaimed on its original publication in 1966, Make Room! Make Room! was adapted into the movie Soylent Green in 1973, starring Charlton Heston along with Edward G. Robinson in his last role.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia, Classics, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Post Apocalyptic

284 pages, Paperback

First published June 17, 1966

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Harry Harrison (born Henry Maxwell Dempsey) was an American science fiction author best known for his character the The Stainless Steel Rat and the novel Make Room! Make Room! (1966), the basis for the film Soylent Green (1973). He was also (with Brian W. Aldiss) co-president of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group.

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Leo . · Rating 4 out of 5]

McDonald's springs to mind!👍🐯

Monsanto too!

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here is a 1966 novel about 1999 which is good, honest, miserable fun. The main guy who is a cop gets to be really happy for about two pages and after that it’s back to worrying about absolutely everything.

It’s New York City and the population has skyrocketed to 35 million. The whole damn country has kind of collapsed. There are no more private cars. Tobacco is a thing of the past. There are meateasies! This is because you can get your meat but you have to know where. But pretty much everything is now scarce because Americans in the 30 years between 1966 and 1999 ate everything and used up everything whilst all having ten kids who then had another ten kids each, it seems.

You wouldn’t want to live in this version of New York City. You wouldn’t want to even visit it for ten minutes.

CHUNK!

This humble word is Harry Harrison’s absolute favourite. No idea why. If you had a shot of vodka each time he uses the word CHUNK you’d be dead of severe alcoholic poisoning before page 90. My own favourite word is GALLIMAUFRY but you don’t see me shoehorning it into every review willynilly. Willynilly is another of my favourite words.

BILLY NO MATES - A THEORY

My latest literary insight is that in most novels, especially thrillerish ones, the protagonist has no friends. (Check the last three novels you read.) I think this is because it would make the story too complicated and annoying for the author & would get in the way of the action. Make Room! Make Room!’s two main characters begin with one sort of friend for him* and none for her. Novelists, this is very unrealistic. People have friends! Even I have friends!

*Our hero’s friend is nothing more than a SOCK PUPPET so that Harry Harrison can explain his ideas of how overpopulation killed the USA and will kill the whole human race unless we embrace birth control. The message of this novel couldn’t be clearer if Harry Harrison personally came round to your house and nailed it to your forehead. With another copy to be cellotaped to your bedroom mirror.

HARRY ADMITS : I GOT IT WRONG

In a one page afterword written in 2008 at the age of 83 HH says : “How right were my predictions? Pretty bad in most of the general details” but then he does say there’s too many damn people and the developed world is soaking up all the planet’s resources. Which we know. He predicted the population of NYC would increase from 8 million in 1966 to 35 million in 1999 which is RIDICULOUS. But there is now a city – Chongqing – which Wiki tells me has reached 30 million. And others aren’t far behind (Shanghai, 24m, Delhi, 21m). The biggest population growth is in the developing world, and this tells us that HH didn’t understand the part which says that there is a correlation between affluence and family size. So the families of western people shrank over the 20th century (I can see this in my own family – grandparents generation 9 or 10 children; parents’ generation two or three; my own generation one or two or NONE.)

I LIKED IT!

Even though it’s a bit of a miseryfest, it zips along and HH has a real relish for all the horrible details.

A CHUNKy three stars from me.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Color me happy and more than a little surprised to be decorating this review with as many stars as I am because I went into this novel with pretty subdued expectations. I would say expectations on par with those I hold for the latest cinematic embarassment by Mr. Dickoless Cage. I know that's not very nice, but I will never, never forgive that talent-free ass bozo for effectively castrating Ghost Rider in front of the general public, despite being a self-described fanboy of the character. The guy should be tied up in a Pulp Fiction style basement and JAMhandled by the gimp.

WOW, okay...I am way off on a tangent here aren't I?...let's get back to the book.

Where was I? Oh yeah....

So leaving aside shitty actors with no ability, this is an excellent novel and a very welcome surprise. Written in 1966 (but taking place in 1999) the story posits a world reaping the results of massive over-population and the depletion of natural resources....which of course we know could NEVER really happen and is just one of those wacky SF ideas these weirdo writers come up with. Hmm? Anyway, while loosely framed as a mystery involving a hard-boiled detective investigating a murder, this plot device is really just a means by which the author explores the future society of New York City (population 35 Million, as opposed to the just under 10 Million of present day 2011).

What really grabbed me by the fruits about the story is the terrific sense of place the author establishes through random, but well chosen, details about life in this "future" New York. Harrison is able to seamlessly weave into the narrative the most fascinating snapshots of the world without resorting to big, drawn out expositional paragraphs. I was very impressed by his control over his story. This novel is a lesson in exceptional world-building.

We learn significant background details such as information involving food riots, foodstuffs made from plankton, soy bean and lentil steaks, ever increasing prices of commodities, water shortages, debates about birth control, and that all of the characters suffer from physical ailments resultng from mal-nutrition or disease. The author provides this well fleshed, intricate picture of the world without dropping major dumps of info that would clog up the natural flow of the story.

Well done, sir. Well done indeed.

In addition to the exceptionally delivered background info, the characters are very much three dimensional and act pursuant to complex and subtle motivations. This kind of high level development is unusual for this kind of short 60's science fiction novel. Again the author exceeed expectations and his ability to do that consistently is worthy of serious kudos.

To sum up, this is a terriific story. While not up to the "all time great" status of a book like Stand on Zanzibar (which is my standard for this kind of science fiction story), this is certainly an outstanding story and among the best of its type that I have read.

4.5 to 5.0 stars. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A science fiction classic

Quite unlike the movie, Make Room, Make Room is a gloomy, glimpse into a New York burgeoning with too many people. The movie that is loosely based on it is Soylent Green. Andy Rusch is a city cop who is overworked and underpaid. He has one friend, Sol, an old man who also shares a room with him. During the investigation of a bigwig's murder, Andy meets a gorgeous woman who was the mistress of the newly deceased. They hit it off. As Andy investigates the crime, he and Shirl get closer, but will she be satisfied with a common man after living the high life in a world in which very few live decently?

[Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book, depressingly enjoyable.

It's amazing but I don't think i have ever read this book before. So when it came up as a Group Read for the "Apocalypse Whenever" group, I voted for it and bought a kindle copy. One of the best decisions i've made.

It is set during 1999 in New York and proceeds all the way to the millennium. Now obviously it is 19 years past that date, and so it is interesting to see what Harry got right , and boy was it a lot. That said some of the "future" as portrayed by Harry is an over exaggerated view of what occurred.

Population out of control, horrendous pollution, over use of all the Earth's natural resources are just some of the issues facing the Earth and more especially the citizens of NY in this novel. Into this add a police force that is severely understaffed and over stretched . A police force that might spend only a few hours on each of the numerous murders that occur on a daily basis. That is until a "fixer and supplier" for some very wealthy people is murdered. Then pressure is brought to bear on the police force to solve this case quickly and not to just let it go. Add into the mix a beautiful girl, an old man with memories of pre problem days, a loyal and trustworthy bodyguard, a group of demonstrators known as the Eldsters (that'd be me 😬 ) , some religious nuts thinking the end is nigh and a young boy on the run.

A great story, depressing but enjoyable in the fact it is wonderfully written.

[inciminci · Rating 4 out of 5]

Make Room! Make Room!, one of the best predictive science fiction works of its time, and one of the most underrated too, foresaw in 1966 that the end of the century would be a time out of hell for New York City, opening the flood gates to an even more hellish new millennium: Climate change and scorching heat burning the planet down; the world bursting at its seems with extreme overpopulation; serious food and housing shortages; barely any water to drink and as a consequence, the lack of a vital infrastructure pushing the masses into crime... Not an ideal place at all. The book shows how people from different backgrounds cope under these utterly dire living conditions.

Against this hellish backdrop we focus on Andy, a police detective tasked with investigating the seemingly mysterious death of the ultra rich mobster Mike O'Brien, Big Mike. During the investigation Andy starts a relationship with Big Mike's hired lover, sugar baby, live-in sex worker, whatever you want to call her, Shirl, who then moves from Mike's gloriously luxurious house with running water and food aplenty into the poor, two room shack he shares with his roommate Sol, an older man who produces his own electricity by riding a wheelless bike.

Meanwhile there are uproars outside, especially the older generations are constantly rallying against the system. The way older people and their political understanding are portrayed is utterly interesting, especially for our times; this exact generation which back in the day was quite revolutionary is being dismissed and looked down on now.

As lead character, Andy is actually quite bland, to be honest, he is kind of an everyman and replaceable with many. He holds values like integrity and honesty and has traditional expectations from his relationship with Shirl; he is kind of a romantic expecting to find a true love he can provide for and take care of (but does not have the financial means to do so). Too bad Shirl is a tough and realistic business woman disguised as a naive young girl, and who is only following the rules this cruel new world has taught her in order to survive - namely to go with whoever can provide for her, pay her money for her company, which Andy can't do.

Sol, on the other hand, is created to be every reader's dream character - old, wise, funny, smart, and familiar with the time and conditions the reader lives in, a time where food is not scarce, where running water and electricity are not luxury goods, but basic human needs. So being a person who knows both how wonderful life could be and his harsh reality, he possesses the kind of clarity the other characters lack. As he states, the crux of the matter is birth control. Since the invention and growth of modern medicine, or death control as he calls it, the number of people on Earth has been multiplying uncontrollably, causing the current state in the book. All the sadder that today we are again moving backwards, moving away from the need to control birth on this planet (as we control death) and finding a way to distribute resources so that every person can live in dignity. We're nearing our catastrophe by the minute actually.

By using as many characters as possible from different backgrounds, Harrison also presents the survival options for the groups in question; Billie Chung, for instance, as a young man of Asian background living in a type of China Town, leads a much harder life than Andy or Shirl, the latter, as a pretty white girl, has found the option of sex work for herself to live in luxury. She too has to pay a price and keep company to men who aren't always nice to her and the sexism she encounters and faces smiling politely is infuriating. Still, it's her job. Then there's Billie's mother, who leads a life of extreme poverty as an Asian woman and mother.

Everyone is miserable and as the new millennium is rang in, it is a bitter sort of new beginning which offers neither hope nor joy.

This is the Shine and Shadow dark read for June'24!

[Apatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

“So mankind gobbled in a century all the world’s resources that had taken millions of years to store up, and no one on the top gave a damn or listened to all the voices that were trying to warn them, they just let us overproduce and overconsume until now the oil is gone, the topsoil depleted and washed away, the trees chopped down, the animals extinct, the earth poisoned, and all we have to show for this is seven billion people fighting over the scraps that are left, living a miserable existence—and still breeding without control. So I say the time has come to stand up and be counted.”

Is overpopulation still a thing? When was the last time you heard it discussed? I don’t know the answer to that, there are opposing views on whether overpopulation still poses a significant threat to all of humanity or, since population growth has stabilized in many countries, some demographic analysts are saying that it is no longer a serious matter. Nowadays climate change is generally viewed as a more pressing issue.

In the 60s overpopulation was perceived as a major threat and it is one of the dystopian tropes often used by sci-fi authors. Several “overpopulation” sci-fi novels have become classics of the genre, John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up by the same author, and Robert Silverberg’s The World Inside spring to mind. However, for me, the one emblematic sci-fi book on this subject is Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room!.

Make Room! Make Room! was first published in 1966, it is set in the (then) future of 1999, starting in August and ends shortly after midnight of January 1st, 2000. In this version of 1999, the global population is seven billion, food, water, electricity and living accommodations are scarce. In New York, where the novel is set, millions of people are living on the streets, public transportation is no longer in operation, and all basic necessities are strictly rationed. Wheat crackers have become a staple food, and meat is mostly only available in an artificial form called “soylent meat”, produced from soya beans.

But how do you tell a story about overpopulation? The concept does not seem to lend itself to conventional plotting. Harrison does this by focusing on just a few protagonists rather than writing an epic but fragmented novel about a large cast of characters. Detective Andy Rusch is the main character of this book, he shares a cramped little apartment with Sol, a retired engineer. Andy is assigned to investigate a murder of an “important businessman” called Michael O’Brien who is, in reality, a gangster with political connections. O’Brien lives in a walled off luxury apartment with access to unlimited electricity and water supply, they even have air conditioning. This is where Andy meets Shirl Greene, O’Brien’s girlfriend who was living with the murder victim and now has to move out. The two predictably form a relationship. To the readers the identity of the killer is not a mystery; it is a destitute teenager who attempted to burgle the apartment, and was caught in the act by O’Brien and accidentally killed him in self-defense.

The first half of the book is so focused on the murder investigation that I did wonder how this is a novel about overpopulation, let alone a sci-fi novel. However, the dystopia is always there in the background, in the state of Andy’s apartment, the people lying on the street that he has to step over to get into his home, his roommate powering their refrigerator by hooking it to a bicycle and cycling like mad. In the second half of the book, the murder investigation fades into the background and an accident causes sea water to seep into the water supply which is quickly shut down. Water become even more strictly rationed and is only available from “water stations” which has to be carried home in bottles and buckets. Children are beginning to contract kwashiorkor, a form of severe protein–energy malnutrition hitherto nonexistent in the US. Living condition deteriorates throughout the narrative and a massive city-wide riot seems imminent.

Make Room! Make Room! paints a grim and depressing picture of an overpopulated New York, it frighteningly depicts the dehumanizing effect of overpopulation. The way of life we take for granted is not sustainable under such conditions, even the simple human interrelationships between family members and friends are corroded by the constant suffering and hardship. Make Room! Make Room! is not a fun read as such, it is too harrowing for that, but it is a good, thought-provoking read. It is quite well written, with a clear straightforward prose, the characters are well developed and sympathetic. The fact that the actual year 1999 was nothing like this is not a reason to dismiss this cautionary tale out of hand. For all we know, Harrison has only overestimated the timing but the catastrophe he depicts here is still possible.


Notes:
• The film adaptation of Make Room! Make Room! is much better known than the book. It is a 1973 movie called Soylent Green. It departs from the source material in many details (especially the titular foodstuff), but is true to the book’s spirit.


• Q: Is overpopulation still a problem?
• A: Yes / No / Maybe

• Harry Harrison is one of the popular sci-fi authors during the 60s through to the 80s, his popularity declined a bit from the 90s onward. Sadly he passed away in 2012. Make Room! Make Room! is atypical of his output. He tended to write fast-paced, lighthearted sci-fi adventures, like his signature series The Stainless Steel Rat, my personal favorite of his book is West of Eden.


Quotes:
“The millennium is here, now, upon us a populous world of souls awaiting His call. This is the true millennium. False prophets said it was the year one thousand, but there are more people here in this single city than there were in the entire world at that time. Now is the hour, we can see it nearing, we can read the signs. The world can hold no more, it will crack asunder under the weight of the masses of people.”

“We can go without washing for a while, it won’t kill us, and when the water is connected up again we can all have a good scrub. It’s something to look forward to.”

“Face it, this city is through. What they need here is animal trainers, not policemen.”

“This whole country is one big farm and one big appetite. There’s just as many people down South as there is up North and, since there’s no public transportation, anyone who tried to walk to the land of sunshine would starve to death long before he got there. People stay put because the country is organized to take care of them where they are.”

“New York City trembled on the brink of disaster. Every locked warehouse was a nucleus of dissent, surrounded by crowds who were hungry and afraid and searching for someone to blame. Their anger incited them to riot, and the food riots turned to water riots and then to looting, wherever this was possible.”

[Marvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

First thing, Forget about the movie Soylent Green which was based on Harry Harrison's novel about overpopulation, Make Room! Make Room!. There is no Charleston Heston screaming , "Soylent Green is people!" and nothing about cannibalism. What we have instead is a very effective and disquieting look at a future where overpopulation is rampant and food and water sources are depleting. While he centers his story around a New York detective and a "accidental" murder, Harrison is more interested in depicting his character's more personal responsse to their environment. Sol (beautifully played by Edward G. Robinson in the movie and the best thing about the film) is most memorable with his ability to remember the past and his examination of where they went wrong. His soliloquy on birth control still rings true today. Yet all the novel's protagonists are nicely developed. Considering the topic, this is actually a fairly subtle novel and one of the best novels by veteran Sci-fi writer Harrison. Highly recommended with a strong four stars.

[Clint Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Depressing, would be the first word that comes to mind.

Harry Harrison had me interested in his characters within the first two chapters of this book. Sounds like a good start. But then he deviated a bit from what I thought was the main plot to explain how a relationship might work and be strained in the future world of 1999.

It's crazy to think that we have surpassed Harry's population numbers and don't quite live in the dystopic world he depicted. We are, however, a population running on fumes. There's nothing in the tank, but we still huff on those sweet gases we call credit. We build up, we build out, we level nature for more farmland to feed the masses, we even have billionaires trying to escape to Mars. How can it be solved? Can it be solved? Culling might be frowned upon--depending on who you ask.

The birthcontrol pill was a recent invention when this book came out. Harry Harrison had his characters delve into monologues about the importance of birthcontrol, which was probably quite popular with the youth at the time thanks to the sexual revolution, and he even went into criticisms of the Catholic church and its stance on the topic. Again, probably not popular, but this was a cautionary tale of the future's plight. You don't always get a solution tabled by a sci-fi author.

When the book was over, I found myself wondering, 'What was the point of this book?' I usually do that anyway, but only after I find a book particularly engaging, but with Make Room! Make Room! my thoughts were of frustration. Until I started thinking about the static nature of the character. This guy was shown avenues of change, but he refused to tread. Or he did tread, but then circled back around to his old route. By the end of the book, he was back at the starting line. Was Andy an allegory for the whole human race?

There was a lot happening in the '60s and this book is as culturally relevant as a song made about the Vietnam War. I enjoyed the read, but by the end I couldn't help but wonder: 'Is that all there is?'

[Paul Haspel · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Soylent Green is – !” But I’m not going to *tell* you what Soylent Green is, dear reader – even though chances are you already know. What I am going to do, rather – with a copy before me of the original 1973 Soylent Green movie tie-in edition of Harry Harrison’s 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! – is offer a meditation on how the novel and the film, taken together, offer intriguing variations on the premise of a police procedural set within a vastly overpopulated New York City of the near future. This year of 2022 – the year in which Soylent Green is set – seems a good time for reflections of this sort.

Outside the science-fiction community, author Harry Harrison might not be as well-known as other 20th-century science fiction writers – Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Robert A. Heinlein, Frank Herbert – but within the SF (*not* “sci-fi”) community, he was popular, and his work was well-loved. There are plenty of SF buffs of the present day who still turn with pleasure to Harrison’s “Stainless Steel Rat” series of picaresque semi-comic novels about a raffish thief and con artist who nonetheless wins the reader’s sympathy because of the way he lives by a discernible moral code. Outside the SF community, by contrast, Harrison is almost certainly best-known for Make Room! Make Room!, a work that may have had its inspiration in the then-widespread anxiety regarding overpopulation.

Make Room! Make Room! begins on August 9, 1999 – at which time, the author tells us, “there are – give or take a few thousand – thirty-five million people in the city of New York” (p. 6). It is understandable that Harrison might have been anxious about such a scenario unfolding; he had clearly done his homework, as a list of “Suggestions for Further Reading” at the book’s end lists no less than 39 books on the topic of overpopulation, including works by Bruno Bettelheim, Erich Fromm, John Kenneth Galbraith, Arthur Koestler, and Harrison Salisbury.

New York in the August 1999 of Make Room! Make Room! is a bleak place indeed. Overpopulation has caused the world’s food supply, and energy supply, to crash. Vast numbers of unemployed people crowd the streets. Parking-lots full of dead cars provide last-ditch housing for the city's many impoverished and jobless people; others simply sleep outdoors. In place of taxis, rickshaw-style “pedicabs” take the relatively fortunate from one place to another. And fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, and particularly fresh meat are out-of-reach luxuries for all but the super-wealthy. The best that one can hope for – and just the rumor of this food’s availability is enough to start a riot at the local market – is a shipment of “soybean and lentil steaks” (p. 21) – soylent.

The novel’s protagonist is Detective Andy Rusch of New York’s 12-A Precinct, who is abruptly pulled off his already excessive caseload of unsolved crimes and sent to investigate the murder of one Michael O’Brien, at the upscale Chelsea Park North apartments on West 28th Street. O’Brien was one of those few fortunate wealthy who could live in relative comfort; in a nice touch, Harrison gives this apartment building “crenellated battlements and towers” (p. 51), and even a drawbridge, as if to emphasize how late 20th-century American society has reverted to a medieval state.

But O’Brien is dead, murdered with a tire iron; and because O’Brien was a mobster with ties to the power elite of New York, Rusch is put under considerable pressure to solve the case quickly. Other things that make this case different, for Rusch, include the novel experience of the air-conditioning system in O’Brien’s apartment – “cool air surged out, fresh on Andy’s face”, and “Every minute in the air-conditioned room made Andy feel better” (pp. 51, 53) – and the presence of O’Brien’s beautiful young mistress Shirl. Both Andy and Shirl are truly outsiders in O’Brien’s world, and soon they become lovers, sharing a stolen season in the brief time before O’Brien’s relatives are able to claim his apartment and possessions.

A person of interest in the O’Brien murder case is one Billy Chung, a young Taiwanese American whose history reflects more of the trauma that Harrison’s near-future New York City has endured. Billy and his family live in “Shiptown,” a harbor area of derelict ships whose cabins provide homes for thousands of Taiwanese refugees displaced from their island home when the Taiwanese government made an ill-advised decision to invade mainland China. Billy sometimes likes to dream that his derelict-ship home is an actual working ship, out somewhere on the high seas, with him as the ship’s captain, and the crew “down below on the decks doing all the things a good crew did while he guided the ship up here for all of them” (p. 100). But a series of bad choices that Billy makes in the course of his day-to-day attempts to scratch out a living make it seem increasingly likely that his path and that of detective Andy Rusch will one day intersect.

One of the most interesting features of Make Room! Make Room! – and something that I wish author Harrison had provided more of – is the way the novel provides occasional glimpses of the world beyond New York City. Once O’Brien’s apartment is closed off to Andy and Shirl, Shirl moves in with Andy and Andy’s roommate Sol – an older man who can provide testimony regarding the way the world was before the population crisis began. While Andy is off on his seemingly hopeless search for the perpetrator of the O’Brien murder, Sol tells Shirl why moving away from New York would not solve anyone’s problems:

“[T]here’s no place to go. This whole country is one big farm and one big appetite. There’s just as many people down South as there is up North and, since there is no public transportation, anyone who tried to walk to the land of sunshine would starve to death long before he got there. People stay put because the country is organized to take care of them where they are. They don’t eat well, but at least they eat. It needs a big catastrophe like the water failures in the California valleys to move people out, or the Dust Bowl – which I hear has now become international and crossed the Canadian border.” (p. 131)

When Shirl protests that things must be better in some other part of the world, Sol indicates that there is no hope to be found in the prospect of international relocation:

“All of England is just one big city and I saw on TV where the last Tory got shot defending the last grouse woods when they came to plow it up. Or you want to go to Russia maybe? Or China? They been having a border war for fifteen years now, which is one way of keeping the population down – but you’re draft age and they draft girls there, so you wouldn’t like that. Denmark, maybe. Life is great there if you can get in – at least they eat regular – but they got a concrete wall right across Jutland and beach guards who shoot on sight because so many starving people keep trying to break into the promised land.” (p. 131)

One of the striking features of Make Room! Make Room! is that, unlike other dystopias like 1984 or The Handmaid’s Tale, it is not a story of a government tyranny. A democratic form of government still seems to be in place – there is a “President’s Emergency Food Planning Board” (p. 143), and the Congress is debating population-control bills – but the population crisis has clearly moved beyond the government’s ability to deal with the problem in any meaningful way.

And it is here that one of the least desirable features of Make Room! Make Room! makes itself apparent, as Sol becomes, all too clearly, a mouthpiece for author Harrison’s strongly held feelings regarding the birth-control issue. To Andy, Sol angrily denounces the futility of the U.S. Senate’s attempts to pass an emergency bill, when, as he sees it, the real issue is “Birth control, that’s what. They are finally getting around to legalizing clinics that will be open to anyone – married or not – and making it a law that all mothers must be supplied with birth-control information. Boy, are we going to hear some howling when the bluenoses find out about that!” (p. 155)

In a later conversation with Shirl (whose attitude toward birth control reflects her Catholic upbringing), character Sol becomes even more transparently a mouthpiece for novelist Harrison’s feelings regarding the birth-control issue, while Shirl becomes little more than a straw woman whose objections Sol systematically demolishes. When Shirl refers to the proposed Emergency Bill as a “Baby-Killer Bill,” Sol insists that “You know well enough that birth control has nothing to do with killing babies. In fact, it saves them. Which is the bigger crime – letting kids die of disease and starvation, or seeing that the unwanted ones don’t get born in the first place?” (p. 159)

And when Shirl tries to suggest that birth control is somehow a violation of natural law, Sol sarcastically replies that “Darling, the history of medicine is the history of the violation of natural law. The Church – and that includes the Protestant as well as the Catholic – tried to stop the use of anesthetics because it was ‘natural law’ for a woman to have pain while giving birth. And it was natural law for people to die of sickness. And natural law that the body not be opened and repaired. There was even a guy named Bruno [Italian scientist Giordano Bruno] that got burned at the stake because he didn’t believe in absolute truth and natural laws like these. Everything was against natural law once, and now birth control has got to join the rest” (pp. 159-60).

Sol's frustration with resistance to birth control -- and, perhaps, author Harrison's -- may reflect the fact that, just one year before the publication of Make Room! Make Room!, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled, in Griswold vs. Connecticut (1965), that the state of Connecticut could no longer criminalize birth control for married couples.

Think about that for a moment. An important state of the American Union -- today, one of the most progressive and affluent states of the U.S.A. -- had gone to the highest court in the land to defend its "right" to declare that a husband and wife could not decide for themselves how many children they wanted to have. A married couple, under the laws that prevailed in Connecticut (the "Constitution State"!) before 1965, could not have sex without facing the possibility of a pregnancy, and could not use birth control without having to worry about a bedroom raid by Hartford or New Haven police officers. With such outdated laws, and such medieval thinking, at work in American life, at a time when the United States of America was reaching for the stars (or at least the moon), it's no wonder if author Harrison was angry regarding the birth-control issue.

Perhaps because some of Sol’s reflections might seem anti-Catholic, as when he says that “I suppose we can mostly blame the Catholics” for the problems of overpopulation in his world, and insists that the Catholic Church should “accept the thing [meaning the necessity of birth control] and give the suffering human race a break” (p. 175), Harrison makes a point of giving his novel a sympathetically rendered, religiously devout character. Named (appropriately) Peter, this character tries to reconcile his religious beliefs with the brutal realities of the world he sees around him.

Encountering Detective Andy Rusch in Times Square as New York City prepares to celebrate the transition from 1999 over to 2000 (and you thought the Y2K computer problems were a bother), Peter quotes the well-known passages from Revelation about an end to death and sorrow and tears, about Jesus Christ making all things new. A tired and embittered Andy tells Peter that nothing has changed; the millennium has not come yet.

“Nothing changed?” Peter shouted. “It is Armageddon, it must be.” Terrified, he pulled his arm from Andy’s grip and started away, and then turned back when he had only gone a pace.

“It must end,” he called in a tortured voice. “Can this world go on for another thousand years, like this? LIKE THIS?” Then people came between them and he was gone. (p. 200)

Detective Andy Rusch has no answer to Peter’s expression of anguish. Neither, the reader senses, does novelist Harry Harrison.

Watching Soylent Green after reading Make Room! Make Room!, I found that both works have their merits. It is not, for me, a matter of one being better than the other; it is more like a case of comparably interesting variations on a theme. Indeed, in some ways Soylent Green has a plotline whose elements are more tightly interwoven than is the case in Harrison’s novel.

In Richard Fleischer’s 1973 film, the detective protagonist is not named Rusch, but rather Thorn. As in the novel, the detective protagonist has a roommate named Sol; but now, Solomon Roth is a “book,” a college professor turned research assistant whose job is to gather evidence for Thorn’s investigations. The murder victim this time is named Simonson, and his murder is deliberate, not random; it turns out that he is an executive for the Soylent corporation that provides the movie’s overpopulated society with “Soylent Green” crackers that are supposedly made from plankton gathered from the world’s oceans. Shirl is in the movie, too, but now she is called “furniture”; beautiful women are provided as living accessories to luxury apartments for ultra-wealthy men.

The dehumanizing references to intellectuals as “books,” and to women as “furniture,” are reinforced by the methods of crowd control dramatized in the film. In Harrison's novel, the regular food riots by starving and infuriated New Yorkers are controlled by self-activating barbed wire that is dropped from helicopters; in Fleischer's film, riot control is administered by "scoops" -- dump trucks with bulldozer-style blades that scoop up rioters and dump them into the truck bed, as if these hungry people were dirt or debris or garbage. These instances of dehumanization foreshadow the movie’s “big reveal” regarding the actual source of Soylent Green – a powerful metaphor for a society that is devouring itself. At a 50-year remove from the release of the film, it is easy to forget how troubling the movie’s surprise ending was for viewers of the time.

Today, the world population is actually larger than what novelist Harrison anticipated; according to the United Nations, the population surpassed 8 billion in November of this year. But the nightmare scenario of Make Room! Make Room! and Soylent Green has not become a reality – yet.

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oddly enough, I kinda expected something hokey before I read this, but instead, I just got a dystopian nightmare of overpopulation.

This isn't unexpected or a bad thing. After all, I've seen Soylent Green and felt the huge impact of the scene where the old man Saul mouths the BIG SECRET through the plane of glass. I remember the riots, the pressure, the senseless violence, and the massive levels of injustice AND stupidity that brought us to this state.

And yet, after reading this novel, that sense is more visceral, more realistic, and a lot less sensational. Yes, there's massive injustice. Just look at the Squatter law that gives priority to squalid massive families regardless of any consideration, or the way no detective is able to do his job because life is already worthless.

For '66, this nightmare world that has used up all resources by 1999 and has ignored or actively fought all birth control or warnings, has resorted to sticking its head in the sand.

Sound familiar?

Well, fortunately, our modern world is getting well-adjusted to living with less... and less... and some technologies are letting us live with a bit less squalor than predicted in this novel... and a New York City of 35 million in the novel is pretty damn close to what some cities are reaching now, true, but the quality of life is NOT as bad as predicted in Harrison's novel.

Of course, in some ways, the violence, the poverty, and the cultural clamp-downs are WORSE in our world. It's odd to see our 7.7 billion people displayed against the novel's measly 7.0 billion. And yet... it's interesting because most of the world is a dustbowl and the only place to safely live .. on the dole .. is the big cities, so everyone migrates there.

I'm just saying this is a really fascinating world-building exercise. I love books that predict or fail to predict in really big ways. :)

Does anyone want any meat flakes? It's just snails... right? Yum, yum.

[Becky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sigh... Where to begin? This is my second, and probably last Harry Harrison novel. I know that he's considered one of the best science fiction writers of his time, and I can't disagree... But it's not his time anymore, and in my opinion, his writing just doesn't stand the test of time. He shouldn't feel too offended though, this opinion applies to quite a few writers whose work shows its age, and not in a George Clooney "Gets Better With" kind of way.

The ideas and concepts I can appreciate. The overcrowding, the overpopulation, the over-consumption and the warnings to future us to not let it happen that way... This stuff I can appreciate. My favorite parts of the book were Sol's railing against the anti-birth control agenda, and Peter the homeless preacher's despair at it NOT being the end of the world when the clock strikes midnight on Jan 1, 2000. "A thousand more years of THIS??"

These bits were the most real and tangible and human parts of the book for me. The rest was just set dressing... Or outdated attitudes that irritated me more and more as the book went on.

Sexism and misogyny, racism, classism... I have a hard time ignoring these things just because the book is 50 years old and things were different then. My thinking is, if Harrison was so ahead of his time thinking about overpopulation and a woman's right to choose whether to have kids or not, then he should also... I dunno, not objectify and make it out that their only value lies between their legs. Woman after woman was described as greedy, hard, cold, and bitchy... And also, coincidentally, usually overweight and lazy, too. Except Shirl, who was exceptionally beautiful... And who sells herself because that's what beautiful girls do in a hard world. There is apparently no other work or options. Fuck for money and place and privilege, or barely subsist on rations and "love". Maybe if her ass got a job and didn't sit at home like a suburban housewife, they might've had an easier time of life, and she wouldn't have been so resentful of Andy being gone 20 hours a day DOING HIS JOB. Ugh.

I just expect a bit more from someone who seems to think, in both of the books I've read of Harrison's, that women are capable and equal to men, but in every action writes them the exact opposite way. It bugs me.

And let's not even start the rant on how Asians were depicted. FML. "Chink" this and "chink" that. SERIOUSLY. I can't get down with that shit.

I seriously never thought I'd ever say that my favorite parts of a book would be the PREACHY bits. Wow.

Anyway. So. Everyone sign up for the Voluntary Human Extinction Project... Or more realistically... Lobby your representatives for better birth control options - and NOT just for women - and safe abortion facilities, because, last I checked, it is still legal in the US, though some would rather unwanted babies be born to families that can't support them. Because that makes sense. Grrr...

Plan your families... We have the technology. Or we overpopulate and consume even more than we do now, and everyone in our children's or grandchildren's future suffers.

That is all.

[Manny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good morning class! Now, hands up everyone who knows what Soylent Green is made of. Ah, that's very good. I'm glad to see you read your assignment.

I'm sorry, we're not quite finished yet. What is the book's original title? No, of course it isn't a trick question. You should have read it a little more carefully...

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of course I remember the movie Soylent Green. I saw it at the drive-in gazillions of years ago, and many times since. But let me tell you, as dramatic as the movie is, with Charlton Heston as main character Andy Rusch giving the infamous scream of Soylent Green is PEOPLE!! there is actually no soylent green in the book at all. There are red crackers, seaweed crackers, brown soylent (soy/lentil) steaks and eventually small soylent burgers supposedly with a smoky-barbecue flavor. So there is no eating of people here. There is not much eating of anything, because there is simply not much food. Or water. Or electricity. Or personal space. And this makes the book feel much more terrifying, because it is easier to imagine our world becoming exactly like Harrison's New York City.

Written in 1966, the story takes place during the last six months of 1999. Okay, we do all know that the world survived the big leap from the year 1999 to the year 2000. But Harrison's dedication shows us what he was concerned about at the time he wrote this book. To Todd and Moria ~~ For your sakes, children, I hope this proves to be a work of fiction.

There are 35 million people in New York City. Andy Rusch is one of them. He is a detective on the police force, sharing living space with an old man named Solomon Kahn. Andy is assigned to investigate a homicide, and at first it seems to be cut and dried, another case to be dealt with as quickly as possible and forgotten. But due to a bit of paranoia and misinterpretation on the part of certain people in control of things behind the scenes, pressure is put on the police force to find the killer, not simply to mark the case closed without a proper investigation. In the process of his more thorough detective work, Andy gets to know the victim's girlfriend Shirl, who becomes very important in his own life. The reader spends time with the killer, we even see him commit the crime, but does Andy ever catch him?

But the police procedure is only a tiny part of the story. The main theme is the lack of everything that makes a city a decent place to live. Water and food rations are small and often cut. Electricity is iffy, there are no cars on the streets, but they do fill once-vacant lots where homeless people crowd into their abandoned bodies for shelter. Of course some people do manage to live in air-conditioned luxury, and even buy beef from the meatleggers. There are always people who can get you things for the right price and others who have that price. Overall the feel of the book is grimy, hot, sticky,
hopeless, and extremely crowded.

Solomon spends time in the second part of the book talking about why the country has turned out the way it has, and his words feel like something we could be hearing today. Or perhaps should be hearing today. As I said earlier, it is very easy to imagine our world becoming Andy's world. A few natural disasters, a little more climate change, one or two dozen more crooked politicians, lots and lots of more people and there we are.

I agree with Harrison's wish in his dedication. However, it does seem that we are well on the way to making this statement by Solomon a reality:
One time we had the whole world in our hands, but we ate it and burned it and it's gone now.

[Bionic Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

“One time we had the whole world in our hands, but we ate it and burned it and it’s gone now.”

“We got a plague of people, a disease of people infesting the world. We got more people who are living longer. Less people have to be born, that’s the answer.”

These two sentences could be from any current eco-thriller, but in fact they were written in 1966 by Harry Harrison, in one of the most prescient Sci-Fi novels I have ever read: Make Room! Make Room! Overpopulation was not yet thought to be a worry, but much later Harry Harrison explained:

“It was really the first book, fiction or nonfiction, about overpopulation. The idea came from an Indian I met after the war, in 1946. He told me, ‘Overpopulation is the big problem coming up in the world,’ (nobody had ever heard of it in those days) and he said, ‘Want to make a lot of money, Harry? You have to import rubber contraceptives to India.’ I didn’t mind making money, but I didn’t want to be the rubber king of India!
… But I started reading a bit about overpopulation, and got the idea for the book. It stayed in my head as I watched the population trend going the wrong way.”

Just two years later Dr. Paul Ehrlich was to publish his enormously popular “The Population Bomb”, which sat on my shelves for decades depressing the heck out of me, and—along with a couple of other seminal works—informing my life choices. It was a deliberately confrontational popular book, using shock tactics with what sometimes amounted to a hectoring tone. Some of the statistics Paul Ehrlich used for this have been shown to be flawed, because one research study he used was suspect, but too often now it is conveniently dismissed as alarmist. Many of the predictions and much of the data was sound; only the lengths of time were premature.

The fact remains that “The Population Bomb” alerted the world to an insidious problem, and one we have yet to solve, despite the populations in many wealthy Western nations now being relatively stable. The birth rate in these “first world” countries has levelled off to the point where we are approaching zero population growth; the number of people remains stable because births and deaths occur at similar rates. However, populations are still rising in underdeveloped countries. Yet those poorer nations are the lowest consumers of the Earth’s bounty; it is the technology and commodity-driven developed countries which gobble up far more of the resources. And in many impoverished nations, where birth control is shunned, the population continues to grow at an alarming rate.

It may be startling to some reading Make Room! Make Room! now, to realise that the contraceptive pill had only been legalised in the United States in 1965, just one year before this novel was published, and that some other forms of contraception only came to be legalised in the next decade. In the UK, “the pill” had been available on the NHS since 1961, prescribed by some doctors and the family planning organisation. Even so it was still new, and there was not automatic entitlement; some individuals and religious groups made vociferous objections. In Make Room! Make Room! the US government positively encourages everyone to have more and more children, despite there being no way of sustaining the ever-increasing population, and the global population has reached seven billion people, which must have been an almost unimaginable number for 1966.

The location of New York was deliberately chosen. The author was born and grew up in New York—although until recently I had mistakenly thought he was English. Harry Harrison did live here for 30 years, which is perhaps why. New York is a good choice of setting: the archetypal large city in a prosperous industrialised country. It is even fairly familiar to many outside the United States, either through travel or through the media.

However, twinned with the problem of New York City’s rapidly increasing population, there is also another problem. There is not enough food or water for everyone, there is a shortage of resources, and a crumbling infrastructure with all the various systems breaking down.

Overuse of resources leading to a dysfunctional society was already a common enough theme in science fiction. But such fiction was usually set in the distant future. One reason why Harry Harrison’s idea was so compelling was that he depicted a near-future society: one which many of his readers and their children would live to see. To make environmental issues a necessary consequence of overpopulation was also forward-thinking. He set Make Room! Make Room! just 33 years later, beginning the novel in August 1999, and ending it at the turn of the century.

Make Room! Make Room! is thus a science fiction novel with a serious theme, but it is never boring, as it conveys this by means of a gripping story. There are actually two stories interwoven here, and at one point I realised I was reading what amounted to a gangster thriller! It functions well as a detective novel about a hunt for a killer. The other thread follows a small group of people in New York, but what the characters actually do isn’t what we focus on. It is watching how each individual reacts, and tries to cope, as their society descends into chaos. What we then have is a addictive and tense story.

The hero of the novel is a New York detective, thirty year-old Andy Rusch, who shares a tiny one-room apartment with an “Eldster”, called Solomon Kahn. This works really well dramatically, because Sol can remember the old days, before the world became so overcrowded and before resources like water and electricity became so scarce. Therefore he can remember a time which was contemporary for the original readers, and which seems positively idyllic compared with the novel’s present. It is the Eldsters who are most vocal in their objections, holding marches and rallies in protest—just as they did in their youth—despite their current fragility and poor health.

Sol is a retired engineer, and while Andy Rusch is out at work, Sol pedals his adapted bike to provide extra power for their most valued items: an old television set and a refrigerator. He also grows herbs from precious seeds, and cooks as creative and interesting meals as he is able to, with the basic rations they are allocated of grain, soya and kelp-based processed food and drinks such as “kofee” which is clearly ersatz coffee.

The description of food made me smile, as textured vegetable protein made from soya beans, various types of spilt and whole lentils, and kelp (a sort of seaweed) as ingredients in vegetarian food were staples of my diet from the mid-70s onwards; it is the American fast-food diet which seems alien. But although the “soylent steaks” were luxury items in this future world, they were seen as poor substitutes, as the wealthy had access to meat. The stark truth was that most of the population were existing on inadequate rations of grain-based food; I assume something like grits, or Graham crackers, (neither of which are familiar to me).

We enjoy the witty dialogue between the two, as they spar with each other. It is easy to empathise with each of them, trapped in what is a truly nightmarish future, where merely stepping outside their minimally tolerable shared room might entail stepping over the sick and dying individuals in the streets, and sometimes even their bodies, if they have not been collected.

The third major character in the novel, and overlapping story is a teenager from Taiwan, Billy Chung, who is invariably mistaken for a Chinese boy by everyone (including Chinese people). His housing seems remarkably prescient to me, because it is the equivalent of Britain’s shameful “temporary” off-shore barges provided for asylum seekers and refugees. Even the polito-economic justifications seem familiar. Billy’s daily environment is a disease-ridden, decrepit, death-trap in the future Manhattan, and he resorts to stealing to survive, although he does not share any of the food he steals with his family.

The basic plot of this story thread is that Billy breaks into a home in a luxury apartment building, having believed that the resident was out. But the man who lives there is in the bathroom, and emerges to catch Billy red-handed. Billy panics and hits Mike O’Brien with a jemmy, accidentally killing him, and then runs away. What he does not realise is that “Big Mike” O’Brien was a racketeer: the leader of a Mafia-like gang.

Andy Rusch is brought in to track down Big Mike’s killer. Most murders in New York are allocated a maximum of 2 weeks before being dropped, but O’Brien had friends in high places. Because Billy Chung had scrawled a heart on the window to make sure he broke into the right apartment, senior police officers believe that a rival gang (whose name is Italian for heart) may be trying to muscle in on O’Brien’s territory. Andy Rusch is instructed to stay on the case.

He becomes romantically involved with O’Brien’s mistress, Shirl, and she moves into his apartment when a new owner takes over O’Brien’s apartment. For a while Rusch, Shirl and Sol all tolerate each other sharing the small apartment

Perhaps because of when it was written, there is a dearth of female characters. Shirl is the only one who has much time devoted to her; we briefly meet a gangster’s sister and a neighbour, but both of these are there merely to move the plot along, as are a dysfunctional family who argue their “squatters’ rights” because there are so many children, and are moved into Andy Rusch’s apartment despite Shirl’s objections.

This had been prompted by Sol contracting a fatal dose of pneumonia, after he went on a protest rally. The family had been waiting near the morgue, so that they could claim the dead person’s living space. Shirl immediately locks herself away, hating these new squatters, and leaves. Andy Rusch spots her at the end, having attached herself to some new rich people.

He successfully tracks down Billy Chung as the killer of O’Brien, but the police are no longer interested, as the theory of a rival gang had fizzled out. Andy Rusch is demoted for disobeying orders. His colleague tells him of a better standard of living well away from New York, but in the end he decides to stay put, and see it out as a uniformed policeman on the beat as the 20th century draws to a close.

The author writes in a very direct style, and the novel is remarkably engaging, considering its understated opening, descriptions of hopeless squalor and its bleak ending. We see the contrasts with the privileged, wealthy folk living in style and partying in their apartment blocks, with ample fine foods and wines, and rare luxuries such as air conditioning and running water for showers.

Harry Harrison did a fair amount of research himself before writing Make Room! Make Room! extrapolating from the data available in 1966 about the United States’ food resources relative to its population size. By these means Harry Harrison painted a vivid picture of what the world would be like when it has to support such a massive population. He makes us feel the reality of what living in this future dying world might be like for ordinary people. Interestingly, Paul Ehrlich was to write an introduction to the novel for one of the later American editions.

However, there is always a sense of disconnect reading any story which was set in the near future, when we have already passed that time a while ago. Quite a few readers now would not have even been born at that “future” time. As Harry Harrison wrote in an afterword in 2005:

“We are now living in the world that I wrote about then; the future has arrived. But how right were my predictions?
Pretty bad in some of the details. I have never believed that science fiction predicts the future. It does not. There are predictions made in the literature, but they are hunches, guesses, hopes.”

As I read this, and his comment on what had not come to pass, I was thinking that these were trivial details, and that the main thrust of his novel was spot on. Then I read:

“Unhappily for mankind the population details, food shortages and oil consumption I wrote about have proven to be too horribly correct. We live now with ever decreasing supplies of petroleum. Prices have gone up—and they will never come down again—as world supplies are depleted and used up. Right around the world our ever-growing population is already running out of food. Starvation on a global scale is already here.”

The end of the novel marks the start of the 21st century, when the population of the United States has just hit 344 million people. This must have seemed almost unimaginable back in 1966, when the United States population was approaching 192 million people. But in reality in 2011, the world’s population passed the seven billion mark, and by 2023, it had reached almost 340 million people in the United States alone. Harry Harrison may not think he was predicting the future we were destined to have, but he was not that far off.

Make Room! Make Room! marked a change of direction for Harry Harrison, who had been more involved in writing space operas until then. In fact his connection with Sci-Fi began when he left the Army, bored and disillusioned, to study Art. He became a commercial artist, and by the end of the 1940s he was running a small studio which specialised in selling illustrations to comics and science-fiction magazines. For years he had thought of himself as a commercial artist rather than a writer.

Harry Harrison then moved on to editing some of the magazines he sold, and writing for science-fiction magazines, moving initially to Mexico and Britain, and from there to Italy, and then to Denmark, staying for seven years, before moving to California. By the mid-1970s he was back in the UK, and Ireland, and remained in the UK as I mentioned for 30 years. Yet it is difficult to imagine a more American feel to a novel than that of Make Room! Make Room.

In 1965, just a year before Make Room Make Room was published Harry Harrison and the British writer Brian Aldiss published the first issue of the world’s first serious journal of Sci-Fi criticism, “SF Horizons”. The two were longstanding friends who shared ideals, and together they worked to improve the way science-fiction literature was published, criticised and understood. They were concerned about deeper issues than Sci-Fi had traditionally been, and went on to edit many anthologies of short stories, each one illustrating the major themes of science fiction.

This then was the setting for Harry Harrison’s first serious novel, although the change of tone was an early indicator of his later work. Make Room! Make Room! told a great story whilst exploring the possible consequences on society of both unchecked population growth, and the hoarding of resources by a wealthy minority. Both of these subjects were close to his heart.

I have wondered how to rate this book. In a way the structure is a little too visible. We see that the murder investigation is what Alfred Hitchcock called the macguffin. It keeps us reading, because it sets the events in motion and puts the characters at risk, so that we want to know what happens to them and can observe their reactions. We see that Shirl is really a passive character, there just to react to the others. We see that Sol is the wise seer, and that often his words (spouted at Shirl) are really the author’s own observations and cautions.

Nevertheless Sol is an irresistible character. There are also noble characters with a strong moral code, such as Tab Fielding the bodyguard, who strives to do the right thing but is defeated by his personal commitments. There are out-and-out villains who are out only for themselves, such as the judge, and O’Brien’s sister. There are fringe lunatics such as Peter, who eagerly awaits the new millennium, believing that the end of the world is nigh.

Even though it is more than three weeks since I finished reading this book, I cannot get it out of my mind. Part of it has a “male-centred gaze”, but this is of its time, and mostly reflects the various characters’ attitudes, rather than the author’s. There is remarkably little stereotyping, and a good ethnic mix. It remains as relevant now as it was when it was first written, as a ground-breaking book. I feel it deserves 5 full stars.

You watched the film “Soylent Green” but never read the book it was based on? Well the one film made in 1973 is only a loose adaptation; for instance Billy Chung is played by a white boy with blond hair, which completely misses the point of a perceived immigrant underclass. I can also guarantee that if there is only one thing you remember from the film, you will not find any trace of it in the novel. It is also probably the reason why Harry Harrison rarely talked about the film.

The advertising material, posters and reviews all blazed the slogan “Soylent Green is Made of People!” But this is an invention by the filmmakers, deliberately shocking to arrest the public’s attention. It downgrades the message of the book, making it somehow less realistic, (even though for many ethical vegetarians it may seem hardly less shocking than much factory farming. It seems the next logical step, for a meat-eating society. Would you eat your dog, cat, or pet lamb? No? Why not? Are there any circumstances when you might? But that is a topic for another time and place.)

Read the book! It tackles issues head on, without getting side-tracked by cheap manipulative horror tactics. The reality of this future world is horrific enough without.

Sol’s wisdom:

“So mankind gobbled in a century all the world’s resources that had taken millions of years to store up, and no one on the top gave a damn or listened to all the voices that were trying to warn them, they just let us overproduce and overconsume until now the oil is gone, the topsoil depleted and washed away, the trees chopped down, the animals extinct, the earth poisoned, and all we have to show for this is seven billion people fighting over the scraps that are left, living a miserable existence—and still breeding without control. So I say the time has come to stand up and be counted.”

And Harry Harrison’s:

“I am not happy about being correct; I wish it had been the other way around. I wish we had controlled population growth and developed green energy sources.”

But he remained optimistic, saying:

“Perhaps we still can …

… If science fiction can teach us one thing—it is that we have the power to change.”

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cult hardboiled overpopulation dystopian classic with the worst title of any cult hardboiled overpopulation dystopian classic in existence. An entertaining romp which wobbles between boilerplate detective novel that happens to take place in a dystopia to a more robust exploration of the dystopia as the claustrophobic society begins a waterless, foodless meltdown.

[K · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Trust the ScienceTM has made everyone live longer, eliminated diseases and cut child mortality but now the planet has gone to shit and who's to blame, none other than those damn Catholics and their disapproval of cheap, safe&effectiveTM contraception.
It's not a good detective novel, or a science fiction novel, or even a dystopia novel. Just environmentalist antinatalist crap and worst thing, Soylent Green isn't even made out of people.

[Alexis Breut · Rating 2 out of 5]

Note finale : 2.5/5

Bon... alors tout ce que je savais de ce livre n'est pas dans le livre (seulement dans la très célèbre adaptation avec Charlton Heston, que je n'ai pas vue) mais ça, je l'ai appris très tôt dans ma lecture, en me renseignant en parallèle.

Alors qu'y a-t-il dans le livre ? L'abominable dystopie écologique de 1999 ! Oh j'ai même pas envie d'être sarcastique, ce roman est daté à presque tous les niveaux. D'une part, c'est pas tant un roman de SF qu'un polar. Et j'ajouterais, pas un excellent polar. Il est très lent et les personnages sont pas très intéressants, il n'y a aucun mystère et peu de tension. Mais donc c'est aussi une dystopie... et elle est pas spécialement inspirante. Alors elle est aussi déprimante mais c'est l'idée hein, c'est une dystopie. Globalement, l'idée, c'est que le monde est dans la merde à cause de la surpopulation et c'est la faute aux gens qui font plein de bébés. Voilà, c'est daté et pas très inspirant.

Parlant de "daté", l'écriture des personnages féminins est très sexiste. Ce sont toutes des "mégères" grosses, vieilles et dégueulasses sauf une : la petite amie de la victime qui est magnifique, qui devient la petite amie du flic, la première fois qu'on la voit elle est à poil et les belles fesses rebondies et les petits seins ronds et la chevelure en cascade et nianiania, vous voyez le tableau. Alors que les personnages masculins, je sais rien sur leurs fesses et leurs testicules, je suis un peu déçu.

Il y a trois chapitres que j'ai trouvés chouettes quand même : le premier avec l'émeute, la rencontre entre Chung et Peter et le premier long dialogue avec Sol où il explique comment on en est arrivé là (le chapitre 4 de la partie 2). Mais c'est une dystopie futuriste qui est fermement ancrée dans son époque. Écrite en 1966, elle se passe en 1999 et Sol, sûrement un self-insert de l'auteur, dit "Alala, il aurait fallu faire quelque chose il y a 30 ou 40 ans #EMOJICLINDOEIL". Bref, je suis pas souvent très déçu par des classiques de la SF mais ça peut arriver. Je ne le recommanderais pas, sauf aux gros amateurs et grosses amatrices du genre.

[Queralt✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Make Room! Make Room! is a dystopian book published in the late 1960s set in New York City in 1999. The city is populated by 35 million people so as you can imagine, it’s crowded and resources are stretched thin and rationed. The story follows detective Andy Rusch as he investigates a murder case whilst simultaneously struggling to cope with being overworked and different crises (extreme weather, rations cut in half, water points closed up for months, hospitals being crowded and lacking medicine, etc.).

I was a bit surprised reading the book because the synopsis made it sound like the core of the book could be a murder case when, in fact, it was just the overpopulation issue. We get to know the murderer very early in the book and while we follow the case, what matters is the ensemble of characters: Andy, Sol, Shirl, and Billy (and I guess Peter). They all experience scarcity and overpopulation in very different ways. None of them lives through it easily. Shirl’s case is interesting because her ‘world’ is perhaps much more comfortable yet it comes with a price she isn’t happy to pay, so even in her ‘better’ case, there are no winners.

I felt the different perspectives colluded in one of Sol’s last tirades against the government: prepare, prepare, prepare. But his suggestions and what the book proposes as ways to deal with things are quite extreme. I do want to say, I truly adored the dialogue in this book. Sol was my absolute favorite character with brilliant bits like: “Funniest show on earth. They’re trying to push this Emergency Bill through — some emergency, it’s only been a hundred years in the making — and you should hear them talking all around the little points and not mentioning the big ones.” Or perhaps this one that I think it’s the core of what Harry Harrison is trying to convey with this book: “We got death control — we got to match it with birth control..”

My one reason not to give this a 5 stars is perhaps because it feels dated. Obviously, it was written decades before I was born and I understand that. Yet much of it sat weirdly with me. 1) I don’t know what my thoughts are about Shirl. She’s just an uneducated woman who gets lucky after winning a beauty contest and then jumps from man to man, and while I really liked her and I found she looked out for herself… I don’t know, I’m not sure about my feelings towards her. 2) This book features things that are problematic now, maybe not then and there (LSD, nuclear facilities, lots of religion first/doomsaying, etc.). 3) I didn’t find the book racist, though there was racism. (Also as a side note, I recently read Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories by Flannery O'Connor which was published a year before this one and holy moly that was unreadable because of how racist it was. And in that book, I couldn’t say if it was the characters or the author).

I’m reading this with my book club Shine & Shadow and I’m typically the party pooper who hates everything, so I’m thrilled to not be the hater this time around. Woop woop.

[Daisy · Rating 2 out of 5]

As an inhabitant of the UK and more specifically London the question of population, specifically squeezing more and more people onto a small island has been thrust to the front of the political stage in the couple of months since Labour’s election victory. The capital has a population of 9.5 million and the country as a whole of nearly 70 million. Homes are expensive, renting is expensive and competitive and so Labour have pledged to build 1.5 million new homes. Fantastic one might cry, until one sees that at least one third of these homes will have to be built on greenfield sites. Yes we must destroy the green and pleasant land in favour of soulless, identikit housing estates because, as if it hadn’t occurred to anyone there is only finite space. Of course everyone deserves a home but there is also quality of life. Do we really want to live in an over populated hell hole of housing, without a blade of grass to be seen? At a time when ‘green bathing’ is recommended as an antidote to the increasing mental ill health of so many, what is being laid down in store for future generations. In it’s own misguided way this is a large part of what the summer riots/protests were about. An overcrowding in areas that mean weeks of waiting to see a GP, over subscribed schools, years long waiting lists for medical treatment, endless traffic, no parking, overcrowded public transport.

And so reading this book written in 1966 but set in 1999 it felt as though the nightmare Harrison had envisioned was already here. The book is set in New York that has seen it’s population grow to 35 million and life become brutish with people being told where to live – our protagonist has a family of 4 forced upon him in his small studio apartment – food and energy shortages and a cheapening of human life that comes from people surviving rather than living. Riots are frequent and food is rationed. For fans of WEF conspiracy theories around us being reduced to eating insects, Harrison sees a future where only the super rich have access to food such as meat and fresh vegetables, the plebs having to barter and save to enjoy a tasty lentil steak. Of course if you are rich you are insulated from the mayhem in spacious air conditioned flats where you can cook the bankruptingly expensive real meat steak that you sent your chauffeur to get.

It is a future so bleak that I’m surprised there wasn’t a rush on sterilisation clinics when it was published.

For all the bleakness and near-the-knuckleness of it, I found it unengaging. The vision of the future is described around a rather pedestrian plot of a murder in a high class building by a desperate member of the underclass who has nothing and therefore nothing to lose. Of course the victim is a crook and so no tears are shed, especially not by his young and glamorous girlfriend who, wouldn’t you know it, falls in love with the policeman investigating the case. All of which I found trite and unconvincing. Who can say whether returning to sharing a small, sweaty, overcrowded room and queuing each day for water and a lentil based delicacy is a price worth paying for love but I will say I have never to this day eaten a Linda McCartney vegetarian sausage nor have any plans to whatever the future may be.

[Alexander Peterhans · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The coal that was supposed to last for centuries has all been dug up because so many people wanted to keep warm. And the oil too, there’s so little left that they can’t afford to burn it, it’s got to be turned into chemicals and plastics and stuff. And the rivers – who polluted them? The water – who drank it? The topsoil – who wore it out? Everything has been gobbled up, used up, worn out. What we got left – our one natural resource? Old-car lots, that’s what. Everything else has been used up and all we got to show for it is a couple of billion old cars that are rusting away. One time we had the whole world in our hands, but we ate it and burned it and it’s gone now."

No thrilling cyberpunk future, here. Just 35 million people piled up on top of eachother in New York City.

The book doesn't have much of a plot, and is more of an overview of a world rife with overpopulation and near complete exhaustion of natural resources, following a couple of characters in the year 1999, ending with the New Year of 2000.

The worldbuilding is strong and imaginative, with a strong environmental message, which some will probably find preachy - personally, seeing how awfully we're handling the climate crisis at the moment, we can do with a lot more preaching.

Also interesting, the movie is only tangentially related to the book - the movie has an actual plot, although the whole soylent green revelation is completely absent from the book.

3.5 stars

[Malice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Algunas de las cosas que plantea este libro ya han quedado un tanto obsoletas, pero otras siguen siendo muy vigentes. Con este tipo de historias siempre me pongo a pensar en si una vida como esa vale la pena ser vivida.

[Denis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having seen the movie Soylent Green at the age of ten or so, back in the seventies, and learned this was the book that inspired it, I immediately tagged it a "Must Get To." I came across a nice hard cover 20 or so years back and let it wait its turn.

I expected it to be different from the film and was pleased of how so. I have found all of Harry Harrison's writing to be above average (from what I have read thus far - not that much actually, only a couple Stainless Steel Rat books, some from the Deathworld series and maybe some other thing or two - it’s been a while), and his strength is especially high with humour. This 1966 novel set in 1999 has some of that but is definitely not a humorous or a typical Harrison novel. It is anything but uplifting and deals with serious issues from the viewpoint of the mid-sixties. Some of this is a bit dated (I won't list my objections - but they are reflective of the time it was written) but much of it is very relevant and was prophetic of our current time. The main issue was over population, which seems less of a concern today than it was fifty years ago, but he nailed the over exploitation and consumption of resources and the stress on the planet’s environment: air, land and sea, in spite of multiple warnings from experts. All this infused into a fast paced detective story.

I would easily list it as one of the decade’s best.

[Anissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Soylent Green was a favourite film with my father's side of the family. Often referenced and spoken about yet, it wasn't until I was a grown woman that I finally saw it (because my husband was appalled that my 70's film viewing had been so lacking; he considers it to have been a fantastic decade for film). Anyway, upon viewing Soylent Green, I had to concur that it was a great story. So as I am wont to do, I sought out and bought the book. Then it sat in my TBR pile for the last five years waiting to be read. I was in no rush because I already knew the gist of the story. But the joke was on me, you see, because Make Room! Make Room! is seriously not the same story as Soylent Green!

Now, I can accept the story diverging greatly but there was another problem. It was slow and worse, a bit plodding. The murder happens fairly quickly but the investigation often takes complete detours into Andrew (the main character and cop investigating the murder) having it off with Shirl (murdered victim's girlfriend). Unfortunately, Shirl has about as much character development in the film as she does the book. Also, unfortunately, Shirl is in a lot more of the book.

Sol appears but is just the old man who shares lodgings with Andrew who also imparts what life was like in the past before the climate and animal life was destroyed and the world wasn't at peak over-population. He's also our lone link to the political goings-on in this hellscape. There's a bill that Congress is to vote on having to do with birth control and Sol explains how birth control could have staved off humanity's rampant consuming that has ravaged the earth. There is no Book or Exchange here but Sol still comes out to be one of the more interesting characters and aspects of the story.

We also get to meet Billy (who murders Big Mike) and it was his character that I found the most interesting and the best thread of the story. In the film, his character is a literal throw away & I don't even know if his name is mentioned. But here, Billy has a whole life and perspective and quite well conveys the misery and futility of living in this place. I was pulling for him and was sad when he met his end. Also adding an interesting part to his story is that Big Mike was involved in organized crime and his bosses are worried that his murder is the first move on their territory from another syndicate in New Jersey. It's why the investigation is pushed at all because it's made quite clear that no one would care about this murder otherwise. If Billy'd killed any other guy, he'd likely have got away with it.

So what about Soylent Green? Alas, it's not a thing. Food is scarce but here they eat weedcracker and protein burgers, oatmeal, meat flakes, and if really wealthy, meat from the Meateasy. Lots of people, but not in comestible form.

I'm glad I finally read this. What I enjoyed, I really enjoyed.

Favourite quotes :

"You’ve got night sticks and you have gas, use them when you have to. You’ve got guns and they’re best left in their holsters. We don’t want indiscriminate killing, that only makes things worse.”

"But doing something means that people must change, make an effort, use their minds, which is what most people do not like to do."

"I blame the stinking politicians and so-called public leaders who have avoided the issue and covered it up because it was controversial and what the hell, it will be years before it matters and I’m going to get mine now."

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine piece of science fiction that grabs you from the start with it's world building and high quality writing and entertains for over 200 pages.

Soylent Green might have been people but Make Room! Make Room! is a story about a detective investigating a murder in a future world with a drastic problem with over-population and a lack of natural resources. The detective aspect works as an interesting framing story that allows Harrison to explore the nuances of his world - food riots, vegan diets, welfare state, birth control, physical defects - without the use of mass amounts of exposition or the dreaded info dump. And yet he manages to write real and fully developed characters who interact with this future in their own unique and subtle ways.

Despite being written in 1966 and set in 1999 the entire concept is still incredibly believable and some of the political messages made in the novel still haven't been tackled by our leaders and politicians. This must sit alongside The Death of Grass as one of the most intelligent responses in the science fiction canon to the ecological disaster that threatens our race and planet and best of all it doesn't have its own political agenda offering absurd L.Ron Hubbard like theories as the saviour of civilisation.

I know Harry Harrison from his Stainless Steel Rat and Bill, The Galactic Hero books which seem to specialise in being a bit silly, but this works brings a whole new level of respect to his work. There are aspects of this book that have clearly influenced a lot of writers that came after him, Neal Stephenson builds a similar shiptown in Snow Crash for example and even describes it in much the same way. Yet still I can't bring myself to give it 5 stars. Don't let that dissuade you, this is one that you should definitely not miss if you're a fan of intelligent science fiction.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's the future - 1999 in fact! Over 7 billion humans, 35 million of them in New York City where a cop, a gangster's moll and a street kid all collide on their no longer separate searches for food and water security. Shanties, tent cities, people living in ships and cars that can't move because there's no more oil. Sounds like Harrison only got the date wrong...

It's an odd book tackling the question of over-population back in the 1960s when it seems to have first been taken seriously (though not by policy makers, plainly). The story is told quite seriously which may come as a surprise to folks familiar with Harrison's OTT spoof/satires starring the Stainless Steel Rat and the points are made deftly - except towards the end when one of the characters turns into a talking head and starts handing out lectures about contraception, Catholicism and politics. This spoiled matters somewhat by being too overt and heavy handed. It's also a bit of a shame that the only pleasant female character is the most minor one.

I can't help contrasting this book with A Torrent of Faces in which a future population of 1 Trillion people is postulated. Rather than a dystopian New York there's a world city and no apparent mineral resource problem. Less realistic but more fun...

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe I am being unfair by rating this book 3 stars. It is difficult to read this book and to not think about the movie the whole time. The two are completely different. The bare bones of the plot is similar but that is about it. If you are thinking the book will have a twist ending like the movie, you will be sorely disappointed. . Which might make you think the movie is better than the book. If you can forget about the movie and you like dystopian futures with populations run amok and scarce resources then this is definitely a book you should read.

[Ajeje Brazov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tempo fa vidi un film intitolato 2022: i sopravvissuti. Un film molto particolare, dove il problema della sovrappopolazione veniva affrontato in modo a dir poco apocalittico e devastante. Così m'informai e scoprii che era stato tratto da un libro, appunto "Largo! Largo!". Fortunatamente lo trovai in una libreria dell'usato a poco, oggi è praticamente introvabile.
La sovrappopolazione è una problematica molto sentita oggi nel 2023, negli anni '60 del secolo scorso, periodo in cui è stato scritto il romanzo, era solo una prospettiva di disastro, che poi è effettivamente accaduta, anzi anche peggiore del previsto. Il problema non è soltanto numerico, certo più persone ci sono e più risorse sono necessarie al loro sostentamento, ma l'ago della bilancia è che siamo in tanti e troppo ingombranti, consumiamo troppo e creiamo tanti di quei rifiuti che solo a pensarci, seriamente, dovrebbe farci accapponare la pelle. Per esempio: circa il 30% del cibo che portiamo sulle nostre tavole va a finire nel bidone della spazzatura, fatto che dovrebbe indignarci, ma facciamo finta di niente, perchè la problematica ancora non ci tange più di tanto; un altro esempio sono i rifiuti tossici che spargiamo nell'aria e nella terra. Proviamo a metterci lì in totale silenzio, cerchiamo di isolarci dalla cacofonia urbana e di riflettere su questo assunto... nessun essere vivente farebbe mai del male a se stesso, perchè immettere gas tossici o stivare rifiuti radioattivi o quant'altro nella terra, vuol dire ammazzarsi con le proprie mani. Invece niente, sì magari c'indignamo per quei 10 minuti di telegiornale, ma poi cambiamo canale su qualcosa di più leggero per non deprimerci troppo, poveri cristi che lavoriamo tutto il tempo, abbiamo bisogno di leggerezza e divertimento, no? Eccheccaz...!
Ormai siamo troppi, questo è assodato, 8 miliardi: c'è sempre una parte che vive sotto la soglia della sopravvivenza, sempre circa 30.000 persone, perlopiù bambini, muoiono di fame, sete e stenti, poi circa 1 miliardo che vive di malnutrizione, malattie ecc... poi ci sono i "paperoni", immancabili, altrimenti che società capitalistica sarebbe? Sono sempre meno e sempre più ricchi e potenti. Infine c'è la mediocrità, cioè quelli che stanno in mezzo, la maggior parte della popolazione, vedono morire migliaia di persone così, ma girano la testa dall'altra parte e poi guardano con gli occhi lucidi, dal basso verso l'alto, i "paperoni", quanto vorrebbero essere al loro posto, caz...!!

Il romanzo è un poliziesco, ma è solo di facciata, perchè il vero obiettivo dell'autore, almeno da come l'ho interpretato io, è far riflettere sulla problematica ambientale che stiamo vivendo noi ora nel 2023 e che al periodo della stesura, era in divenire o comunque agli albori.
Da recuperare sia il libro che il film, perchè si completano, creando una serie infinita di quesiti esistenziali, sociali e politici!

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

Make Room! Make Room! was the basis for the classic sci-fi flick Soylent Green. Of course, the scene that everyone remembers from the film - Charleston Heston yelling, "Soylent Green is people!" at the end - never appears in the book. Sorry, kids, no cannibalism in this rather slow read from the 1960s, but lots of commentary on the dangers of overpopulation.

It's actually a fairly depressing story about environmental collapse: the food is pretty much gone and it's hot all the time due to global warming (yep, we knew that was coming way back in the '60s. Good thing we got right on it and solved the problem before... oh, wait. Actually, we've done nothing). The situation for everyone is made worse by good old gridlock in Congress. That's actually one of the most darkly comic scenes in the novel: with overpopulation literally crushing the life out of the planet, Congress argues over the "morality" of allowing women to use birth control. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad and true to life.

It's not exactly a page turner and there is little if any redemption for any of the characters involved, but it is an interesting relic from the not-so-old days of old, one that reminds us that there really is nothing new under the sun.

[Stephen Robert Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was made in to Solvent Green with very odd cast of Charlton Heston & Edward G Robinson who was famous for playing gangsters it was his last movie & he was very ill when it was made.
My late mother hated this as was about suicide clinks for old people. She said was in very bad taste.
The book & the movie are different Harry Harrison famous for his Stainless Steel rat books often did comical books or even black comedy but the move was not comical I found it bit of sour taste special if you know what Green was? Hahaha