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Make Room! Make Room!

Harry Harrison

3.72 · Rating details · 7,451 ratings · 680 reviews

First published in 1966, Harrison's novel of an overpopulated urban jungle, a divided class system—operating within an atmosphere of riots, food shortages, and senseless acts of violence—and a desperate hunt for the truth by a cynical NYC detective tells a classic tale of a dark future. ...more

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Mass Market Paperback, 288 pages

Published May 1st 1994 by Spectra (first published November 1st 1966)

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Apr 09, 2018 Leo . rated it really liked it · review of another edition

McDonald's springs to mind!👍🐯

Monsanto too! ...more

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May 03, 2018 Paul Bryant rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-novels-aaargh

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 ...more

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Aug 05, 2009 Stephen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 1954-1969, science-fiction, ebooks, audiobook, mystery, world-in-the-shitter

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 g ...more

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Sep 16, 2019 Beverly rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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 Shi ...more

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Sep 19, 2019 Adrian rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: group-read, sf-apocalypse-dystopia, zz-i-book

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 ...more

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Aug 30, 2011 Apatt rated it really liked it

Shelves: pre-80s-sf

“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 ...more

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Jul 05, 2012 Marvin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Oct 14, 2015 Debbie Zapata rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: saturdaymx

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 (view spoiler) 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-bar 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 (view spoiler) 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 (view spoiler) 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. ...more

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Apr 02, 2012 Manny rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

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... ...more

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Feb 19, 2018 Becky rated it it was ok

Shelves: disappointing, owned, 2018, audiobook, science-fiction, politicalish, reviewed

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 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. ...more

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Sep 30, 2018 Bradley rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi, 2018-shelf

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 ...more

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Sep 11, 2021 Alexander Peterhans rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: the-best, bought-digital, sci-fi, dad-sci-fi-shelf

"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 a ...more

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Jun 13, 2020 Anissa rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020, climate-fiction, science-fiction, speculative-fiction

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 waiti 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, (view spoiler)[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. (hide spoiler)]

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." ...more

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Oct 11, 2020 Denis rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: b-c, hardcover

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 D ...more

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Sep 28, 2012 Toby rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, black-as-night

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, w ...more

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Jul 04, 2013 Robert rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: sf

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 ...more

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Oct 01, 2019 Nancy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: owned-print, ha-2019-mount-tbr-challenge, a-z-challenge-2019

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. (view spoiler). 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 po ...more

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May 30, 2012 Jason rated it it was ok

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 w ...more

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Apr 21, 2013 Nancy Oakes rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

Considering that this classic novel of sci-fi was written in the 1960s, it's still quite a grabber and definitely worth reading. You're welcome to stay here for the short version or click here for the longer one.

The setting for Make Room! Make Room! is New York City, 1999, well beyond teeming with a population of 35 million people. Food is a precious commodity and water is rationed,except for the rich who have speakeasy-like secret meat markets for their shopping pleasures and can enjoy long sho Considering that this classic novel of sci-fi was written in the 1960s, it's still quite a grabber and definitely worth reading. You're welcome to stay here for the short version or click here for the longer one.

The setting for Make Room! Make Room! is New York City, 1999, well beyond teeming with a population of 35 million people. Food is a precious commodity and water is rationed,except for the rich who have speakeasy-like secret meat markets for their shopping pleasures and can enjoy long showers in their guarded apartments.

One of the defenders of the people in this overpopulated New York City filled with desperate people is Andy Rusch who lives in a room next to Sol, an elderly man who fills Andy's head with his old stories & opinions. Andy is currently tasked with finding Billy Chung, the murderer of a wealthy criminal named Michael O'Brien, who most of the policemen are glad to see gone. Andy wonders why this guy's death is such a big deal. All he knows is that the word has come down from the politicians that he's to give the case top priority. Overworked, tired, with a little extra food ration for being a cop, he starts his investigation and meets Shirl Greene, girlfriend/mistress to the dead guy, who is about to be tossed out into the streets; Billy Chung manages to find a way to disappear, holing up with a former priest who is waiting for the turn of the millennium, for the new heaven and new earth. Each character represents a different segment of the population; the murder plot is the frame for the real point of this book, which examines the hell of "an overpopulated future," as well as how things got to this state.

While some reviewers say that the themes in this novel aren't relevant in today's world, I say a) read it again...you'll find plenty of issues that resonate today, and b) that it is an intriguing look at the looming issues of its time: overpopulation and the failure of the earth to sustain an out-of-control population was a real concern back then. Another prevalent criticism of this book was that it was nothing like the movie Soylent Green -- and failed to mention the secret behind the food. Really? Seriously? This book didn't even go down that path, so why on earth criticize it for something that Hollywood made up after the fact? Even Harrison, as his LA Times obituary notes, thought the film only occasionally "bore a faint resemblance to the book."

While Harrison's doom-and-gloom scenario of 35 million people in New York City never came to pass, the book shouldn't just be one you turn your nose up at. According to the author's obituary, Tom Doherty, founder of Tor Books, noted that Harrison saw science fiction as a medium that "caused people to think about our world and what it could become.” That's one major reason I read sci-fi, although I have to admit I'm partial to older novels like this one. I liked it, and while maybe it's not the best sf novel I've ever read, it's definitely one I won't forget. ...more

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Nov 23, 2016 Stephen Robert Collins rated it it was amazing

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 ...more

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Jul 16, 2021 Leo rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

There is a listopia on Goodreads titled ‘The Movie was actually Better than the book’ and Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! is included. I must dissent. I felt the book was much superior to the film. I concede there were two very clever ideas incorporated into the movie which were not present in the novel (one was the famous revelation at the end). But Harrison’s novel did something the movie failed to do - it made me care. I cared about the main characters.

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Sep 12, 2017 Terris rated it really liked it

Such an interesting book! This is the book that the movie "Soylent Green" was based on.
It was written in 1966 and set in the future "1999"! Well, we're pretty far past that so it was kind of cool to think what the author, in 1966, thought the future was going to be like.
Well, in this future there was no birth control. For religious reasons, birth control was not allowed so population growth went crazy. Therefore, the 344 million people living in the United States did not have enough food, water, ...more

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May 25, 2019 Jamie rated it liked it

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

While this story shares the same main protagonist and setting as the classic dystopian film Soylent Green, which based itself on the story, that's where the similarities end. Soylent Green is a murder / police procedural. There is indeed a murder in the book, however it takes a backseat to what's more of a personal story about Andy Rusch, NYPD detective, living in an overcrowded, resource starved world ...more

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Nov 30, 2012 Nefariousbig rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed

Inevitable? Dystrophic in Dystopia. Imagined or Insighted?

This 1973 synopsis sounds like a current headline: In 2022, with 40 million people in New York City alone, housing is dilapidated and overcrowded; homeless people fill the streets and food is scarce; and most of the population survives on rations produced by the Soylent Corporation, whereof the newest product is Soylent Green, a green wafer advertised to contain "high-energy plankton", more nutritious and palatable than its predecessors ...more

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Nov 11, 2017 Andy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Whoever turned this into the movie Soylent Green was brilliant.

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Aug 29, 2008 Jim rated it it was amazing

Shelves: scifi, 1paper, apocalyptic, 2fiction

This was the basis for the movie "Soylent Green" with Charlton Heston & Edward G. Robinson. Superb! ...more

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Dec 05, 2021 Jonathon Von rated it really liked it

3.5 I was expecting this to be funnier. Sure, it’s bleak and deals with a serious issue but isn’t Harrison usually a little more fun than this? It’s a dour parable redeemed by an interesting world, the occasional timely idea, and a sort of apocalyptic cynicism that really seems to revel in its own self-seriousness. The story is actually kind of interesting and stridently refuses to resolve its conflict. What is there to resolve? It’s just a big city circling the drain, like humanity itself. It’s ...more

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Apr 15, 2014 Jay rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I was first exposed to the work of American sci-fi author Harry Harrison in my early teens, when I read his "Stainless Steel Rat" series, followed by the "Deathworld" trilogy and the Bill, the Galactic Hero series. That last was a parody, scathingly funny and a brilliant send-up of space opera sci-fi. The others were classic science fiction, and though they differed in tone they shared tight writing, crisp dialog, memorable characters, and thrilling plot twists.

Since the classic 1973 film Soylen I was first exposed to the work of American sci-fi author Harry Harrison in my early teens, when I read his "Stainless Steel Rat" series, followed by the "Deathworld" trilogy and the Bill, the Galactic Hero series. That last was a parody, scathingly funny and a brilliant send-up of space opera sci-fi. The others were classic science fiction, and though they differed in tone they shared tight writing, crisp dialog, memorable characters, and thrilling plot twists.

Since the classic 1973 film Soylent Green shares those traits (as well as superb acting), I was only mildly surprised when I learned, some time back, that it was based on this HH book, Make Room! Make Room! But for some reason, I had never managed to read the book...until now, and I wish I hadn't.

[Warning: spoilers follow]

The book version of the story bears little resemblance to the film, except for being set in the same world. It's a fairly standard crime tale with a rocky romance thrown in, but gone is the overarching conspiracy (the word "soylent" is only mentioned once or twice, and never explained); the relationships between the major characters are very different, and less interesting; the dialog is flaccid; and the crime which in the movie has the appearance of a random attack actually is a random attack in the book. It's a chore to read because there's no crescendo, no climax, no resolution--just a few months in the life of dystopian future New York as seen through the eyes of a couple of its unremarkable citizens.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment of all, though, was getting 3/4 of the way through the book only to find that the reason HH wrote it was to frame a screed against the Catholic Church (and all other "bluenoses") for their opposition to birth control--the sole factor which, in this world, has led to a shockingly unsustainable population of 7 billion (!) by the year 1999, and all Earth's resources have been depleted. And he's not championing abortion, he's just talking about the birth control pill and family planning. Now granted, HH wrote the book in 1966 when the Pill was just becoming widely available, and certainly there was some cultural discomfiture as it was being adopted; but nothing in the moral arguments against it were sufficient to prompt the Malthusian doom-casting that falls jarringly into the later chapters like a stone into a bowl of oatmeal. And the family (thankfully missing from the film) that invades the main characters' apartment near the end are nothing short of feral caricatures that could have been written by a high schooler trying to impress his English teacher with his range of negative adjectives. They're clearly meant to be his archetypes of the kind of humans that will populate the world unless we start preventing births NOW!, but they're so cartoonish that they force the reader to suspend disbelief. (Since Harrison lived until 2012, I wonder if he was ever chagrined at the fall of birth rates to below replacement level in almost all developed countries in the last few decades.)

I still think Harry Harrison is a sci-fi genius, and this horrid work does nothing to dim my enjoyment and admiration of his other books; it's hard to grasp that The Stainless Steel Rat and Make Room! Make Room! were written by the same man. But now I have an even greater appreciation for screenplay writer Stanley R. Greenberg, who somehow took this bland story with forgettable and unlovable characters and spun it into one of the best told, best written sci-fi films ever.

Interestingly, Harry Harrison died almost 5 months to the day after the world population was estimated to reach 7 billion. ...more

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Nov 04, 2013 Patrick rated it liked it · review of another edition

Harry Harrison is one of those great old names of Golden Age SF whose stuff I have vague memories of reading avidly as a child, but of which I remember very little about nowadays. In his case I know I loved his ‘Stainless Steel Rat’ books, but I can’t recall much about him as a writer, so it was partly for that reason that I picked this book up from the library. It had nothing to do with ‘Soylent Green’ because I didn’t realise this book was the source for that movie — though once that clicked, Harry Harrison is one of those great old names of Golden Age SF whose stuff I have vague memories of reading avidly as a child, but of which I remember very little about nowadays. In his case I know I loved his ‘Stainless Steel Rat’ books, but I can’t recall much about him as a writer, so it was partly for that reason that I picked this book up from the library. It had nothing to do with ‘Soylent Green’ because I didn’t realise this book was the source for that movie — though once that clicked, I had the weird experience of reading all the way through expecting that famous line which is never once delivered. (They made up the whole cannibalism thing for the film.)

The book is based in Manhattan in the year 1999. It’s a dystopia. New York has become an impossibly overcrowded city of some thirty million people. Food and water are scarce, and about to become scarcer. Personal space and privacy are at a premium. Alcohol and meat are almost impossible to find; most people survive on composite foods made of lentils, soy and seaweed. The book follows Andy, an ordinary hard-working cop, and his investigation into the murder of a local gangster — but it isn’t really a crime story, and nor is it a political thriller.

The death is an excuse for the author the delve into this world, to explore it in detail. And it is a world-builder’s book, I guess, a sort of Malthusian thought-experiment taken to some kind of conclusion. Whether it is logical or not, I don’t know; it starts from the proposition that the population boomed because the US government never endorsed or supported any kind of birth control program, and I really have no idea how plausible that may have seemed when this was written in the mid-sixties. But I don’t think you have to entirely believe this to enjoy the book — in my opinion, it works quite well as a simple tale of deep pessimism and urban despair (which are both things I very much enjoy in literature).

I do have a few reservations. The writing is good — often really quite enjoyable, in a pulpy sort of way — but in many respects it hasn’t aged well. In particular, the portrayal of Andy’s girlfriend Shirl is a disappointing mass of wet cliches about sheltered, house-bound women that probably seemed dated when they were first written. I think we’re supposed to feel sorry for her when she ends up living with him and his roommate Sol in their tiny apartment with the bicycle-powered fridge and TV, but all I could think was that the least she could do was stop moping about and pedal the damn bike once in a while.

There’s also an unflattering portrait of a ‘welfare queen’ family near the end of the book, complete with squalling, bratty kids, and what is so often described as an ‘entitled’ attitude towards the government welfare that rehouses them. I suspect the author had lost any interest he once had in the plot of the book by this point. But again, this is another unfortunate incidental detail in a book which is really about how hell is other people, in every conceivable sense. ...more

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Sep 29, 2009 Rachel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This was a really wonderful book. I read it before I watched the movie (Soylent Green), but because a co-worker told me about the movie. It was really interesting to watch the movie just after finishing the book and compare the two. In many ways they were almost polar opposite, but then again, the essentials were very much the same.

New York (and the entire world) are overpopulated and there is very little food and pretty much no space. According to the book the only decent place left to live in ...more

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About Harry Harrison

Harry Harrison

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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 G ...more