Soylent Green (Make Room ! Make Room !) [Paperback]

Harry Harrison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 6, 1973

A gangster is murdered during a blistering Manhattan heat wave. City cop Andy Rusch is under pressure to solve the crime and captivated by the victim's beautiful girlfriend. But it is difficult to catch a killer, let alone get the girl, in crazy streets crammed full of people. The planet's population has exploded. The 35 million inhabitants of New York City run their TVs off pedal power, riot for water, loot and trample for lentil 'steaks' and are controlled by sinister barbed wire dropped from the sky. Written in 1966 and set in 1999, "Make Room! Make Room!" is a witty and unnerving story about stretching the earth's resources, and the human spirit, to breaking point.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Harrison’s fictions constitute one of the main monuments in modern SF.” —Paul Di Filippo, SciFi.com

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Harry Harrison was born in Connecticut in 1925 and lived in New York City until 1943, when he was drafted into the United States Army. For the past thirty years he has lived in Ireland and England. Other books published by Harrison include Deathworld, also published by Penguin, the Stainless Steel Rat series, Bill, the Galactic Hero, Stars and Stripes Forever, West of Eden and Captive Universe. He has received the Nebula Award, the Golden Scroll of the Academy of SF Film, Prix Jules Verne (Sweden) and the Premio Italia. He is a member of the SF Hall of Fame and is a European Grandmaster. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Berkley (June 6, 1973)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425023907
• ISBN-13: 978-0425023907
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,423,683 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Prophetic, October 30, 2000

By 

magellan (Santa Clara, CA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Make Room Make Room (Paperback)

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

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

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Make Room! Make Room! Read it! Read it!, August 1, 2000

By 

James W. Van Scoyoc (Los Angeles, California United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Make Room! Make Room! (Paperback)

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

28 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Elbow room please, January 27, 2000

By 

Michael Battaglia - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Make Room! Make Room! (Paperback)

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