Make Room! Make Room! (RosettaBooks into Film) (original 1966; edition 1966)

Let me ask you a question before we go any further. Have you watched the movie Soylent Green which was based on this book? No? Go watch it now. I'll wait.

Back again? Tastes like p... ahem.. Anyway, have I told you that this book is different from the movie? No? So what are you doing wasting your time reading this review? Go read this book now.

Back again? Now tell me, which one was better? Both? Yeah, thought so. Charlton Heston.. sigh.. they don't make rough and tough guys like that anymore. And this book... this book... I bet will haunt you for a long time. Happy reading!

One of my favorites of all time! ( )

Well, okay enough for what it was, but A) these lunkheads don't collect rainwater during a water shortage? and B) nothing about Soylent Green being people? Really? That's all movie script addenda? Boooo. Leaving aside the movie, it's not very good as a novel (though fine as a polemic, and there's good world-building). As a plot, it's pretty basic, with no real twists (or at least, none that are really worked). The ending is pretty anticlimactic. Harrison doesn't seem to have wrested much from his story elements. ( )

I admit, I was hoping to find out that Soylent Green is people. Alas, there was no dramatic revelation. I'll have to watch the movie version to find that out.

Reading older books is an odd experience sometimes. Especially books set in the 50's and 60's. It's just modern enough for you not to notice differences right away, but foreign enough that you do end up saying "hey, wait a minute..." every once in awhile. If this were a contemporary novel, I'd expect to hear about genetically modified crops, desalinization plants, water recycling, rooftop gardens, caching rain water, renewable energy sources, and other technological ways to get more use out of very limited resources. In other words, something like METAtropolis. Instead, we have the exact same technology of the 60's plus hovercraft, but twice as many people.

I was kind of expecting a city like the now destroyed Kowloon Walled City in China - an estimated 30,000 people on 6 1/2 acres of land.
In those conditions, NYC's current 18 millon people would fit into just 6 square miles. Now, that's crowded. The New York of Make Room, Make Room is nowhere near that level. There's still streets, alleys and open space - odd since there's ten times the people living there than the city was built for with no construction possible due to the lack of supplies. But, it isn't a lack of space that is the issue - it's mainly a lack of food, water, and fuel. ( )

A most interesting read, not at all like I remember the movie "Soylent Green". I'm going to have to watch it again to refresh my memory. The overwhelming message of the book is over population. The origin of "Soylent Green" is never mentioned. ( )

Make Room, Make Room by Harry Harrison is the basis for the movie Soylent Green. The novel and the movie are, however, very different. They both have a premise, in that, due to regulations and birth control being illegal, there are too many people, and there is a murder. That is where they diverge. Where as in the movie the man killed is the businessman responsible for the cannibalistic Soylent Green, in the novel the man killed is a gangster. The Cop assigned to the case spends the entire time bemoaning the futility of police work in a giant city but he is pressured by his superiors to find the killer. When he finally solves the case and is catches the murderer, he is demoted and punished for spending so much time on it and not other cases, even though he was ordered to. Cannibalism is not mentioned in the novel and has nothing to do with the plot. The movie is a sensational piece of speculative fiction with elements of horror; the novel is a sensationalist dystopian piece that Harry Harrison uses as a platform for his own political agenda. Not that he is wrong. Besides it’s still a good book and an enjoyable read, if a little bit dry and dated ( )

This is a dystopic novel about what happens when the amount of people far outnumber the resources available. I went in expecting a freaky-ass horror book and found it to be more of a screed about the importance of birth control and resource management. (It was the basis of the movie Soylent Green, but the ingredients of soylent green in the book and the movie are quite different. In the book, soylent is just “soy” and “lentil.” The fact that I kept waiting for it to be made of something else based on my limited knowledge of the movie led to my disappointment with the book.)

THE BASIC STORY

New York City in 1999 (which was quite far in the future when the book was written in 1966) is miserable and overcrowded, with more than 35 million people competing for scarce resources. The plot focuses on a handful of characters: Andy Rusch, an overworked police officer trying to solve the murder of a rich man (the only kind of murder that gets investigated); Billy Chung, a desperately poor boy who has resorted to robbery to feed himself; Shirl, the attractive, young mistress of the murdered rich man who uses her looks and sex to survive; and Sol, Andy’s roommate and “eldster” (senior citizen) who rants about why society has degenerated The narrative switches between these four main characters—showing how they must struggle to survive in a world where there are too many people and not enough food, water and space.

MY THOUGHTS

I’m sure this book was more shocking and futuristic when it was written in 1966. Today, it feels a bit dated. Yet I think the message—humans must be careful with their management of the planet’s limited resources—is still timely. I suspect that a future world where we’ve exhausted our natural resources would be as miserable and horrible as the one described in the book. However, since I went in expecting more of a horror kind of read, I was disappointed when what I got was more of a political statement disguised as a novel.

The social commentary is not subtle. Sol exists solely to rant about the government and the need for birth control. Shirl represents how the rich will still live well despite the rest of the world barely having enough to eat. Andy is the “regular” guy who works hard and barely catches a break despite doing everything right. Billy represents the lengths people will go to when pushed to their limits. The writing is serviceable and plain; the author’s intent is to get his message across, not to create lovely sentences.

I think my expectations definitely affected my opinion of this book. And, after seeing the previews for Soylent Green, I suspect I won’t be watching it. (It looked incredibly cheesy.) Still, I admire Harrison’s environmental views and foresight; the world he imagined might still come to pass one day, and we’ll all be sorry if it does. ( )

A nightmarish vision of a future New York in which overpopulation has resulted in starvation and people living practically on top of one another, this is the novel that inspired the movie Soylent Green. For the first half of the book or so, the two are so alike that the novel reads like the screenplay. But then they diverge, and I think overall the movie's plot was more coherent and interesting. Toward the end of the book, the author begins lecturing, through his character Sol, about the salvation of birth control (illegal in his imagined future), which comes across as quaint and a bit simplistic to modern readers. An interesting read in the sub-genre of dystopian fiction, but not a great one.

Reading the science fiction classics (2012). ( )

I really wouldn't call Make Room! Make Room! suspenseful. It is more of a postcard glimpse of an overpopulated future. The format here is future-noir, the dialog is unfortunately cliche, and the scope is that of a long-form short story, rather than a fully-fledged novel. I love the idea of reimagining NYC, though; the streets are the same, but where they lead is completely alien. For that reason, it falls into the same category as the film Escape from New York. In the end, though, Harry Harrison has quite fully developed a society and its laws. Whether this alone is enough to tell a compelling story is for you to judge! ( )

I loved the movie Soylent Green and I found this book....I LOVED IT! The chilling plot still remains, if not just barely there and even though I enjoyed it, but it is quite depressing. Read it if you love dystopia novels and suspense. ( )

Unexpected gem of a different kind from the author of Deathworld and Stainless Steel Rut. How depressing though. The book is totally fresh despite all the geopolitical changes from the time it was written. ( )

By the eve of the millennium Earth's population has exploded. New York City alone supports 35 million. There's not enough food or water, the rivers run dirty and the air is barely fit to breathe, and fossil fuels have long since been exhausted. And yet, birth control is a controversial concept that causes fear among the majority of the people, who revile it as "baby killing."

Andy Rusch, a good cop trying to make his way in a city that is able to provide less and less for him, is assigned a pointless investigation--in addition to his regular job of working the riots that break out regularly in the wake of ever more severe food and water rationing--into the murder of a local black market wheeler-dealer. In the process, he inherits the bad guy's sweet gal, but that's about all he gets…aside from hungrier, thirstier, and more and more tired.

Make Room! Make Room! is a dystopian novel about a future world that in the baby-booming fifties and sixties must have seemed to loom just around the corner (anybody remember the "Stop at Two" campaign?). Thankfully, Harrison's direst predictions have not come true, although his portrayal of the obstinacy of the human race in the face of inevitable misery is chillingly believable. Harrison's prose style is matter-of-fact, devoid of too much invented jargon or futuristic talk. And although in some ways Make Room! Make Room! might seem dated--I don't think there's much fear of overpopulation anymore, at least not in the First World--with just a few tweaks--climate change, anyone?--the story is all too believable. ( )

Make Room, Make Room was the basis for the important 70's SF movie Soylent Green. However, the story line is very different and especially the climax from the film is completely absent in the novel.
About the novel then: it is a typical dystopian science fiction novel, in this case based on the dire predictions of the Club of Rome. It is 1999. The worlds population has exploded and only New York city houses 35M people. All oil has long been burned up and all transport is primarily done with manpower. Room and food are extremely scarce. The society under these conditions is vividly depicted from a man-in-the-street perspective. The quiet depressing atmosphere is quiet convincingly depicted. Especially the lack of perspective and the resulting feeling of being trapped was well put across.

Of course, in hindsight, it's always easy to ridicule a prediction that turns out off the mark, but in this case I repeatedly felt that Harrison was just doing the numbers wrong. It's just plain incredible to me that society would deteriorate so badly in just 30 years. And this seems an important aspect of near-future SF: you have to be able to believe the scenario. Example: the current population of the USA is not much less than the suggested 350M in the work. It's just not convincing that a country as large as the USA would house several families in a room under the depicted circumstances with so much room available.

Also, many loose ends remain untied at the end. Whatever happened to Billy's obsession with Shirl after his only glimpse of her? What about Judge Santini and his liaisons with the underworld?

All in all, Make Room, Make Room is an entertaining read, but it is certainly not on par with 1984 or Brave New World. I actually think the film is better (remarkable in itself). ( )

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

I must have read this book a few years ago and forgotten, because I have no specific recollection of reading it, but the plot is familiar. This is a distopian novel about the dangers of over population, and was written at a time when the best available population models said that massive over population was going to be a problem by 1999. In the book the population of New York City is 35 million, whereas in reality its much more like 8 million at the moment. In order to support that many people the quality of life has had to radically decline, and the city spends most of its budget on welfare payments instead of maintaining its decaying infrastructure. It turns out that didn't happen, and I think that's partially why I didn't enjoy this book. The underlying story is good, but the book lacks hope, and feels preachy about population control. This book's style is quite different from the rest of Harrison's work that I've read -- there is hardly any humor. Its still an interesting read though and I managed to make it through to the end. I guess what I wanted from this book was a little less doom and gloom.

http://www.stillhq.com/book/Harry_Harrison/Make_Room_Make_Room.html ( )

This is the book that the film science-fiction film Soylent Green is loosely based on. The two stories are very different, however. Both are set in an overpopulated New York in the near future. In the film, the story is about the police investigation into the murder of an executive of the corporation that makes the synthetic food stuff, Soylent Green and has one of the most memorable twist endings I remember in a film. In the book there is also a murder, but the story is very different and less important than the Harrison’s description of daily life in New York. Harrison was writing a warning to his readers about the dangers of unchecked population growth and resistance to birth control , and there is a bibliography at the end of the book. I don’t think the book has dated terribly well. Much of the population growth that Harrison feared has happened, but with few of the consequences that he had feared. Nonetheless, the book makes for uncomfortable reading as he describes the daily fight to live in a city with little food, unreliable sources of power, and insufficient accommodation. The plot, however, is poor, and the filmmakers were right to change it. The ending in the book has nothing of the shock power of the film version. ( )

This book is about a hellish future New York (1999!) in which the world has become massively overpopulated and crime and disease are rampant. There's not much food or water. The movie Soylent Green was made from it, but in the book soylent is just a soy-lentil patty. It had a little science fiction, a mystery and some romance in it. Cars are useless and people live in them. Pretty cool. ( )

The book that the movie "soylent Green" is based on. As usual the book is much better ( although I really liked the movie too ) ( )