Make Room! Make Room!

I enjoyed reading this book. It starts off almost as like a detective novel but the intrigue soon dissolves into the background and in the end it is more like a portrait of a possible dystopian future without much of a story. Despite being published in 1966, it successfully predicts the problems we have now of running out of resources. However it blames this squarely on over-population rather than over-consumption and reads like a manifesto for increased access to birth control as the solution. I think this is what dates the book a little because I get the impression that we now have quite good access to birth control and education about that, at least where I live, yet we are still heading towards the catastrophic future predicted in the book. In a way the dystopia in the story seems almost reassuring viewed from a modern perspective where we are fed stories of catastrophic climate change and the extinction of the human race. At least in the book they somehow manage to get together and distribute enough food and water rations to everyone like a sort of socialism instead of just having an all out war and survival of the fittest to get access to the resources. Overall it’s a good book that is still relevant but doesn’t go far enough for a modern viewpoint.

Author Harry Harrison wrote in 1984 about the technique of background-as-foreground - the story for the main characters is really a means to capture the readers attention and draw them to the greater truth of the setting. He uses this to great effect in Make Room! Make Room!

This novel shows what the world will be like "if we continue in our insane manner to pollute and overpopulate Spaceship Earth." The observed limitations of oil and aquifers play right alongside the conflict between farmers and city dwellers. Disease plays only a small role here, but then the scope of the novel is roughly 6 months.

The main character is a policeman, with side stories covering his target and a judge who influences his duties. These characters and the various side characters are well described and interesting, and only once (towards the end of the book) does the story digress into a few pages of exposition as Sol rants about birth control and sustainable development.

As you probably know, this book was appropriated and turned into a movie. Well, some of it was. Harry Harrison wrote all about it in an article published in Omni, which fortunately lives online here - www.iol.ie/~carrollm/hh/soycann.htm The book of course doesn't contain cannibalism, and when Soylent shows up, it is where it makes more sense - Soy and Lentil steaks.

All in all, a really excellent book. Though published nearly 50 years ago, it is still quite relevant today, and a very good read. Recommended!