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A Review of Make Room! Make Room!
Imagine: 35,000,000 people living in New York City. Imagine: water is so scarce in the city that it is rationed, and needs to be collected and carried home in containers. Imagine a home that may be one shared room, or a place on the stairs, or a seat in an abandoned car. This is the world imagined by Harry Harrison in his 1966 book, Make Room! Make Room!
While Harrison's dystopian novel may be considered a classic by some, it is however remembered mostly for being the foundation of a classic dystopian movie: Soylent Green. As a matter of fact, I'd never heard of the novel until I rewatched Soylent Green. When I read the book, I saw the relationship with the movie, but the perspective on the consequences of overpopulation differs between the two. Soylent Green carries the logical implications of scarcity to a more extreme outcome.
The starting point for both movie and novel is overpopulation. Each paints a grim picture of a world in which there are more people than resources to support them. Where the film diverges from the book is the extremes to which authority goes in order to deal with the population pressure. (Film review to come shortly. Right now I will focus on the book.)
The story begins in a cramped, New York City living space. Detective Rusch wakes to a city baking in a heat wave. In one paragraph the circumstance of Rusch's life is established. He has lived in the same room for seven years. His bed sheets are dirty ("gritty"). He keeps time with a scratched wristwatch. The watch is on a chair, not a table, so furniture is sparse. He hears his roommate, Sol--separated by a thin partition--pedaling on a stationary bike, which serves as a generator.
As the day progresses we realize that Rusch and Sol have it good. They have a room, crackers, a refrigerator (fueled by Sol's generator/bicycle), and a weird margarine that has apparently 'turned'. They have these things because Rusch is employed. While his job involves investigating crimes, a large part of his time is spent in crowd control.
Riots and protests are common. When the rationed water is shut off, people riot. When the manufactured food product known as soylent green is unavailable, people riot. Everything is rationed. Everyone has a ration card.
Soon we meet another character, Billy Chung, who will, in a sense, drive the plot of the novel forward. Billy Chung manages to steal a box of soylent steaks during a riot. He exchanges the solyent steaks for ten dollars and with that he bribes his way into being a messenger.
His first assignment takes him to the apartment of a powerful, rich, figure, Mike. Billy is tempted by the riches he sees. He returns to the apartment to steal, but ends up killing Mike. The basic plot elements of the story are in place now.
Rusch must investigate Mike's murder. Billy has to run away. As Rusch investigates the crime, powerful politicians are drawn into the investigation because of the possible implications of Mike's death.
This is the broad outline of the story, though there are subplots. Shirl, for example, is the woman who lives with Mike. She lives as a paid escort. Whenever she goes out, she is protected from the crowds and criminals by Tab, Mike's bodyguard.
These two secondary characters serve to reinforce the book's message that everyone is scrambling to survive.
Rusch must keep his job or he and Sol will find themselves without a place to live. Billy Chung turns to thievery because he and his family cannot live on the meager resources available to them. Shirl and Tab are desperate to keep their positions or they too will be out on the street.
It is a grasping miserable existence that everyone in the city must endure, except the few privileged who ride around in pedicabs and who live in sleek high rises.
What happens? Does Billy get away? Does Tab find a new job? Does Rusch solve the crime? It almost doesn't matter. What matters is what each of these characters does to make way for themselves in a city where making way involves basic survival skills.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Harry_Harrison_2005.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=index&utm_content=original
Harry Harrison at the 2005 Worldcon in Glasgow. Photo credit:Szymon Sokó. Used under CC 3.0 license.
Harry Harrison, the author, is not shy about promoting his agenda. Birth control is essential. Without it, the world is looking at a future that resembles the scene in Make Room! Make Room! Harrison also indirectly addresses the issues of climate change and the environment.
There are droughts, water shortages, farmers blowing up reservoirs that supply the cities because they need that water to irrigate their crops. Nobody is sure what goes into the manufactured food products sold as 'soylent orange' 'soylent yellow' and 'soylent green'. The yellow and orange are supposed to be derived from some sort of vegetation. Soylent green is the only source of protein. It is said to be made from plankton.
People are starving. Birth control is not supported by the government, and yet a common illness for children is kwashiorkor, a nutritional disease caused by a diet profoundly deficient in protein. It is common for a woman to bear ten children and have several die in infancy. In the book one woman carries her infant around and declares his soft belly is due to "kwash", which she recognizes. The government gives her one dollop of peanut butter every day. This, the peanut butter, she gives away to her husband.
At some point in the book the child does not appear anymore. The suggestion is that he has succumbed to malnutrition.
Make Room! Make Room! is not a feel good book, but it is brilliantly written. Maybe because I watched the film first, I did have the sense that the story could have been streamlined...which is what happens in the film. I guess every character does serve a purpose in delivering the author's message, but I did feel the story would have had more punch with less digressions.
A startling aspect of the book is that the year given for the events that occur is 1999. Harrison apparently envisioned such a rapid decline in the quality of life and such a population explosion that he felt comfortable offering 1999 as a temporal setting. He suggests at the beginning of the book that by the turn of the century the world would have 8 billion people. Today the estimated population is actually 8.3 billion, and climbing.
Harrison also estimated that New York City would have 35,000,000 people. It is estimated to have approximately 8,585,000 (July of 2025). The Coalition for the Homeless estimates that upwards of 350,000 people in the city are without homes--this number includes those who have to double up with family or others in order to be sheltered.
Was Harry Harrison prescient when he wrote Make Room! Make Room!? If I look around I'd have to say he had insight, but he missed the mark by at least a decade.
I do recommend this book. It is certainly thought provoking and this author knows how to tell a good story. That's the best recommendation I can make about any author.
The book is available at Amazon as a paperback for 7.99. It is also probably available at a local library, because it is considered a classic.
I adapted the image from a photo by luthfi alfarizi on Unsplash
Thank you for reading. Hive on!
Replies (13)
Dear @agmoore !
Madame!
I watched a classic dystopian movie starring Charlton Heston: Soylent Green!
The scene in that movie where people ate other people was shocking!
By the way, I believe World War III will break out before people eat people!
In the 1960s, there were many people who predicted a dystopian future in which humanity would be destroyed by nuclear war!
I believe Harry Harrison was one of those people!
I feel a sense of relief and happiness that his prediction was wrong!
Because Harry Harrison's prophecies were wrong, your daughters and I were born in the 1970s and have been able to survive until now!
I'm more curious about what kind of life you lived in New York in your 20s than Harry Harrison's wrong predictions!
I hope your health and long life! MoM!
That is a crazy number and in many cases would surpass whole countries population. At the current level of 8.58 million people is more bearable, but as more and more people migrate to metropoles who knows what would be the final number of it. And there is a clear movement towards that, thus the cities need to become smarter in order to cope with such complex logistics and utilities. Probably AI can help with those optimizations after it evolves itself to better levels.
I've never watched the movie, nor have I read the book. You've made them both seem like musts. I'll start with the book. I always start with the books, and wish the movies had not been quite so streamlined.
It's very interesting that birth control is not supported by the government, since it is now so heavily supported. He got that wrong most of all it seems to me.
I grew up in school doing an exercise called "Duck and Cover". This was intended to protect students from nuclear attack. We were supposed to duck under our desks and cover our heads in case "the bomb'. It's true we are all still here, but the ability to drop a nuclear bomb has spread to more countries. Today we are probably in greater danger than we were back in the 50s when I did those exercises.
As for his predictions about population growth--it's true New York City doesn't look anything like the city he describes in his book. However, one of the biggest issues facing many governments today is the 'immigration crisis'. Where are all these immigrants coming from? From lands where there is not enough food, enough space, enough jobs. So far the U.S. and other developed countries can provide for basic needs, but the pressure from less privileged parts of the world is growing. Harrison was right about that. He asserted that other parts of the world were going to want their share of resources.
How will all of this shake out? Will the scramble for resources result in WWIII? I have no crystal ball.
I think the issue of migration to cities is serious, but I think more telling is the issue developed countries are having with immigration. I think that is a symptom of overpopulation in the same sense that Harrison sees it. In many countries there are more people than there are resources to provide for them well. This is even becoming an issue in the U.S. While some economists point to an ever-rising stock market, others point to the growing disequilibrium between different sectors of society. The people in the U.S. for the most part enjoy a good standard of living, but it is a standard premised on debt. When will the bill come due? How will paying that bill affect quality of life in the U.S? How fast will those effects become manifest?
All open questions and none of them give me comfort.
Both the movie and the book are cultural touchstones, so in that sense...yes, musts.
Birth control is heavily supported? I know that for a while the government mandated birth control be covered as other health conditions are covered. And then there was the very regrettable period when birth control was offered to low-income women...poorly disguised effort to limit birth rates in selected communities (a hint of eugenics). Also, the government sponsored sterilization programs in certain populations--again eugenics. However, the government support of birth control is slowly being eviscerated. Clarence Thomas even suggested from the bench that legalization (not to speak of support) of birth control was subject to review by the Court.
How is it heavily supported?
hm. I guess it depends on how we define "government supported." Does that mean with taxpayer dollars, or not made illegal? In the majority of states, still, there are no laws against abortion, there is no federal law that criminalizes abortion. I'd say it is very much still government supported, as well as culturally. Forcing insurance companies to fund it was a step too far to my mind.
Birth control is eugenics by definition. I have very mixed feelings about whether it should be controlled in any way, or not. Choice is best, in general, not only in abortion, but in all lifestyle choices that do no harm to others, especially medical, which abortion is. The tricky part is in defining harm.
I put my response in the wrong place :))
I don't consider abortion birth control. That's a failure of birth control. Birth control is contraception...preventing conception. If there is no conception, there is no need for abortion. There is nothing to abort.
And eugenics is not the same as birth control. Eugenics is essentially selective breeding...planning and designing reproductive strategies for populations to improve the human stock. That's not what people do when they use contraceptives. There are millions (as many as there are people) of reasons for using a contraceptive. People are designing families and their lives...not human stock. Eugenics grew out of Darwin's discovery about evolution. His relative started the movement when he realized what selective breeding was. He thought science--governments--could apply the principles of selective breeding to humans. That does not come close to describing contraception as used by individuals.
Mehnnn, always you with the classics huh?🌚😂😂
This is quite the concept and I'm intrigued, I'll check the book out.
Hello @seki my young friend. I think you will enjoy this book. Try to keep in mind that it was written more than 50 years ago. A lot of stuff that has been written since is derivative of this, although perhaps not consciously derivative. The ideas in the book have been incorporated into our cultural awareness.
If you haven't seen the movie, Soylent Green, you must. As Harry Harrison said about the movie, you can see a resemblance to the book, but there is a lot in the movie that is different.
Dear @agmoore !
I agree with you!
It is true that it is more dangerous now than in the 1950s!
However, it is also true that the present is more prosperous and easier to live in!
The fact that an American woman living in New York and a man living in East Asia are having a conversation is both interesting and mysterious!😄
Yeah, Currently, the world is fighting with each other for food, resources, territory, and environmental pollution.
The world I live in is also experiencing various problems due to immigrants.
However, it is also true that we are wealthier and better to live in today than in the 1970s when I was born!
I think many problems will go away over time!
Yeah, I agree with you!
It's hard for us to predict the future!
By the way, I want to travel to America. I wonder if you will welcome me when I visit New York!😄
I read the book many many moons ago and, in keeping with novels of its time it's quite short, maybe 250 pages. The movie is one of my favourites and I've watched it multiple times over the years. Once you see it, you'll never forget it.
It is short, a quick read. I wanted to compare it to the film which is, as you say, unforgettable. I think the film does a better job of sharpening the message, of delivering the startling impression Harrison wanted to make. That last line in the movie (my husband and I laughed when we heard it all the way back in 1973) is considered one of the hundred most famous lines in cinema.
I was going to write a review of the movie at first, then decided to start with the book. A bit of trivia I learned when doing my research for the book/movie review: Edward G. Robinson (Sol) was actually dying of cancer when his death scene was shot. He was dead within weeks of the filming.