Make Room! Make Room!
by Harry Harrison · first published 1966
8% recommend92% neutral
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.
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…sometimes a bit of a downer, Stand on Zanzibar is matched or exceeded in that regard by The Sheep Look Up. However, if that's your thing I can suggest George Turner and Paolo Bacigalupi, and Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room! (which was turned into the movie Soylent Green). > 5. Pat Cadigan - I haven't read any of her stuff yet, but she is on my short-list of authors to start reading. Gets recommended a lot in these circles.…
on “Neal Stephenson reacts to Facebook name change” ↗The topic of "creeping cost of living" reminded me of two other good dystopian novels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Room!_Make_Room! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/334_(novel)
on “Amusing Ourselves to Death (2009)” ↗Harry Harrison's novel "Make Room! Make Room!" was the basis for the 1973 science fiction movie Soylent Green.
on “R.I.P. Harry Harrison, creator of the Stainless Steel Rat” ↗[Face-palm] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Room!_Make_Room! It's actually not named after the movie, it's named after the artificial food that appears in Harry Harrison's book "Make Room! Make Room!" (the movie is extremely loosely based on the book). Steaks…
on “20 bucks says Soylent is a viral marketing campaign” ↗Not in the movie, in the book ('Make Room! Make Room!') by Harry Harrison which inspired the movie
on “Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like in 2014” ↗> Our name was inspired by Harry Harrison's 1966 science fiction novel Make Room! Make Room!, which explores the impact massive population growth could have on world resources. According to WP [1], this somewhat (?) obscure book was the inspiration for the name, not the extremely well-known…
on “Announcing Soylent 1.2” ↗Wrong, it came from the book Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison in which "Soylent Green" is based off of. However, in the book the soylent is not made from people. The movie added that for....drama
on “Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick” ↗It's intended as a reference to the novel that the movie is "based on", Make Room! Make Room!, By Harry Harrison. Which doesn't involve cannibalism, but is an odd choice in other ways.
on “Soylent Closes $50M Series B Round Led by GV” ↗based on a book written in 1966! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Room!_Make_Room! Author Harry Harrison claimed, "The idea came from an Indian I met after the war, in 1946. He told me, 'Overpopulation is the big problem coming up in the world' (nobody had ever heard of it in those…
on “All You Need Is Soylent Green” ↗…classes (briefly) and then the rest of us. (I should read the book [1] because I was intrigued by little scenes like the one with the old people in the library — if you even remember that bit.) [1] "Make Room! Make Room!" by Harry Harrison
on “The world of tomorrow” ↗…shift in protein source efficiency worldwide. You can put C.M.Kornbluth and Fred Pohl's "Space Merchants" and Isaac Asimov's "zymoveal" in his "The Caves of Steel" as well as the "Soylent Green" in "Make Room Make Room" by Harry Harrison into this box: the zeitgeist was very definitely "we are heading to a world with more people than we can produce protein for" view. As late as 1981, Alasdair Gray's "Lanark: A novel"…
on “Quorn Fermentation and Evolution in Fermenters” ↗Funny how you can be right about future facts (world population) but wrong about the consequences. Make Room! Make Room! [1966] The world is overpopulated at 7 billion people, with 35 million people in New York City alone. The inspiration for the film Soylent Green (1973). Maybe not surprising, but worth noting anyway…
on “List of stories set in a future now past” ↗…by my understanding it is not intended to be), and Rob's influence is the book, not the movie. From http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/rob-rhinehart-no-longer-requi...: > Actually, in the original book Make Room! Make Room! Soylent is made of soya and lentil. The movie changed many aspects of the book, though it's still one of my favourite movies. My Soylent is human-free.
on “Soylent Closes $1.5M In Seed Funding From Lerer, Andreessen Horowitz” ↗Soy is not used in Soylent. He named it after Make Room! Make Room![1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food_substitute)
on “Soy's Negative Effects (2009)” ↗He named the product based on the Soylent from the book Make Room! Make Room!, which was a Soya / Lentil product meant to feed the masses, but the movie version Soylent Green had turned that into a mix consisting of human parts. While I understand he references the original book,…
on “The drab stupidity of Soylent” ↗