Make Room! Make Room! - Harry Harrison

   1966; 285 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Dystopian Fiction.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

 

    New York City in the not-so-distant future is a crowded place.  35 million people are crammed together within its city limits.  That’s a lot of mouths to feed, and that's just one of many problems.

 

    There’s not enough food, especially “real” sustenance such as honest-to-goodness meat.  There’s not enough water, and what is available is of suspect purity.  There’s not enough living space either, but where can the homeless go – the rest of the country is in just as bad shape as the Big Apple.  Nobody drives anymore because gasoline is almost impossible to find.  Even paper is rationed because there are very few trees left to chop down.

 

    So unless you’re very, very rich, you survive by the grace of government-issued ration cards.  Alas, they keep cutting the size of the rations you can obtain this way, and the lines to do so keep getting longer and longer.

 

    There’s one other way of surviving if you’re poor: break into the dwellings of the wealthy and steal their stuff.  If it can’t be eaten, it can always be hocked on the black market.

 

    But that carries an inherent risk: if your breaking-and-entering goes awry, the consequences can only be bad.

 

What’s To Like...

    As the book cover shown above correctly claims, Make Room! Make Room! is the basis for the fantastic Charlton Heston film, Soylent Green.  Let’s be clear though, the movie is not a screen adaptation of this book, the storylines are completely different.  True, some of the book’s characters make the leap to the silver screen: Detective Kulozik, Shirl, Tab Fielding, Judge Santini, and Sol, although the latter gets a different last name.  Noticeably absent from the movie are the book’s two main characters, Detective Andy Rusch and Billy Chung.

 

    There are three main plotlines to follow: 1.) who killed Big Mike, 2.) who behind the scenes is pushing for a major investigation into the murder (and why?), and 3.) how’s New York, and the rest of the world for that matter, going to deal with hordes of starving citizens that are resorting to protests?

    This is not a whodunit; the reader knows who the murderer is from the start, and Detective Rusch figures it out fairly early on.  But knowing who did it and locating/arresting him are two different things.

 

    I liked the story’s premise: that the underlying problem is overpopulation due to the use of birth control being outlawed.  I was amused that the “near future” setting was 1999, which is old news to some now, but not when Make Room! Make Room! was first published in 1966.  FYI, the population of NYC today (2018, actually) is a mere 8.3 million or so, not the book's 35 million, so at least part of Harry Harrison's scenario didn't play out.  And curiously, sending telegrams was still a common means of communication in Make Room! Make Room!

 

    It was interesting to learn that the term “Soylent” is a portmanteau of “soy (beans)” and “lentils”, the two main components of it.  At least that’s what “they” want you to believe.  There are soylent burgers and soylent steaks, but of course, they’re a poor substitute for the meat-based counterparts.  I laughed at LSD still being a popular (and illicit) drug.  Billy Chung’s first acid trip shows that Harry Harrison did some good research.  Finally, the whole idea of “meatleggers” was hauntingly intriguing.

 

    The ending is okay, but not great.  There are no twists, nor any happy conclusion.  1999 segues into a new millennium, and the world doesn't come to an end.  That may seem trivial in nowadays, but I recall religious zealots and computer programmers being scared to death that 12/31/99 would usher in Armageddon.  Harry Harrison at least got that part right.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Gonif (n.) : a disreputable or dishonest person

Others: Astrakhan (adj.).

 

Excerpts...

    The man in the black uniform stood in an exaggerated position of attention, but there was the slightest edge of rudeness to his words.  “I’m just a messenger, sir, I was told to go to the nearest police station and deliver the following message.  “There has been some trouble.  Send a detective at once.”

    “Do you people in Chelsea Park think you can give orders to the police department?”  The messenger didn’t answer because they both knew that the answer was yes and it was better left unspoken.  (loc. 820)

 

    “Some of our neighbors can be dangerous.”

    “The guards?”

    “No, they are of no importance.  Their work is a sinecure, and they have no more wish to bother us than we have to bother them.  As long as they do not see us we are not here, so just stay away from them.  You’ll find that they don’t look very hard, they can collect their money without putting themselves in any danger – so why should they?  Sensible men.  Anything worth stealing or removing vanished years ago.  The guards remain only because no one has ever decided what to do with this place and the easiest solution is just to forget about it.”  (loc. 2199)

 

Kindle Details…

    Make Room! Make Room! sells for $7.99 right now at Amazon.  Harry Harrison was a very popular science fiction/fantasy writer for many decades, and there are dozens of his novels available for the Kindle.  Individual e-books range in price from $1.99 to $13.99, and you can also get several “bundles” (typically 10-12 books) for  a mere $0.99 to $1.99.  Also, some of his books are now classified as “public domain”, which means you can download them for free.

 

“Men should be spoiled, it makes them easier to live with.”  (loc. 1930 )

    There are a couple of quibbles.

 

    First, there were an above-average amount of typos for a non-self-published book.  This was my second “Rosetta” book, both of which had this problem, so I suspect Rosetta’s to blame, not the Harry Harrison or the original publisher.

 

    OTOH, it should be noted that two of the three main storylines are not resolved, and that's the author's responsibility.  The book screams for a sequel to answer what becomes of Rusch, Shirl, and the world as a whole.  Alas, AFAIK no “Book 2” was ever written, although one might consider the movie as doing that.

 

    Also, Harry Harrison gets a little “preachy” late in the story when it comes to the idiocy of outlawing birth control.  I happen to agree with his views on this, but the “sermon” still slowed things down.

 

    Finally, while there wasn’t a lot of cussing in the story (only 5 instances in the first 20%),  there were several ethnic slurs in the text that made me cringe a bit.  Yet I have to say, dialogue back in 1966 included a lot more of these slurs than our present-day speech patterns do.

 

    7½ Stars.  I enjoyed Make Room! Make Room!, but I wasn’t blown away by it.  Maybe my letdown is a function of how much I enjoyed Soylent Green.  My main beef is with the ending coupled with a lack of a (written) sequel.  Perhaps one of these days someone will pick up the gauntlet and write one.