Harry Harrison's “Make Room! Make Room!” This inspired the "Soylent Green" film. скачать в хорошем качестве

Harry Harrison's “Make Room! Make Room!” This inspired the "Soylent Green" film.

“Make Room! Make Room!” by Harry Harrison. Serialized in Impulse magazine August, September, and October1966. Then published by Doubleday, looks like June 1966. Highly recommended. A population/pollution warning novel. “Alas, Babylon” is a well-known example. Most SF folks are familiar with this novel and the following film “Soylent Green”. Harrison’s writing is excellent in this novel: The characters are well thought out and expanded, you can visualize his scenes, he delivers a sense of foreboding and urgency with a harsh story, but not written in a sledgehammer style. None of Harrison’s humorous style is displayed, I missed that a little. Some rioting, a romance goes awry, hunger, overcrowding, rationing, violence, etc. is depicted. The novel does contain some controversial language, but does not condone using that. The first few pages of the novel are mirrored pretty closely in the film’s initial dialogue and setting, as we are introduced to Andy Rusch - New York police detective [Thorn in the film, but Andy from here on], Solomon Kahn and the Eldsters - a group of older activists, who do not appear in the film. Many of the film’s plot devices are then lifted with alterations from the novel, and they are more similar than I recalled. Shirl, who has a much larger novel role than in the film, and she does have a bodyguard in both the film and print. She is met by Police Detective Andy after her wealthy and influential boyfriend is murdered by an intruder, unintentionally in the book and who is intentionally murdered in the film. Andy receives pressure from both screenplay and novel direct report to apprehend this suspect. This is young Billy Chung, who we get to know a lot more about than this suspect in the film. Andy is ordered to track down the killer, similar to the film, and does find him and gets in trouble for following orders, as in the film. Shirl and Andy become close and we get know Shirl a lot more than the film Shirl. Sol has a lot more to say and discuss in the novel as well. He has a very different perspective on life in the novel, than the film Sol. However, his final moments have a few similarities to the film version. A lot more going on in this novel, I should stop the story review here, before spoilers become evident. Next is just for Nerds, the Prologue is interesting, below is a discussion of Harrison’s thoughts in the Prologue to the book, if you are interested. 60 years later, some observations: In the Prologue, Harrison posits that uncontrolled birth rates will destroy Humanity. Certainly, a valid point. However, the US and Western Civ nations are not the main reproducers. Western Civilization media were warning about population control and pollution concerns throughout the 1960s on, and most of those nations acted in the 1970s. However, this has led to birth rates lower than replacement levels in the US and Europe, while some parts of the world remain quite high: Now, Western Governments are implementing policies like tax breaks, parental leave, and childcare support to encourage higher birth rates. Actions that would have stunned people from 1955 until 2000. Also, In the Prologue Harrison speaks of the US being the world’s largest consumer of raw materials in 1966. That was correct and the US was a large manufacturing site, within its borders. But that was largely the result of many nations being bombed to near oblivion in WW 2, taking a few decades to return to full production in the early 1960s.They began again using more raw materials by the early 1960s. China consumes more raw materials than anyone else since about 2007. While US manufacturing has massively shrunk since the 1970s.