Line #11 Literature/MakeRoomMakeRoom


1	[[quoteright:305:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/make_room_make_room_harry_harrison.jpg]]
2
3	->''"To TODD and MOIRA\
4	For your sakes, children, I hope this proves to be a work of fiction."''
5	-->-- '''{{Dedication}}''' to the novel
6
7	''Make Room! Make Room!'' is a 1966 ScienceFiction novel by Creator/HarryHarrison.
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9	It's set in the CrapsackWorld of [[BigApplesauce New York City]] in the (then) far-future year of 1999, a world beset by [[OverpopulationCrisis severe overpopulation]] and [[GaiasLament environmental collapse]], where a bland artificial food called soylent (made from soy and lentils) is the best thing most people ever get to eat.
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11	When wealthy racketeer "Big Mike" O'Brien is killed, NYPD detective Andy Rusch is assigned to investigate the murder – a daunting task, in a city of 35 million inhabitants. Rusch finds himself getting romantically involved with the murdered man's concubine, Shirl. Meanwhile, the killer – a poor, teenage petty criminal named Billy Chung – attempts to elude capture.
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13	It is now best-known as the inspiration for the film ''Film/SoylentGreen''. (The famous secret of Soylent Green was invented for the movie, and isn't in the book.)
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15	----
16	!!This novel provides examples of:
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18	* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The book was written in 1966 and set in 1999.
19	* BreakOutTheMuseumPiece: A crowd riot gets so out of hand that the police have to use weapons from a museum to break up the fight.
20	* CrapsackWorld: In addition to the everything crapsack-y about the movie, the transportation system has ''completely'' broken down. In other words, everyone is trapped in the city; the only non-human-powered vehicles mentioned are old buses taken from a history museum, used by the police and running on extremely low grade fuel.
21	* DepravedHomosexual: Charlie, the head of the servants at Chelsea Park, in addition to running a black market for the tenants, also keeps the elevator boy in his bed overnight.
22	* DoubleDoubleTitle: The title is formed by duplicating "Make Room!"
23	* DownerEnding: The story doesn't end happily for any of the principle characters. Billy and Sol [[spoiler:are dead]]. Andy has been [[spoiler:temporarily demoted to being a patrolman and Shirl has left him]]. On top of it all, the population is still increasing with no end in sight.
24	* TheEndIsNigh: A secondary character is Peter, a defrocked priest turned [[TheHermit hermit]] who's eagerly awaiting the {{turn of the millennium}}, which he assumes will bring the end of the world. [[spoiler:He's sorely despondent when it doesn't.]]
25	* ElderAbuse: "Eldsters" are forcibly retired from work so younger people can have their position.
26	* FailedFutureForecast: The novel's "overpopulated" dystopia has a world population of around seven billion – a number surpassed in RealLife in the early 2010s. The final line of the novel describes the United States as having 344 million people, only 16 million more than the real-word total in 2019. Meanwhile, New York City has yet to pass the ''nine'' million mark even two decades past the novel's setting, never mind ''thirty five'' million.
27	* FutureFoodIsArtificial: Soylent steaks made of soy and lentils are an expensive item.
28	%% * GaiasLament: Earth's fate as a whole.
29	* GlobalWarming: Barely a page goes by without someone complaining about the ever-present humidity... in New York at winter time.
30	* GoldDigger: Shirl, Big Mike's former mistress, who hooks up with Andy only to leave him for someone wealtier.
31	* NewYearHasCome: The novel ends shortly after midnight on January 1, 2000.
32	* NotHisSled: An unusual inversion, thanks to AdaptationDisplacement. Unlike the movie, and it's infamous TwistEnding about the [[HumanResources true nature of Soylent Green]], there's no such twist here; Soylent Green doesn't exist, and the product it was based on, Soylent Soy, really ''is'' just made from soy and lentils.
33	* OnlyElectricSheepAreCheap: Even soy-based faux steak is expensive and worth practically rioting over.
34	* OverpopulationCrisis: The central issue which is destroying society in the book.
35	* PostPeakOil: Cities effectively become their own totally isolated city states when the oil becomes too rare to use. The only form of long-distance transport mentioned are large freighters (shipping food to the millions effectively trapped in cities); on the local level, motorized transit has been replaced with human-powered "pedicabs" and "tugtrucks".
36	* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: As previously mentioned, apparently Harrison couldn't imagine a world with 7 billion people (more than double the world population of 3.4 billion at time of writing) not having all the problems his book shows.
37	%% * SoylentSoy: Played straight, unlike the film adaptation.
38	* UsedFuture: We never get to see how the wealthy live, other than that they have access to "luxuries" like running water and fresh food, but everyone else is stuck using decades-old tech that's falling apart, if it works at all. Andy's apartment has an old TV and a refrigerator hooked up to a bicycle generator.
39	* WeWillUseManualLabourInTheFuture: The few people who even have jobs anyway, there doesn't appear to be any sort of automation anymore.
40	* WeWillUseWikiWordsInTheFuture: Soylent, which is a portmanteau of "soy" and "lentil".

Context Literature / MakeRoomMakeRoom