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. |
8 | |
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. |
10 | |
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. |
12 | |
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.) |
14 | |
15 | ---- |
16 | !!This novel provides examples of: |
17 | |
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". |
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