Make Room! Make Room!
Make Room! Make Room! is a 1967 novel written by Harry Harrison, and later used as the basis for the movie Soylent Green. It takes place in the year 1999 and describes a world where the global population is 7 billion, resulting in rampant over-crowding and lack of resources. The plot focuses on the life of a police detective in New York City investigating the murder of a wealthy man. His investigations are used as a literary device to describe the lifestyles of people in all walks of life, from the desperately poor who are housed by the government in abandoned freighter ships, to the very wealthy who have a quality of life about the same as the lower middle class in 1967. Some of the most memorable parts of the movie Soylent Green are absent from the book. For instance, the woman who is "furniture" (a concubine attached to a rental apartment) in the movie, is simply a conventional prostitute in the novel. Most notably, the cannibalism subplot of the movie doesn't occur at all in the novel. The foodstuff "Soylent Green" is mentioned, but it is never implied to be anything other than soya and lentils. Instead, the novel focuses on social commentary, pushing the importance of birth control and sustainable development.
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