Make Room! Make Room! A review!

Harry Harrison

Electronic editions published 2002, 2010 by Rosetta Books LLC, New York
ISBN e-Pub edition 978079531169

Minor spoilers for the novel and Movie below!

Make Room! Make Room! is an entertaining read, though that is not the main point of this work. The entertainment draws you in, then it scares or depresses you; but what it is meant to do is to make you think. Not about big ideas of Political Theory or human nature as some other pieces of Science Fiction do, no, this work is laser focused on one topic – over population and it’s toll on our world. Harry Harrison is crystal clear about this in his prologue when he quotes Dwight D. Eisenhower:

“”This government…will not…as long as I am here, have a positive doctrine in its program that has to do with this problem of birth control. That is not our business.” It has not been the business of any American government since that time[1].”

How often does a novel start it’s introduction with a quote from a president?  While the world did not turn out as Harry Harrison and others feared, don’t let stop you from reading this, it still has a lot to offer. Think of it not as a dystopian novel, but as a piece of “alternative history”, while the novel is set 30 years in the author’s future, it is close to 60 years in our past.

Make Room! Make Room! (which is the basis for the Charlton Heston movie Soylent Green) follows the life of New York police detective Andrew Rusch during the last few months of the 20th Century, he is the prototypical hard boiled police detective in the mold of Dashiell Hammett, seemingly gruff and uncaring but who really has a heart of gold. Rusch (and a few other characters) have to pick their way through a world of extreme resource scarcity. 35 million people now inhabit New York City and it is groaning under the weight of supporting them. An extreme heat wave is gripping the city (foreshadowing climate change) and terrorists have disabled the aqueducts which bring water in from upstate. Rusch has to solve the murder of “Big Mike” O’Brien, a racketeer who is politically connected.  But to some degree this is all window dressing for the real meat of this book which is a chance to experience the world as some feared it would become. Every character has one goal, to live the best life that they can when every facet of the world seems to conspire to make their lives miserable. Almost all of their energy is devoted not to self improvement or contributing to society, but simply to figuring out a way to get through the day. No electricity? Hook a bike to a generator to run a TV. Not enough food? Grow your own on your window sill, never mind that you live in an overcrowded apartment in the city. In this version of society Harry Harrison has invested nearly all of the problem solving and proactive skills in individuals, leaving the government almost completely reactive to the miserable conditions people face. This is briefly commented upon by Sol (the character play by Edward G. Robinson in the movie) who is Harry Harrison’s mouthpiece in the only overt time the work preaches to the audience when he says:

“So they think wrong. Am I to blame because the world is full of fatheads? You know well enough that birth control has nothing to do with killing babies. In fact it saves them.  Which is the bigger crime—letting kids die of disease and starvation or seeing that the unwanted ones don’t get born in the first place?”[2]

Make Room! Make Room! is notable for Harry Harrison’s use of strong secondary characters. In particular Shirl, Detective Rusch’s love interest is a strong character who actually has a better developed back story then the main character. She has an independent life and the character passes the Bechdel-Wallace test. Interestingly Shirl’s characters role was significantly reduced in the movie version and was even referred to as “furniture”. While this may have been a comment of the commodification of people in a resource poor society, comparing it to Harrison’s work shows how unique Make Room! Make Room! really is.

Make Room! Make Room!’s extreme pessimism is an interesting counterpoint to much of Science Fiction produced during the 1960’s, particularly Star Trek TOS’s general optimism expressed in an episode which explores the same theme of overpopulation, The Mark of Gideon. While Star Trek explored remedies to the issue and leaves the audience that the impression that overpopulation is not an intractable problem, Make Room! Make Room! (as well as the movie) ends on a much more ambiguous note.

Make Room! Make Room! is a product of it’s time, while (fortunately) the world did not turn out as predicted, the demographic trends that it is based on were at the time undeniable. Understanding this work and the issues it faced at the time opens avenues into understanding how large complex societal problems can be remedied. How were the demographic trends changed? Was it technology? Social programs? Education? Make Room! Make Room! does not try to answer how those issues of overpopulation could have been remedied, but it is a fascinating window into how those questions were thought of during the later part of the 20th Century.


[1] Make Room! Make Room! Copyright Harry Harrison 1966. Electronic edition 2002, Rosetta Books LLC, New York ISBN 9780795311659. Prologue

[2] Make Room! Make Room! Copyright Harry Harrison 1966. Electronic edition 2002, Rosetta Books LLC, New York ISBN 9780795311659. P. 223