Limitless overpopulation

His passion for social issues and exquisite humor are his hallmarks.

In ‘Laberinto de papel’, Xataka’s fantasy literature podcast with Minotauro, we revisit the classics. This time, we have a real gem, an old-school author who, with wit and satire, unraveled past issues that affect us today.

Harry Harrison was a notable science fiction author and contemporary of Isaac Asimov, Alfred Bester, and Theodore Sturgeon. In this episode, we discuss three recent Minotauro books that perfectly illustrate his importance and scope:

His most famous novel, The Stainless Steel Rat, is a quick read. A light mix of impossible heists, future melodramas, and anticipation literature with humour and a twist every two pages.

Making Room! is a novel that is accurate and visionary in many ways but dated in others. The sensational cult film Soylent Green was inspired by it, but took some liberties. This novel is equally intriguing and many times more raw.
50 in 50 celebrates Harrison’s long career with fifty stories, one for each year. And organized by themes, demonstrating his career versatility.

If you liked this episode of the second season or want to listen to ‘Laberinto de Papel‘ on your favorite podcast app, subscribe on the main platforms:

I like science fiction from the 60s and 70s that extrapolates the social effects of overpopulation. An overpopulated world can be a captivating backdrop to a simple plot (Robert Silverberg’s The Time Hoppers) or the driving force behind an entire novel (John Brunner’s monolithic Stand on Zanzibar).

An overpopulated world often has a breakdown of cultural and moral barriers, the “mechanization” or “programmability” of mankind, societal good increasingly aimed at production or reproduction, landscapes plagued by extreme pollution (disease, extinctions, etc.), and a protagonist with traditionalist philosophies.

The following works address alien world overpopulation…

I’m compiling a list (updated as I find more) of SF books and movies (my review linked) about overpopulation. I listed them by release date.

Malthus famously predicted a hyperpopulated future in his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population. Scientists, commentators, magazine writers, and tract publishers debated the issue throughout the 19th century. Some anti-Malthusians thought the Essay too pessimistic, but more thought its argument was sound and debated how to address its alarming prophecy. My question is: why was this topic not fictionalized at this time? Science fiction was a lively and varied topic throughout the century. Why did no writers use overpopulation as a theme?

Although the amended Malthusian argument is logically sound, many speculative writers ignore or even attack it. The population problem was rediscovered in the 1960s. The Population Bomb (1968) by Paul Ehrlich and The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (1972) by D H Meadows popularized the issue.

Langford and Stapleford list many fictional versions of the question, including Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! (1966), ‘a novel whose thrust was entirely lost,’ when it was filmed as Soylent Green in 1973. They may have mentioned Anthony Burgess’s 1962 film The Wanting Seed, but Burgess believed Harrison had stolen his idea. Lee Tung’s The Wind Obeys Lama Toru (1967), John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (1968), and Brunner’s later The Sheep Look Up (1972) are other 1960s, 1970s, and later overpopulation SF.

In most of these stories, overpopulation is controlled by culling, as in William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson’s Logan’s Run (1967), but Philip José Farmer’s Dayworld (1985) and its sequels take a less bloodthirsty approach: everyone is awake for only one day a week, spending the other six days in suspended animation and fitting seven people into one person’s space.

Limitless overpopulation

His passion for social issues and exquisite humor are his hallmarks.

By nr39r

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