New York 1999

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New York 1999 ( Make Room! Make Room ! , USA 1966) is a dystopian novel by Harry Harrison .

content

The novel painted in 1966 a picture of New York in 1999 with a population of 35 million people. The majority of the population can no longer feed themselves, only a small layer of the super-rich can.

By chance, 18-year-old Billy Chung finds out that the alarm system in the apartment of rich Mike O'Brien, known in rogue circles as Big Mike, has failed. When he sets out to take advantage of this and clear out the apartment, he is surprised by Big Mike. In a panic, he kills him and flees without having achieved anything. Since the (influential) rich are concerned that Big Mike's murder could be linked to a foreign criminal's lust for power, they are pulling out all the stops to resolve the case as quickly as possible.

The criminal police officer Andy Rusch is charged with investigating the case. One of his first acts is the interrogation of Shirl Greene, the partner of Big Mike, a young woman who was able to secure a life without hunger and fear with this relationship. The two fall in love within a very short time. When the lease for the apartment is terminated at the end of the month, Shirl moves in with Andy, who in turn already shares the small apartment with an old man, Sol. At the same time, he has already tracked the perpetrator and, despite resource constraints, his colleagues have started the hunt for Billy, who was identified using his fingerprints. Billy escapes and finds accommodation with an old tramp. When the two are driven out of the old ruins, they move into the trunk of a car in a parking lot.

Soon after, Sol fell ill with pneumonia. Since there are neither enough hospital beds nor medication in New York, Sol dies. Since this frees up space in the apartment, the Belicher family of 10 exercise their right to claim this space. The many people in this narrow space, but above all the indecent behavior of this family, throw Andy and Shirl into an argument.

When Billy visits his family, he is watched and Andy is assigned to check on the family. When Andy arrives, he finds Billy attacking him with the knife. In self-defense, Andy aims at the legs, Billy stumbles and so the bullet hits him in the head. When he comes back from the mission, Shirl has disappeared, she has left him.

In the last chapter, Andy patrols New York City during the New Year's Eve party, transferred to the police station because of the "waste of police resources". He briefly sees Shirl, who is accompanying a rich man again, and resigns himself.

shape

The novel is written from the authorial narrative perspective. The two storylines are centrally linked through the murder of Big Mike O'Brien. On the one hand, the story follows the paths of Billy Chung, on the other hand it follows the developing relationship between Shirl Greene and Andy Rusch.

worldview

The author himself states his motivation for the book as follows in the foreword: “In 1950 the United States, with only 9.5 percent of the world's population, consumed 50 percent of the raw materials on earth. That percentage is rising steadily, and at the current rate of growth, the United States will be consuming more than 83 percent of the world's annual production of raw materials in fifteen years. If the population continues to grow on the same scale, this country will need more than 100 percent of the earth's raw materials by the end of the century if the current standard of living is to be maintained. "

The main burden of the narrative work, in addition to the superficial themes of love and crime stories, therefore lies in the representation of a world that no longer has any resources. A world where people kill for trifles because the police don't have enough staff to deal with crimes; the fact that the individual life is no longer of value makes the situation worse.

In this world, pensioners demonstrate for a few drops of drinking water and are trampled to death in the process, while a few hundred meters further the water runs in streams through the showers. The flourishing black market is just one of the many examples shown of the prevailing chaos. At the same time, Harrison is creating a world in which a once rich nation struggles to survive through the careless use of resources.

reception

The novel formed the basis for the film Soylent Green (German: … year 2022… who want to survive ) with Charlton Heston . The eponymous Soylent Green in the film does not appear anywhere in the book.

literature

  • Harry Harrison: New York 1999. Translated from the English by Tony Westermayr and Wolfgang Jeschke. Heyne, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-453-16170-X .

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