Soylent Green: Change my mind.

"Soylent Green is made of people!"*

Detective Robert Thorn, Soylent Green

As part of my birthday trip to Victoria in September, I made a shopping trip to the Cavity Curiosity Shop, which I've found to be an excellent spot for vintage science fiction shopping.  I've been trying to restrict myself to the purchase of replacement books, but sometimes it can be hard not to colour outside the lines, and unfortunately (or fortunately) Cavity offers a wide range of temptations.

On this occasion, one of those temptations was a copy of the classic SF novel Make Room Make Room! by Harry Harrison, which I've somehow managed to go without reading up until now.

Harry Harrison is quite a good writer, and has an excellent bibliography.  He’s one of the large group of workmanlike and perhaps lesser-known SF authors from the 60s and 70s, authors like Colin Kapp, Keith Laumer, Robert Sheckley, A. Bertram Chandler, and Brian W. Aldiss.

Originally serialized in three parts in the United Kingdom science fiction magazine Impulse and then published in novel form in 1966,  Make Room! Make Room is a low-key near-future eco-disaster drama set in 1996 New York, population 35 million.

It's a sad little dystopian story of overpopulation, deprivation, overcrowding and misery, with none of the excessive drama that you find in other Malthusian** not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper novels like John Christopher's 1956 novel The Death of Grass, or Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up, both by John Brunner.

It's also the relatively unknown inspiration for the 1973 movie Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston and featuring veteran actor Edward G. Robinson in his last movie role.   

Soylent Green, which, slightly ironically, is set in 2022, received mixed reviews generally but was more favourably received by the science fiction community, winning both a Nebula award and a Saturn Award, and receiving a Hugo nomination.***

To be honest, I don’t think I would have chosen Make Room! Make Room! for a Harry Harrision movie adaptation - his 1970 political SF novel The Daleth Effect strikes me as a far better choice.  Make Room! Make Room! is an understated cautionary tale: subtle, nuanced, and without a definitive resolution to its rendition of life in 1996 New York, and as such it seems an odd choice for Hollywood to option.  It's equally odd that, having chosen to adapt Harrison's slice-of-life story, the producers decided to change it into an action-filled conspiracy thriller.

It's a heavy-handed change to the original plot, but it does succeed in terms of creating something that probably felt more like a science fiction movie script to the producers.  (There was probably a similar process involved in the transition from Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to the script for Bladerunner.)

Now, just to make this clear, I'm not saying that Soylent Green is a better story than Make Room! Make Room!, but the concept of recycling humans as food* is certainly a bold science fiction concept that falls firmly into the "My god, what if" approach to SF.  

The re-written storyline gives the plot a specific direction by changing the accidental murder of a mob boss by a frightened teenage thief into the assassination of a Soylent Corporation executive to prevent him from going public with the truth about Soylent Green.

In Harrison's original text, the term "soylent" refers to a mix of soy beans and lentils used to create food patties - the original Impossible burger, come to think of it.  In the movie, it's a more abstract concept, partially because it's supposed to be made from plankton, which turns the name Soylent into a futuristic sounding buzzword.

As is very often the case with science fiction set in a specific time, both Make Room!  Make Room! and Soylent Green have passed their best before date in terms of predictive accuracy, although that in no way diminishes their value in terms of social commentary and cautionary warnings.

However, the good news is that none of the current vegetarian meat substitutes on the market are made out of people - at least, not that I know of.   Our version of 2022 certainly has some issues, but I'm reasonably certain that's not one of them.

- Sid

*My apologies to anyone who was unaware of this climactic plot twist and has now had the movie spoiled forever, but let's be fair, Soylent Green came out almost 50 years ago and I feel that it's somewhat in the public domain in terms of surprise endings.

** This is the sort of thing you learn by reading science fiction.  In his 1798 publication, An Essay on the Principle of Population, British clergyman and scholar Thomas Malthus suggested that it was inevitable that population growth would exceed food production, an idea which the science fiction community has referenced again and again over the years.

*** Nebula Awards are in some ways the science fiction equivalent of the Golden Globes in the same way that the Hugo Awards are the Oscars of SF. The Saturn Awards are movie-specific and were originally developed by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films to address the lack of genre recognition by the Oscars.

"I want to know what happens next."

"Right, Doctor Who-ever I'm about to be - tag, you're it."

The 13th Doctor, The Power of the Doctor

No spoilers, but I laughed out loud in delighted surprise at the unexpected results of 13th Doctor's regeneration scene tonight.  A brilliant twist to end Jodie Whittaker's excellent run as the Doctor.

- Sid

"WARNING: Choking Hazard. Small parts, not for children under 3 years."

The pandemic isn’t really over, but now that it’s become more of an ongoing state of affairs rather than an emergency, I’m enjoying the opportunity to cautiously resume attendance at public events like the Capital City convention that we visited in Victoria or the historical fantasy discussion at the Vancouver Writers Fest.

Earlier in the week, my sister-in-law Stefanie kindly and considerately forwarded an ad for the Vancouver Comic and Toy Show for my consideration.  It's fortuitous timing:  my wife has a social event to attend that will occupy most of her day, leaving me at liberty to do a little comic and toy shopping, so here I am, standing in line at the PNE Forum at 11:00 AM on a seasonally cool and cloudy Saturday morning.  I don't really need to buy anything - to be honest, I feel that my recent Disneyland purchases have fulfilled my toy quota for 2022 - but I'm curious to see what the show has to offer.  I'm also a bit curious as to whether or not it would be a suitable venue for a future sale of the greater part of my book collection.

As a minor sidebar, I save about 10 or 15% off the ticket price by paying fifteen dollars cash as a walk-in.  The ticket's not actually cheaper that the online option, it's just that there are no fees associated with paying at the door, whereas the web site had a couple of mystery charges attached.  It's a shame it's not the other way round, I would have been happy to see that extra money go to the cheerful volunteer who stamps my wrist and wishes me a enjoyable visit to the show, but life is rarely that fair.

The Vancouver Comic and Toy Show is exactly what it says it is: comics and toys. There are a few outliers on display: a handful of t-shirts, one table of trading cards, a lunch box dealer, and some books, but really, people are here to buy comics and toys, and they're serious about it.  (It's also immediately obvious that this isn't the venue I want for selling my books.)

The crowd ranges from hard core collectors down to hopeful children with their parents, although a lot of the merchandise might appeal more to dad than junior in terms of when it originally hit the market.  The choice of dad over mom in that description is deliberate, it's very much a male crowd - not entirely, but female shoppers are definitely in the minority. There's a smattering of costumes, but only a few, again, it's not that kind of a show.

The dealers are equally serious.  There are a lot of professional retailers such as Langley-based Toy Traders, who have an extended multi-stall footprint, ranging down through smaller sellers to an individual with crossed arms and a grim poker face seated at an unlabeled table covered with with about 20 bagged comics. 

There's a certain freedom in attending a show like this without a mandate, it's like wandering around a grocery store when you don't need any food.  As such, I'm able to survey the booths without being captured by their contents, I don't need to stop and obsessively sort through a collection of Hot Wheels cars in hopes of finding the rare 1969 pink Volkswagen Beach Bomb for sale, complete with original surf boards.

If I had to choose one franchise that dominates the show, it would have to be Star Wars, both in terms of current products and various vintage toys from throughout the nearly 40 years of the franchise's existence.  But really, the broad range of toys from all eras that are laid out on the tables demonstrates that fame can be fleeting: yesterday's prized plaything quickly becomes today's abandoned interest - and tomorrow's collectable. 

The toys on display are broken down into little clusters of pop culture: Transformers, Star Wars, Star Trek, The World Wrestling Federation, He-Man and The Masters of the Universe, The Simpsons, Hot Wheels, and so on. There's even a display of the classic 12 inch GI Joe dolls from the 1960s, which probably don't even have prices on them:  as the saying goes, if you need to ask, you can't afford them.  Or, perhaps more accurately in the collecting environment, if you want them, you don't care how much they cost.  And there are countless Funko Pop! figures for sale - as their website says, everyone's a fan of something, and the range of choices on display reflects that fact.

It probably shouldn't be a surprise, but a lot of the toys for sale are loose or in plastic baggies rather than in any kind of of original packaging, let alone MOC or MIP (Mint On Card or Mint In Package).  I suppose this speaks favourably to the number of toys that children actually take out of the box to play with.  

There are any kinds of one-offs to balance out the mass market selections:  what appears to be a fully functional Pip-Boy from the Fallout gaming franchise; some quite expensive robots from 1970s Japanese animated series; an equally expensive Elvira statuette; what I think is a Mega Man arm cannon; Gumby and Pokey together in their original packages;  a small herd of Furbys; and a lonely copy of Beatrix Potter's Rabbit Nutkin, that I can't help but feel has just wandered into the wrong neighbourhood by accident. 

I'm a bit saddened to see that there are bins of comic books on sale for a dollar, it's a telling comment on the uncertain nature of the comic book collecting marketplace.  It's a bit tempting to take a look, I suspect that everything in those boxes is selling well below cover price, but fortunately my subscriptions to Marvel Unlimited and DC Infinite eliminate any need for physical copies.  And really, there's no need to add to my current burden of storage challenges if I can help it. 

In spite of the abundance of options, there actually isn't very much on display that speaks to me.  I stop briefly to look at a half dozen or so ranked Macross Valkyrie VF-1 Veritech fighters from the 1985 Robotech animated series, but they look a bit the worse for wear, they don't seem to have their gun pods, and as such I don't really need to spend $80 on one of them. 

I do find one table that catches my eye: it's a selection of art books and comic portfolios, with a massive limited edition copy of The Incal, a graphic novel series written by famed filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky and illustrated by French fantasy artist Jean Giraud, better known as Moebius.  However, my interest is quickly extinguished by the $995 price tag, that's quite a long way over my budget for this sort of purchase.

Just over an hour into the show, and the relatively narrow aisles between booths are virtually impassable.  At this point, I decide that I'm done and make my escape, without having made a single purchase. It's partially because I still haven't seen a lot of toys that match my specific range of interests - apparently I mine a narrow vein of fandom, in my own way* - but the real reason is that I'm just overwhelmed by the massive range of choices.  

Even so, I’m actually a bit pleased with myself for leaving empty handed.  Even if you put yourself on a diet, it’s not easy to go into a candy factory and come out without a single chocolate bar.

- Sid

* Admittedly, it's impossible to make a complete survey of what's for sale, but in my casual walk through of the show I don't see a single toy from my own little collection on display, although my Pop! Tron was probably in there someplace.