Unrestrained population growth and gluttany of natural resources have led to a world packed to bursting with people. In 1966, Harrison published this tale of the New York City of 1999. I won't be looking for more books by Harrison though. (only mildly though because it is still "someone"/"the MAN" who puts their profits from fracking and oil pipelines ahead of clean water, for example).Anyway, I am glad I read it and can accept that it is a product of its era, driven by the concerns of that era. End result = the same, but process of getting there mildly different. Oh, sure, this is par for the course, but I always prefer when authors put some work into character development and have women be something other than independently mobile sex toys, or, perhaps, slothy neglectful mothers.I guess Harrison's underlying premise is that overpopulation would starve out humanity (because "someone"/"the MAN" bans birth control) and, while that might have been an issue in the 60s, nowadays it is more likely that we will starve out humanity by virtue of genetic modifications, disease and toxic water contaminiation. the characters are all a bit of a jerk and the female character trades on her sex to get by. it is very dry and we don't actually care that the whole world is starving to death (well, all of NYC is anyway). I always seem to expect more from these classics than I get from them.
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