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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

It's the end of the world reading list!

Whisky Priestess

13:45 / 28.05.03

I'm writing a sci-fi story about a highly-populated future in which the right to breed has been drastically limited, most people never have children, and those who can't reproduce lose themselves in state-sponsored hedonism and self-indulgence in order to fill the void.

I want to read around the subject and make sure I'm not reworking some old classic (too much), but the only sci-fi books I can think of on the subject are Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room!(Soylent Green) and to a certain extent, Asimov's Foundation series.

This is such a common sci-fi trope that I can't believe there aren't a lot more relevant titles out there - so can anyone tell me what they are?

Jack Fear

13:59 / 28.05.03

THE BLADERUNNER, by Allen Nourse (no relation to the film of the same name) envisions a future with free high-quality healthcare for all—provided they submit to sterilization: in practice this creates a two-tiered society...

John Brunner's STAND ON ZANZIBAR is the classic overpopulation novel...

On the how-do-you-fill-the-void-when-you're-not-reporducing thang, I recommend P.D. James's THE CHILDREN OF MEN—which is actually a death-by-underpopulation novel, with the world emptying as an inexplicable plague of infertility sweeps across the world. Actually, I'd recommend it anyway, just because it's a damned good read.

alas

19:02 / 28.05.03

THE HANDMAID'S TALE by Margaret Atwood is a classic of something like this genre, methinks--again, this time world is not exactly underpopulated, but there have been terrorist incidents and wars and lots of bad stuff and a right-wing government has taken over the United States, and only the "right" kind of people are allowed to have and raise children, but many of them are infertile . . .
(whoa, maybe this isn't fiction)
so they use handmaids, who have been declared "unfit" but have had children in the past.

BRAVE NEW WORLD, Aldous Huxley, has population control but not sex control, IIRC.

alas.

Baz Auckland

03:56 / 29.05.03

ENDER'S GAME (Orson Scott Card) has an earth where people can only have 1 kid, but it's sort of a tiny subplot to the alien invasion, and everyone but Catholics and Mormons don't care about it...

Simplist

15:43 / 29.05.03

Anthony Burgess's The Wanting Seed covers pretty much exactly that territory, being a dystopian future in which overpopulation has led to the official stigmatizing of heterosexuality, hedonistic cannibalism, and so on. I'm a little hazy on the details at this point (it's been fifteen years or more) but I remember enjoying it.

Whisky Priestess

13:34 / 21.08.03

Any more for any more? Wanting Seed was good but it cost me dear in library fines, I can tell you ...

paranoidwriter waves hello

18:05 / 19.06.05

I just discovered this thread in the archives, and I don't know if you're still after suggestions or not WP, but have you tried:

'The Forever War' by Joe Haldeman

'Baby' by paranoidwriter (ahem). Sorry...Couldn't help myself...

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:34 / 19.06.05

I think 314 by Thomas M Disch covers related ground...

paranoidwriter waves hello

22:49 / 19.06.05

It's been over a decade since I've read it (and I'll bet you've already read it), but if my memory serves me correctly, the title story from the following short-story collection may also be relevant.

'Welcome to the Monkey House' by Kurt Vonnegut

unheimlich manoeuvre

09:30 / 20.06.05

Haus - I think 314 by Thomas M Disch covers related ground...

Not wishing to correct the Haus, but that is 334 by Thomas M Disch and yes it does.

Whisky Priestess

10:40 / 21.06.05

Thanks for these. I still haven't been able to find Stand on Zanzibar but live in hope of Amazon - unless anyone's got a used copy they want to lend/sell me?

A fall of geckos

11:18 / 21.06.05

I know they have a copy in the Science Fiction Masterworks range, and I think there's a set of these books in Forbidden Planet in London. If you can't find a copy though, I can probably dig one out.

Nobody's girl

12:03 / 21.06.05

If you're looking for pulp in this vein there's also Anne McCaffrey's Pegasus series. She's a bit of a hack but very widely read.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

15:15 / 21.06.05

don't know if there was a book for Soylent Green but it fits your genre.

>pablo

Lord Morgue

14:29 / 13.07.05

Yeah- it was based on Harry Harrison's excellent "Make Room, Make Room!". Very different story- the whole "Soylent Green is PEOPLE!" angle was created as a hook for the movie- the story is a dark look at an America reduced to Third World conditions.

grant

17:32 / 13.07.05

There was a Robert Silverberg story not so much about overpopulation as about social collapse/starvation/cannibalism in the cities.

Very poignant, had a scene with a librarian (?) eating a stew made of his old, leather-bound books.

Can't recall the title, but I think it was in his collection Nightwings.

matthew.

17:46 / 13.07.05

Dhalgren by Samuel Delany. It's like the T.S. Eliot or James Joyce of apocalpyse because of its strange modernist style.

Juan_Arteaga

22:34 / 13.07.05

The Sea and Summer by George Turner

for some odd reason I found more webpages about this book in Spanish than in English... weird.

It's pretty much about the life of a family living in the future somewhere in Australia (Alas, no Thunderdome!) and the world is heavily overpopulated. The dad loses his job, and since it is impossible to actually get another job due to some insane number of jobless people around, the guy commits suicide, so the mom and her two kids have to move out of the house and move to a poorer neighborhood and hope they manage to keep enough money to pay the rent for their new house, or they have to move to the Towers, where the gov sends all the dirt-poor people.

It is an OK book. I didn't buy any of the economic reasons the guy gives for this hellish scenario, but the book is readable.

Also, there was an episode of Captain Planet about overpopulation. Just saying.

Lord Morgue

09:45 / 14.07.05

I don't think it was based on a book, but the movie Zero Population Growth tackled overpopulation.

By Christ, though, by about halfway through this film, you will be so sick of the word "baby", specifically, the way Oliver Reed says it, like he's forcing the word through the throbbing veins on his head until it pops out of his mouth like a boiled egg. "mmmmgnurrrrrhunghBBBBABY!"

Quantum

14:04 / 11.08.05

Larry Niven has a good take on eugenics in his known space novels (Ringworld for example) like the birthright lottery to breed for luck, but you can't beat Stand on Zanzibar- the tragedy of the commons writ large.

Are Being Stolen By Bandits

14:51 / 11.08.05

It's not exactly the best thing he ever wrote, but there's a short story by J.G. Ballard set in a massively over-populated future called 'Billennium' which might be worth a look. It's in The Terminal Beach, a collection which contains several of Ballard's best short stories.

Lord Morgue

07:52 / 12.08.05

Shirley Jackson's classic short "The Lottery" isn't about overpopulation per sé, but from memory, the lottery itself was supposed to be a holdover from a time that was overpopulated.

spigot

18:17 / 17.08.05

Stand on Zanzibar's already been mentioned but it's also worth noting another Brunner: The Sheep Look Up. It's mainly about environmentalism but of course you have overpopulation issues when there isn't enough food to go around...

Also, The Drought - another Ballard apocalypse with added overpopulation.

Lord Morgue

06:22 / 18.08.05

Robert Silverberg's "The World Inside" has the human population stored vertically, in huge skyscrapers called Urbmons, to save space, which is used for farming to support the masses. Inside is a permissive society, with only one major taboo- you step outside, they kill you.

Mysterious Transfer Student

10:29 / 18.08.05

One or two other members have previously mentioned Maul by Tricia Sullivan on other threads; it's more in the domain of reproductive catastrophe speculation a la Handmaid's Tale than population control per se, but I've just read it and would like to recommend it nonetheless. The only time I can remember seeing a male depopulation/female ascendancy scenario that didn't devolve into adolescent sniggering - not that the author doesn't have a peculiar sense of fun: the lead female scientist gets drunk at inappropriate moments, craves chocolate and has a cloned daughter named Bonus.

Lilly Nowhere Late

19:55 / 11.09.05

I thought of "Swan Song" by Robert R. McCammon when I read this thread although it's been about 15 or more years since I read the book. So I might be off. Obviously that story stuck with me in feeling if not in detail.
"Dhalgren" is the very best book of all time ever.
"The Fifth Sacred Thing" by Starhawk is also very close, and very beautiful, if a bit goofy in its new age-ie-ness.

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