This Crowded Earth (1958) by
Robert Bloch 3.5/5
A short novel dealing with the problems of overpopulation, which was a popular theme on which for SF writers to extrapolate in the 1950's and 1960's, before one realized just how effectively one could house and feed 5+ billion people.
It was published in the October 1958 issue of Amazing Science Fiction Stories (as it was currently known). Amazing was one of the bottom of the barrel magazines, and since it was a long story I was ready to dismiss it, but I was encouraged by the reviews on Goodreads which ranged from praise to snowflakes being angry that the story was not about women. Apparently there is a segment of the SF readers who read SF to read about women, for some reason.
Also, the subject matter is interesting to me, and I was curious how a relative lightweighter (when it comes to the physical sciences) like Bloch dealt with it.
Apart from underestimating how adaptable human society really is, and how effective at production (making advertising still big business), Bloch got more of his projections right than most of his colleagues (see quotes at the end).
His solution to the overpopulation problem was also quite novel, and the only other instance I know is from the old
Genesis song
Get 'em out by Friday! from 1973:
[9 September 2012 T.V. Flash on all Dial-A-Program Services]
This is an announcement from Genetic Control:
"It is my sad duty to inform you of a four foot restriction on
Humanoid height.
Googling did not indicate that Peter Gabriel who wrote the lyrics was inspired by Bloch's story, though.
The story starts like a regular story, and reminded me of The Space Merchants, with the protagonist in both stories working in advertising (which both Bloch and Pohl did at some time). But instead of following the protagonist closely in a short time, the story moves rapidly in vignette format jumping years with each chapter, and with different POVs. It's moves a bit too quickly maybe, and felt a bit rushed in the end, and the brisk early story turned more into exposition, but close to the turning point is quite quotable, where Bloch makes fun of many SF tropes:
[spoiler]
the old science fiction was fun while it lasted. Ever read any of it?"
"No," Harry admitted. "That was all before my time. Tell me, though—did any of it make sense? I mean, did some of those writers foresee what was really going to happen?"
"There were plenty of penny prophets and nickel Nostradamuses," Wade told him. "But as I said, most of them were assuming war with the Communists or a new era of space travel. Since Communism collapsed and space flight was just an expensive journey to a dead end and dead worlds, it follows that the majority of fictional futures were founded on fallacies. And all the rest of the extrapolations dealt with superficial social manifestations.
"For example, they wrote about civilizations dominated by advertising and mass-motivation techniques. It's true that during my childhood this seemed to be a logical trend—but once demand exceeded supply, the whole mechanism of stimulating demand, which was advertising's chief function, bogged down. And mass-motivation techniques, today, are dedicated almost entirely to maintaining minimum resistance to a system insuring our survival.
"Another popular idea was based on the notion of an expanding matriarchy—a gerontomatriarchy, rather, in which older women would take control. In an age when women outlived men by a number of years, this seemed possible. Now, of course, shortened working hours and medical advances have equalized the life-span. And since private property has become less and less of a factor in dominating our collective destinies, it hardly matters whether the male or the female has the upper hand.as I said, most of them were assuming war with the Communists or a new era of space travel. Since Communism collapsed and space flight was just an expensive journey to a dead end and dead worlds, it follows that the majority of fictional futures were founded on fallacies. And all the rest of the extrapolations dealt with superficial social manifestations.
"Then there was the common theory that technological advances would result in a push-button society, where automatons would do all the work. And so they might—if we had an unlimited supply of raw materials to produce robots, and unlimited power-sources to activate them. As we now realize, atomic power cannot be utilized on a minute scale.
"Last, but not least, there was the concept of a medically-orientated system, with particular emphasis on psychotherapy, neurosurgery, and parapsychology. The world was going to be run by telepaths, psychosis eliminated by brainwashing, intellect developed by hypnotic suggestion. It sounded great—but the conquest of physical disease has occupied the medical profession almost exclusively.
"No, what they all seemed to overlook, with only a few exceptions, was the population problem. You can't run a world through advertising when there are so many people that there aren't enough goods to go around anyway. You can't turn it over to big business when big government has virtually absorbed all of the commercial and industrial functions, just to cope with an ever-growing demand. A matriarchy loses its meaning when the individual family unit changes character, under the stress of an increasing population-pressure which eliminates the old-fashioned home, family circle, and social pattern. And the more we must conserve dwindling natural resources for people, the less we can expend on experimentation with robots and machinery. As for the psychologist-dominated society, there are just too many patients and not enough physicians. I don't have to remind you that the military caste lost its chance of control when war disappeared, and that religion is losing ground every day. Class-lines are vanishing, and racial distinctions will be going next. The old idea of a World Federation is becoming more and more practical. Once the political barriers are down, miscegenation will finish the job. But nobody seemed to foresee this particular future. They all made the mistake of worrying about the hydrogen-bomb instead of the sperm-bomb."
"Your Underground," Wade repeated. "Hell, every science fiction yarn about a future society had its Underground! That was the whole gimmick in the plot. The hero was a conformist who tangled with the social order—come to think of it, that's what you did, years ago. Only instead of becoming an impotent victim of the system, he'd meet up with the Underground Movement. Not some sourball like your friend Ritchie, who tried to operate on his own hook, without real plans or system, but a complete sub rosa organization, bent on starting a revolution and taking over. There'd be wise old priests and wise old crooks and wise old officers and wise old officials, all playing a double game and planning a coup. Spies all over the place, get me? And in no time at all, our hero would be playing tag with the top figures in the government. That's how it worked out in all the stories.
"But what happens in real life? What happened to you, for example? You fell for a series of stupid tricks, stupidly perpetrated—because the people in power are people, and not the kind of synthetic super-intellects dreamed up by frustrated fiction-fabricators. You found out that the logical candidates to constitute an Underground were the Naturalists; again, they were just ordinary individuals with no genius for organization. As for coming in contact with key figures, you were actually on hand when Leffingwell completed his experiments. And you came back, years later, to hunt him down. Very much in the heroic
tradition, I admit. But you never saw the man except through the telescopic sights of your rifle. That was the end of it. No modern-day Machiavelli has hauled you in to play cat-and-mouse games with you, and no futuristic Freud has bothered to wash your brain or soft-soap your subconscious. You just aren't that important, Collins."
[/spoiler]
