Word: soylent
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...days ago. A notable conservative who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., he would later serve as the president of the National Rifle Association. Before the onset of the Alzheimer’s that claimed his life, Heston was often just a punch line for jokes about Soylent Green and gun nuts, but in truth he was a lot more than that...
What's worse than a city with no humans? One with too many, in Heston's last big s-f parable, the 1973 Soylent Green. Spinning off the doomsday population predictions of Paul Ehrlich, the movie imagined New York 50 years hence, with 40 million people crushed on the island, half of them out of work. The Soylent Corporation, which runs the town, determines there's only one way to feed these people: by feeding them people. The bitter cop Heston plays is a precursor to the Harrison Ford role in Blade Runner. One big difference: Soylent Green, and Heston...
...small band of rebel fighters, living by their wits and their martial-arts skills (nicely enhanced by special effects). A lot of what they do and endure consists of spins on the sci-fi past. There are references to everything from the Alien movies to The Terminator to Soylent Green, but that's what we have for a living mythology these days, and the Wachowskis are bold and knowing in their deployment of it. They're acknowledging a tradition, not ripping...
Time has been less kind to other works of SF, despite hard work and serious intent. Harry Harrison's novel Make Room! Make Room! (source of the movie Soylent Green) predicted a New York City crammed with 35 million people, each allotted a meager four square yards of living space. That novel is set today--in 1999. It was published in 1966. The scenario made sense back then, before the advent of widespread birth control. All you had to do was follow the exponential curves...
...enthrall, there are other things. On Wednesday, 100 weathermen blew into Washington, D.C. to give the President his annual tribute of Al Roker's weight in gold--and basically to yak about global warming, which, as Al said, "we don't like." They should have all watched Soylent Green (1973): Chuck Heston in a classic 'open your eyes, dammit!' film with a conscience, in which pollution, overpopulation, and the greenhouse effect have conspired to cram 40 million people into New York, where it is 95 degrees year-round. A very sweaty movie, and family viewing only if your kids...