Summary: Harry Collins lives in a world where war is a thing of the past and death from disease is almost unheard of. As a result, Harry lives cramped and squeezed in an overpopulated city of 38 million, in a cramped and squeezed world of six billion. After a failed suicide attempt, Harry is sent to a “treatment center,” where he unwittingly becomes part of the government's horrifying solution to the problem of a world with too many people and too little space for them.
Bloch: “This Crowded Earth—the other half of Ladies Day, also considers the same problem [overpopulation] in another scenario of a possible future. But my timing was off: during this period science fiction had largely abandoned sociological speculation in favor of the stylistic experimentation labelled “New Wave” writing. But then, as you know, I’ve seldom been a slavish follower of fashion in fiction.”—The Robert Bloch Companion
Notes:
Bloch: “This Crowded Earth—the other half of Ladies Day, also considers the same problem [overpopulation] in another scenario of a possible future. But my timing was off: during this period science fiction had largely abandoned sociological speculation in favor of the stylistic experimentation labelled “New Wave” writing. But then, as you know, I’ve seldom been a slavish follower of fashion in fiction.”—The Robert Bloch Companion
Notes:
- Published bound with another Bloch novel, Ladies' Day.
- Originally published in the November 1958 issue of Amazing Stories magazine.