Quote:
Originally Posted by flipreads
(It's also interesting to read at how their fears are completely the opposite of other cultures; we fear overpopulation, they fear underpopulation.)
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As I said, fiction reflects the society and the time that spawns it.
Extrapolating from Japan's present (and several other european countries) one would in fact be perfectly justified in fearing a population implosion.
Along those lines: Asimov's CAVES OF STEEL (written in the mid-50's) postulates an overpopulated Earth that survives in beehive-like "giant cities" where New York runs 20 million people and the entire planet runs 8 billion. And the only way to feed folks is with massive "yeast farms" to supplement the robotic farms covering the countryside.
From the point of view in the early 50's, pre- green revolution, those were pretty good extrapolations. From today's point of view, not so much... not to yield the kind of world he intended. From today's point of view you'd need to at least double it since known technology has raised the bar on efficiency from the levels he envisioned.
Times change and with those changes we get different starting points for the writers looking to extrapolate.