Unspecified date, 2022

Content warning for suicide mention.

By 2022, the Earth is dying. Most plant and animal life has been wiped out by climate change, and humanity struggles to survive in the hot and overcrowded cities that remain. The population of New York City stands at around forty million, and they subsist on a product named Soylent, produced by a company that has a monopoly on the food supply. The rich (mainly consisting of the higher-ups at Soylent) live in comparative luxury, with access to incredibly rare meat and vegetables, and hold ownership over concubines known as “furniture”.

Soylent releases a new product known as Soylent Green, allegedly made from plankton fished up from the ocean. But police detective Frank Thorn suspects otherwise when he is assigned to investigate the assassination of a member of the board of directors at Soylent, determining that he was killed to protect a dark company secret.

Thorn evades a series of bribes and assassination attempts on his own life as he gets closer to the truth. After Thorn’s elderly companion Sol finds out where Soylent Green really comes from, he chooses to be voluntarily euthanised. Thorn follows his body and sneaks into the Soylent factory where he finally discovers the terrible truth for himself:

“Soylent Green is people!”