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Before [[Logan's Run (film)|the movie]], ''Logan's Run'' was a novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson.
 
At the close of the 20th Century, the "Little Wars" broke out, resulting in a worldwide ban on all adults. Before you reached your 21st birthday, you were required to turn yourself in for "Deep Sleep" in which a plesurepleasure-inducing poison gas sang you gently to your grave. If you ran away from this responsibility, a "life clock" embedded in your right palm would turn black and alert the local Deep Sleep Men (euphemistically called "Sandmen") to hunt you down and kill you -- by shooting you with the Homer, the most gruesome, vicious, pain-inducing weapon ever devised by man.
 
Now, in the year 2116, Logan 3 is one of these Deep Sleep Men. When he chases down a Runner named Doyle 10, the man screams the mysterious word "Sanctuary!" right before he dies. Logan has heard rumors of the mysterious Ballard, the man who's allegedly led a "double lifetime" and runs the Sanctuary Line to help Runners escape their mandated destiny -- possibly even by leaving Earth itself. When Logan's own lifeclock begins blinking red-black-red-black, indicating that he's on his Last Day before he has to turn himself in for Deep Sleep, he resolves to spend his final 24 hours hunting down Ballard and wiping out the Sanctuary Line once and for all. Meanwhile, a mysterious D.S.Sandman Man namesnamed Francis 7 watches Logan from the shadows.
 
Adventures on a post-apocalyptic Earth ensue.
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* [[Abnormal Ammo]]: The Guns carried by the DS Men are 6-chambered revolvers, where each chamber carries a different specialized round. The arsenal of a Sandman resembled the [[Green Arrow]], with rounds named Tangler, Ripper, Nitro, Vapor, Needler, and the dreaded Homer.
* [[Ancient Keeper]]: Box. Also, the computer hidden within Crazy Horse Mountain, which takes care of all the young people littering the Earth and which is slowly, inevitably breaking down.
* [[Children Are a Waste]]: Very youndyoung children are raised by robotic nursemaids, a la ''[[Brave New World (novel)|Brave New World]]'', until they're old enough to strike out on their own -- which in this dystopian future happens at age 7.
* [[Death's Hourglass]]: The life clocks. They're yellow from age 0-6, green from 7-13, red from 14-20, blink red-black-red-black on Lastday, and finally turn black when you hit 21.
* [[Dystopia]]: Since no one lives past 21, few people ever get the chance to learn how to fix and maintain the world's infrastructure. Cities are falling apart left and right, and many areas have decayed into outright lawlessness.
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* [[The Reveal]]: Francis is {{spoiler|Ballard}}!
** Learning at the end why the chapters of the novel ''count down'' instead of up.
* [[Teenage Wasteland]]: The world is dotted with the remains of once-great cities that now house lawless roving gangs, some of whom are posessedpossessed of questionable sanity.
* [[Terminally Dependent Society]]: The planet is secretly controlled by a giant computer located inside Crazy Horse Monument ... and that computer is slowly falling apart. In the backstory for the first sequel novel, Ballard, in his final act of defiance, destroys this computer to end the tyrranytyranny of the 21-year age limit -- but in so doing he destroys the last vestiges of civilization and the whole planet descends into barbarism.
* [[We Will Have Euthanasia in the Future]]: The Deep Sleep chambers.
* [[You Are Number Six]]: Characters are named 'Name X,' as in Logan 3, Jessica 6, Francis 7, Doyle 10.
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