Logan's Run (novel)
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| Synopsis: | Life ends at 21. Literally. Logan chases the people who try to run away from their deaths – until it's his turn to die, when he goes after a bigger target. |
| Genre(s): | Dystopian science fiction |
| First published: | 1967 |
Before 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 pleasure-inducing poison gas sang you gently to your grave. If you ran away from this responsibility, a "palm flower" 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 palm flower 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 Sandman named Francis 7 watches Logan from the shadows.
Adventures on a post-apocalyptic Earth ensue.
The novel caught the attention of Metro Goldwyn Mayer, who eventually turned it into a movie that had little or nothing to do with the original. Meanwhile, William F. Nolan went on to write two sequel novels, titled Logan's World and Logan's Search.
- 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 young children are raised by robotic nursemaids, a la 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.
- Free-Love Future: Nobody gives orgy houses with transparent walls and floors between the beds a second thought.
- Love Potion: One feral tribe of women gives Logan a dose of "Everlove" and forces him to copulate with them repeatedly.
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The first orgasm was good. |
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- Mad Doctor: "Doc" in New You takes a sadistic thrill from trying to kill Logan. His assistant, Holly, takes a sadistic thrill in watching Doc work.
- Only Fatal to Adults: The DS Men deliberately hunt down and kill anyone who turns 21. They're little more than street cops when it comes to anybody younger, though.
- Reactionary Fantasy: The implication was that, if those damn hippies got their way, they'd create a world where an eleven-year-old girl announces that she's sexually "skilled beyond all others", where fourteen is adulthood and everyone dies at twenty-one.
- The Reveal: Francis is 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 possessed 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 tyranny 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.