Ultimately, almost all analysis of the novel Logan’s Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson becomes a comparison/contrast essay. The story of a dystopic future where genocide is government policy by way of the mandated death of everyone upon reaching a certain very young age and the plot mechanism of Runners being pursued by an authoritarian force called the Sandmen is rather well known, at least to a chunk of the population that would already have been long gone dead had the conceit of the story actually been implemented. Unfortunately, the story that is familiar to that large chunk comes almost universally from the film adaptation of the novel which is substantially different from the story as presented as originally presented.
First off the bat: that gloriously conceived futuristic dome city featured in the movie does not exist in the novel. Nor does the ignorance of the outside world that is experienced by those inside the dome. Whereas Logan and Jessica have no concept of what they are looking at when they find a Washington, D.C. in ruins, the history that has led to the current situation in the novel is well-known and even celebrated. Many things are different in the film, but most are cosmetic in nature.
What many readers of the novel may the to be most interesting element not fully developed or pursued in the film adaptation is the “character” known as Thinker. Thinker is the name given to the powerful computer which is basically charged with governing the world in this dystopic future where everyone has basically agreed to commit suicide when they turn twenty-one (rather than age thirty in the movie). Thinker is portrayed as all-knowing and self-repairing and infallible enough to have devised the elaborate system of keeping track of everyone’s age. The origin story of Thinker is presented briefly, but in a way capable of making a reader’s jaw drop wide open that it would not have done over the course of the book’s first few decades of life. Thinker began centuries earlier when researchers working on opposite coasts of the United States figured out a way to connect computers across that vast chasm through an interconnection that allow them to communicate with each other. As the technology improved, more and more computers joined this worldwide web of interconnected computers until, eventually, it was controlling the lives of every single person on the planet.
Did a shiver just run down your back?
Yep, in a nutshell, one of the fascinating things about Logan’s Run is that it kind of predicted the coming of the internet. Admittedly, things have not gotten quite the extreme point of control in the novel yet, but keep in mind that the story takes place in the year 2116 and lot can happen within a century.
