The Cubs
Sandmen are armed authorities who chase after Runners who are attempting to get away from the government-mandated execution of everyone upon reaching their twenty-first birthday. But it turns out that that in this bleak portrait of the future, simply trying to see your twenty-second birthday is filled with all manner of pitfalls besides of the official one. For instance, pre-teen gangs known cubs who become slaughter machines under the influence of a certain drug:
“Originally developed for armed combat, the drug was designed to speed up reactions. It increased a man’s strength tenfold, giving him ample time to deal with an enemy. But its action was too violent to control; it forced the heart to do a day’s work in minutes. A man lived impossibly fast with Muscle in his bloodstream.
Only the very young could use it.”
Molly
This is not your glittery domed disco fantasia vision of the future featured in the film adaptation. There are no domes here and the setting is much grittier and labyrinthine. It also features cute nicknames:
“And far below, where reinforced steel acts like balsa, and nightmare creatures carry their own light, is Molly, once queen city of the teeming sea. She took an age to build. She covered a hundred undersea miles. She provided living quarters and work space for twenty thousand technicians and their families—and she gave sustenance to a quarter of the world. She was a vast food-processing center sunk under a plasteel dome, and through her locks came subs and tenders, skimmers and harvesters.”
When Your Short Life Flashes
They say that when you know death is imminent your whole life flashes in front of you. Imagine knowing beforehand the exact date and method of your execution. Yeah, there is likely to be a lot flashbacks bouncing around inside your head. Even for a Sandman like Logan since law enforcement in the future, amazingly enough, is not granted special treatment but must face the music just like everyone else:
“And he was twenty-one. Suddenly, twenty-one! And his palm-flower was blinking and he was high in the threemile complex, hanging by one hand from the ledge, with Lilith laughing above him and he was in Arcade on the Table with the scapels slicing down at him and he was in the narrow corridor with Doc charging, popsickle raised, and he was on the age-warped platform under Cathedral with the cubs, a blurred bee-drone, rushing in and the drugpad shimmering at his face and he was in brined submarine darkness in the heart of Molly”
Revolt in Youth
A surprisingly comprehensive backstory to what has led to the current conditions in the year 2116 is gradually filled in over the course of the narrative. It comes in drips and drabs with a little filler her and a little filler there, but the portrait of how things initially began to turn is pretty well complete by the end:
“The first engagement in the Little War took place at Fifteenth and K street in front of the Sheraton Bar and Grill in the heart of Washington. For over a month young people had been pouring into the city, massing for a huge demonstration to protest the Thirty-ninth Amendment to the Constitution. Like other prohibitions before it, this Compulsory Birth Control Act was impossible to enforce, and youth had taken the stand that it was a direct infringement of their rights. Bitter resentment was directed against the two arms of Governmental enforcement, the National Council of Eugenics and the Federal Birth Study Commission. Washington had no business regulating the number of children a citizen could have. Bitterness turned to talk of rebellion.”
