Movies - Logan's Run

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	Movies - Logan's Run

Logan's Run is a novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, published in 1967 describing a dystopian future society in which the population is kept young by euthanizing everyone who reaches a certain age. This also avoids the issue of overpopulation. The story follows the actions of Logan, a "Deep Sleep Operative" or "Sandman," as he "runs" from society's lethal demand. A 1976 film version directed by Michael Anderson and starring Michael York was shot primarily in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex (including locations such as the Fort Worth Water Gardens and the Dallas Market Center), and is largely faithful to the initial parts of the book, while deviating markedly in its latter half. The story was also adapted as a short-lived television series that aired from 1977 to 1978 and was produced by Ivan Goff. A remake of the film, which is said to have a story more similar to the book, is currently in pre-production.

The taglines for the 1976 film version were, "Welcome to the 23rd Century: A perfect world of total pleasure, with just one catch..." and "The only thing you can't have in Logan's world is your 30th birthday. Unless you run away." The introduction to the book states:

"The seeds of the Little War were planted in a restless summer during the mid-1960s,
with sit-ins and student demonstrations as youth tested its strength.
By the early 1970s over 75 percent of the people living on Earth were under twenty-one years of age.
The population continued to climb—and with it the youth percentage.
In the 1980s the figure was 79.7 percent.
In the 1990s, 82.4 percent.
In the year 2000—critical mass."

Plot introduction

In both the book and the film, the future population is age-limited, to twenty-one years in the novel and thirty years in the film. When people reach that limit — called "Lastday" — they are euthanized in a Sleepshop.

A person's age can be told by looking at a "life clock" crystal in the palm of his or her left hand, which glows a different colour depending on the person's age:

Life Clock System:

In Logan's society, all those whose life clocks turn black must report for euthanasia on Lastday. "Runners" are people who refuse to report in an attempt to escape this fate. Logan is a Deep Sleep Operative or Sandman, whose job it is to terminate Runners. On his own Lastday he decides to become a Runner himself in an attempt to infiltrate an apparent Runner underground railroad, with the goal of finding "Sanctuary" — a place where Runners live freely in defiance of society's dictates.

Jessica 6, a contact Logan made when he terminated her Runner brother, helps him in his quest.

Differences between the novel and film

The film is reasonably faithful to the novel in its first half, with some specific differences. The movie is set in a post-apocalyptic scenario in which the final remnants of humanity live in a domed city sealed off from the outside world. Thus, the population control policy is designed to prevent overpopulation of the dome. In the film, there is a death ceremony called Carousel in which people believe they may be "renewed."

In the novel, there has been no worldwide apocalyptic war, but some cities from the past (e.g. Washington D.C.) have been ruined in the Little War. Most cities are massive and thriving, which makes the forced euthanasia premise much more cynical. Accordingly, in the novel, Logan and Jessica travel all over the globe. The novel does not contain Carousel, nor the concept of life renewal.

In the film it's implied that the age of sexual consent is fifteen, when one's life clock turns green. In the book, however, there is apparently no age of consent after leaving the creche at seven: at one point Logan is approached by a twelve-year-old girl who assures him that she is "skilled beyond all others", and later he meets a "woman" of fifteen who tells him that her last lover was an eleven-year-old boy.

Also in the movie, Logan is assigned by the city's computer to go undercover as a Runner to find Sanctuary and destroy it, and Logan's life clock (referred to as "palm flowers" in the novel) is artificially advanced to enable him to infiltrate the network of citizens sympathetic to Runners. In the book, Logan decides to undertake this quest himself on his own Lastday so that he will be remembered as a hero. For most of the book, therefore, Logan is a much darker character, an antihero, with his character developing a growing sympathy towards Runners until he eventually desires to achieve, not destroy, Sanctuary.

In the movie, Logan finds an ankh pendant, which is a key to Sanctuary, on the body of a Runner he has killed. In the novel he finds a card that allows him to contact an underground network of Runners, through which he meets Jessica. Logan's character in the movie is similarly amoral, but also naïve when compared to other Sandmen. His character is more that of an innocent who is being corrupted by the system — and victimized by it as well: when he's assigned the task of finding Sanctuary, his lifeclock is advanced to Lastday although he is "only Red-6," four years short of the normal lifespan.

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Movies - Logan's Run

Plot introduction

Life Clock System:

Differences between the novel and film

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