Logan’s Run is a novel co-written by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. Originally published in 1967, it is a work of science fiction portraying a dystopic future in which nobody lives past the age of twenty-one. This self-imposed mass extinction of the elderly from the world of humanity is deemed necessary as a means of containing an exploding population incapable of producing enough resources to support it. The story is set in the year 2116 and prefatory material to the commencement of the narrative indicates that it was the youth-inspired countercultural revolution of the 1960’s which stimulated the series of events leading to the imposition of a universal death sentence upon the reach of one’s twenty-first birthday.
Although Johnson is credited as co-writer of the novel, it was Nolan alone who would go on to publish two additional novels which comprised the “Logan Trilogy” as well as a novella. Working with two different co-writers, he has also written two other unpublished sequels. On the other hand, it is George Clayton Johnson who carries the much broader science fiction writer resume: a handful of story and teleplay credits for the original version of The Twilight Zone and the teleplay for the very first televised episode of the original Star Trek series.
The novel was adapted into a very well-received motion picture in 1976 starring Michael York as Logan. Most likely for casting reasons, in the film it was at age thirty that citizens faced mandatory execution. In addition, the means by which death was carried out was made more cinematic and dramatic in the film than it is portrayed in the source material. In addition, the most spectacular element of the film—the entire population living inside a domed atmosphere and oblivious to the reality of the outside world—is not a feature of the plot of the novel.
