Line #22 Literature/LogansRun


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/62148_logansrunfirstedition.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:300:Cover by Mercer Mayer. Yeah, [[Literature/LittleCritter that Mercer Mayer.]]]]
3	Before [[Film/LogansRun the movie]], ''Logan's Run'' was a 1967 novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson.
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5	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 "life clock" 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.
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7	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 lifeclock 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 D.S. Man names Francis 7 watches Logan from the shadows.
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9	Adventures on a post-apocalyptic Earth ensue.
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11	William F. Nolan went on to write two sequel novels, titled ''Logan's World'' and ''Logan's Search''. The novel caught the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who eventually turned it into a [[Film/LogansRun movie]] that while successful for its time, had few things common with its source material.
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13	An e-book novella, ''Logan's Return'', was released in 2001, more than 20 years after the last book.
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15	----
16	!!''Logan's Run'' provides examples of the following tropes:
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18	* AbnormalAmmo: 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 ComicBook/GreenArrow, with rounds named Tangler, Ripper, Nitro, Vapor, Needler, and the dreaded Homer.
19	* AncientKeeper: 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.
20	* BadassPacifist: Jessica, so very much. [[spoiler: Though she does knock Ballard unconscious when he tries to kill Logan]].
21	* ChildrenAreAWaste: Very young children are raised by robotic nursemaids, a la ''Literature/BraveNewWorld'', until they're old enough to strike out on their own -- which in this dystopian future happens at age 7.
22	* DeathOfAChild: [[spoiler:Logan and Jessica's son is killed in ''Logan's World''.]]
23	* DeathsHourglass: The life clocks. They're yellow from age 0-6, blue from 7-13 (green in the movie), red from 14-20, blink red-black-red-black on Lastday, and finally turn black when you hit 21. [[spoiler:Ballard was able to start and run the Sanctuary movement because his life clock malfunctioned, keeping him permanently on red. He uses New You parlors and appropriated identities to keep hiding in plain sight as a Sandman.]]
24	* DefectorFromParadise: The automated city is described as idyllic, wherein most residents live a life of leisure. However, to sustain the masses, the city has instituted a population cap called "Sleepshop" that terminates anyone over the age of 21. An underground society of "runners" seeks to subvert this age cap, which protagonist Logan 3 initially joins as TheMole before his HeelFaceTurn.
25	* {{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.
26	* FailedFutureForecast: The most obvious being that the Little War took place around the year 2000. The construction speed of the Crazy Horse monument recounted in the novel is also extremely optimistic, as in the real year of 2014 the monument is decades of work behind the way it is described by the end of the book's Little War.
27	* FreeLoveFuture: Nobody gives orgy houses with transparent walls and floors between the beds a second thought.
28	* HappyEndingOverride: [[spoiler:By the time of ''Logan's World'', Ballard has been killed while taking out the master computer, which is a death sentence for the people on Sanctuary, as without the resistance, no more supplies can be flown in. On top of that, the destruction of the computer means an end of civilization on Earth. On top of THAT, Logan and Jessica's son Jaq is killed when they return to Earth]].
29	* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: "Logan's [Noun]": ''Logan's Run'', ''Logan's World'', ''Logan's Search'', and ''Logan's Return''.
30	* MadDoctor: "Doc" in New You takes a sadistic thrill from trying to kill Logan. His assistant, Holly, takes a sadistic thrill in watching Doc work.
31	* MoralityChain: Logan is a nasty piece of work in the book, an AntiHero. Jessica is armed only with her conscience and will to live. It's enough to make an impression on him.
32	* NewNeoCity: Both Doc and Logan refer to New Alaska.
33	* NoPartyLikeADonnerParty: The residents of the HellHolePrison at the North Pole reverted to cannibalism.
34	* OnlyFatalToAdults: 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.
35	* TheOutsideWorld: [[spoiler:Having undergone a HeelFaceTurn, "sandman" Logan 3 escapes the rigidly controlled city with renegade Jessica 6 to explore the abandoned but habitable colony on Mars. This was later adapted into the film ''Film/LogansRun'' by MGM studios in 1976, changing the outside world to the overgrown but habitable Washington, [=DC=]. A television series follows the further adventures of Logan and Jessica, plus the android Rem.]]
36	* PhantomLimbPain: In Logan's World, a sequel to the original novel, Logan meets with an informant while trying to track down the people who kidnapped his wife. The informant is missing both legs, and loudly complaints to Logan about how he can still feel pain in his missing left leg, but feels nothing from his right leg.
37	* RapeAsDrama: Logan ''and'' Jessica with the Pleasure Gypsies.
38	* TheReveal: Multiple:
39	** Francis is [[spoiler:Ballard]]!
40	** Learning at the end why the chapters of the novel ''count down'' instead of up.
41	* ThePromisedLand: Sanctuary, in actuality [[spoiler:an old abandoned space station orbiting Mars]].
42	* RagingStiffie: The Pleasure Gypsy women gives Logan a dose of "Everlove" and gang-rape him.
43	-->The first orgasm was good.\
44	The second orgasm was all right.\
45	The third orgasm was bad.\
46	The fourth orgasm was painful.\
47	The fifth orgasm was agony.\
48	The sixth orgasm was damnation.
49	* TeenageWasteland: 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.
50	* TerminallyDependentSociety: 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.
51	* TrilogyCreep: William F. Nolan published the ebook novella ''Logan's Return'' in 2001, more than 20 years after the last book.
52	* UnusableEnemyEquipment: Sandman guns use palmprint recognition to make them unusable to anyone else.
53	* WeWillHaveEuthanasiaInTheFuture: The Deep Sleep chambers.
54	* YouAreNumberSix: Characters are named "Name X", as in Logan 3, Jessica 6, Francis 7, Doyle 10.

Context Literature / LogansRun