Logan's Run author ports sci-fi classic to comic books

PORTLAND, Ore. – For science fiction fans, there are few films from the 1960s and 1970s that are worth a second look in our post-Avatar world.

 

The old-school special effects look cheesy, the acting can induce cringes, the “future music” soundtracks can be hilariously bad and the ideas can seem almost Victorian in their naiveté.

 

But a few films do stand out: Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey from 1969, of course, as well as George Lucas’ experimental and brilliant THX-1138 from 1971.

 

Charlton Heston’s 1970s triple-feature of Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man and Soylent Green, and of course Star Wars, Alien and Blade Runner are all icons of the period, the last three of which arguably ushered the sci-fi movie genre into the modern age.

 

Among the films that may give a chuckle now due to said cheese, music and other period elements that time has not been especially kind to is Logan’s Run from 1976, the tale of a seemingly utopian society of young people with the dark demon of forced euthanasia at its core.

 

Logan’s Run, the movie, is based on the 1967 book of the same name by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, and the book and the movie continue to strike a nerve over 40 years later.

 

 

 

During the rancorous national debate over the Obama health care reform plans, Logan’s Run, now recognized as a metaphor for forced end-of-life regulations, has been brought up by more than a few politicians and thousands of online pundits.

 

Indeed, search online for “Logan’s Run” and you will get tens of thousands of blog and journalism entries and more than a few online videos featuring the movie or recreations of scenes chosen for maximum political effect.

 

While Sara Palin’s famous “death panels” remark was not explicitly derived from Logan’s Run, it was an apple that did not fall far from the tree, and there were many pundits quick to draw parallels to Palin’s remarks and the work of Nolan and Johnson’s visionary 1967 novel.

 

 

 

In the book, a post-apocalyptic society of young people, all under the age of 21, live carefree lives of bacchanalian frivolity in cities run by mostly unseen forces, most notably a supercomputer that is slowly beginning to break down.

 

The year is 2274.

 

It’s all partying, casual sex and vaporous drugs until the residents turn 21 years old (in the movie: 30), when they must go to “deep sleep,” a kind way of saying “you’re dead.” There is the veiled promise of “rebirth” through a dramatic ritual, but the bottom line is you get 21 years (or 30) and that’s it.

 

In the perfect ecological balance of the domed city, people have to die before more can be born.

 

Of course, not everyone goes willingly. Those that try to dodge their fate on “Last Day,” which is indicated by a colored crystal implanted in one hand, are called “runners.” They are tracked down by “Sandmen,” trained police/assassins that kill runners with special handguns. Very few escape.

 

Those runners that do escape the Sandmen try to reach a mythical safe harbor known as Santuary, where they will be free to live out their days away from the controlled confines of the youth cities.

 

But the ever-present question persists: does Sanctuary, and the cipher that presumably protects it, actually exist? Logan 5, the elite Sandman, is tasked by the supercomputer called The Thinker to sniff out Sanctuary. In order to do so, he is instructed to become a runner and his “Last Day” is moved up – to that day.

 

Logan teams up with a comely rebel, Jessica 6, who is part of an underground movement trying to find Sanctuary. Logan’s former partner pursues them through the domed city’s infrastructure.

 

Do Logan and Jessica find Sanctuary?

 

You’ll have to read the book to find out. Let’s just say it’s a different answer than that given (repeatedly) in the movie.

 

 

 

In 2006, co-author William F. Nolan teamed up with local adult-oriented comic book maker Blue Water Comics to bring Logan’s Run back into the mainstream. Nolan, now 80, lives in Vancouver, Washington.

 

The comics, which Nolan says bring Logan’s Run very much into the modern age, fill in the back story of Logan’s world, detailing how it came to be and where it is possibly headed.

 

It also portrays the story in a much darker light than the 1976 movie could ever hope to.

 

Unlike the movie, Sandman Logan wears body armor and a sinister helmet when pursuing runners. His “profession” was determined at birth, and children are raised by robots for the first seven years of their life. The training, begun as a child, is dehumanizing and militaristic.

 

At a recent book signing at one of Portland’s comic mecca’s, Things From Another World, Nolan talked with KATU.com about the legacy of the book, the movie, the comic books, Sarah Palin and a planned modern remake of the movie.

 

Along with Nolan was collaborator Jason Brock, who helped bring the comic book project to life and works closely with Nolan on upcoming books and projects.

 

Brock is also a film maker who has recently completed a documentary about acclaimed science fiction writer Charles Beaumont. The film features William Shatner, Harlan Ellison, Nolan and other sci-fi luminaries. Brock and Nolan are also working on a bibliography about Beaumont.

 

Nolan said the comic book project got started when Jason Brock’s wife, Sunni, saw an article in the Columbian newspaper about Blue Water comics. Jason Brock contacted the company and asked if they were interested in meeting with Nolan.

 

From there, Nolan, Brock and the Blue Water team began work on bringing the world of Logan’s Run to the illustrated page, as well as Nolan’s popular Sam Space stories and his shock-horror Dark Universe story series.

 

The Logan’s Run series is the first out of the gate. The other series will follow soon. Logan’s Run is scheduled for an initial series of 24 issues, and the books will also include storylines from Nolan’s other Logan’s Run follow-up books, Logan’s World and Logan’s Search.

 

Brock says there are elements of Nolan’s later books throughout the initial series of Logan’s Run comics as they work to fill in the backstory of Logan’s life and the world of 2274.

 

Brock and Nolan said they are also working on a fourth Logan book, which will likely be titled Logan Falls.

 

Nolan said Brock, in working with BlueWater, has helped him realize an artistic version more true to the original vision of the story, a vision that is also far away from the original film.

 

Nolan added that this is the third iteration of the Logan’s Run story in comic book form, and said he was not fond of the first two efforts, with which he had little affiliation. The comics came out shortly after the film. Nolan called the artwork in the Malibu Graphics edition “horrible.”

 

The first comic book version was by Marvel, but Nolan did not agree with the depiction of Logan as a superhero, calling his central character “a killer.”

Nolan called the current Bluewater comics a “dream come true for me” in terms of the artwork and collaboration.

 

 

 

 

Nolan said future comic books will address topics from the original books, including the “Little War” that helped initiate the path to Logan’s world, overpopulation and age limiting, and character development.

 

Nolan explained that the Little War mentioned in the original book was a result of a wave of young people overthrowing the U.S. government and a small-scale nuclear attack on Washington D.C. by what we would now a call a domestic terrorist - topical subjects even when the book was written in 1967.

 

The later part of the movie, when Logan and fellow runner Jessica discover Washington D.C. in ruins, was a result of the Little War, Nolan said. The reason the capitol is deserted and crumbling is never explained in the movie – which Nolan says differs greatly from his book.

 

Nolan said he and co-author George Clayton Johnson wrote the first draft of Logan’s Run in 21 days of work in Malibu, Calif., during which the Watts Riots were making world headlines and on the news each night. Nolan then polished up the draft before the book was published.

 

Nolan said he and Johnson thought they were really onto something timing-wise with their central concept of a youth revolution as the Watts Riots raged.

 

At the same time, hippie culture was peaking in the U.S., with Woodstock in 1968 and the Apollo 11 moon landing the year after that. It was a time when youth-based new ideas seemed to be taking hold.

 

But Nolan pulled no punches in his disappointment with the film version of his book, saying MGM missed the subtext and many messages of the story, especially around the issue of age and aging.

 

“The thing that annoyed me most about MGM [the studio that made the movie], is the whole subtext of the novel is that you can’t have a world of just nothing but young people,” Nolan said. “You’ve gotta have middle-aged people, and older people to balance, society has to have a balance. You lose the wisdom of age.”

 

In the novel, Nolan said that problems in the sealed cities were attributed to the fact that only young people lived there. He said that important element was not incorporated into the film. Indeed, in the film version, the city seems to run on auto-pilot without any problems at all.

 

But Nolan also does not dismiss the whole film out of hand. He had high praise for Michael York, who played Logan, and other cast members, including Jennifer Agutter, who played Jessica, saying he felt the first half of the movie was good but then it went off the rails when Peter Ustinov’s doddering “old man” character is introduced.

 

Ustinov’s mumbling character is not in the novel.

 

“They told me in science fiction, you don’t need logic,” he said, recalling the time the movie was produced. Logan’s Run did win an Academy Award© for Best Special Effects and it remains popular to this day.

 

Nolan said he had no input on the movie but was on the set when they were filming in Dallas, Texas. He said he and co-author George Johnson submitted the original screenplay but after that it was pretty much out of his hands. Their screenplay was not used.

 

David Goodman ended up writing the screenplay that was the basis for the film. Goodman had “no knowledge of science fiction whatsoever,” Nolan said. “I would have changed a lot of things if I had” written the final screenplay he said.

 

Nolan did co-write the pilot for the Logan’s Run television series, but he said that effort turned out even worse than the movie, in his opinion. The series ran for a total of 14 episodes. Gregory Harrison played Logan, a casting choice Nolan felt was ill-advised.

 

 

 

The release of the BlueWater comic books comes at a time when efforts to remake Logan’s Run for the big screen are gathering momentum. As far back as the mid 1990s, there has been interest in remaking the movie and bringing it up to date.

 

Nolan said they’ve gone through nine writers and four directors, most notably Brian Singer, who first brought X-Men to the screen along with other notable films including cult favorites The Usual suspect, Apt Pupil, and more recently, Superman Returns and Valkyrie with Tom Cruise.

Singer was also in line to head up the critically acclaimed remake of the 1970s space serial Battlestar Galactica, but ended up moving to the X-Men 2 project when events on September 11, 2001 stalled BSG production.

 

Nolan said Singer is now off the project following over a year of visual development on the film due to exhaustion from making the last Superman feature.

 

Now, the remake appears to be in the hands of Joseph Kosinski, who is wrapping up production for the remake of another science fiction cinema classic: Tron. The new movie, called Tron: Legacy, is less of a remake as it is a continuation of the storyline from the first film.

Tron: Legacy is Kosinsky’s first time directing a feature-length film. He has an extensive background in designing video game content and promotional materials. He is reportedly being tasked with remaking The Black Hole for Disney as well.

 

The Logan’s Run remake is being produced by Joel Silver, who counts Predator, The Matrix films, Speed Racer, The Book of Eli and other features among his science fiction portfolio. Silver has produced dozens of well-known and critically acclaimed films going back to, ironically, 1976.

 

Nolan said Silver is pushing hard to get the film underway and get it in theaters by 2012. He hopes he can be a consultant on the film and if he is involved, he plans to write a production journal called Running With Logan, but said he is not writing the screenplay.

 

Collaborator Jason Brock said both he and Nolan hope the new comic books, with their updated back story, production design and darker storyline, get the attention of Silver and Kocinski.

 

Despite the success of Avatar, Nolan said he has no desire to see Logan’s Run remade in 3D, calling the format “a distraction.” Nolan said he did see Avatar, but not in 3D.

 

“I’m not a 3D advocate,” he said, “It’s still a gimmick, but they have improved it.” He said he felt the 3D format took away from story and character development.

 

Later in our conversation, he reconsidered and said he would not mind if the new Logan’s Run came out in 3D and 2D versions like Avatar did, so viewers could have a choice of what to see.

 

 

 

As a historical document, the book Logan’s Run is perhaps one of the best intertwining of two science fiction staples: Utopian and dystopian societies.

 

On the surface, Logan 5 and the rest of the residents of the domed city live care-free lives filled with casual sex, drugs, entertainment, free plastic surgery, and efficient mass transportation.

Disease, hunger, taxes (indeed, money), worry and even bad weather are absent from their lives.

 

But underneath all the frivolity, the 21-year time limit lurks like a Sword of Damocles, with each person holding - literally - a built-in clock to remind them the end is ever nearer and that there is a lethal enforcement policy that is essentially inescapable.

 

Additionally, the underpinnings of the society are breaking down.

The all-knowing supercomputer, The Thinker, is slowly breaking down. Building projects remain unfinished. And the seeds of dissention against the age limitation have been sown in the legend of Sanctuary.

 

Logan’s Run wasn’t the first film to touch both topics, of course. Visions and notions of a perfect – and very imperfect – future date back to the roots of cinema and literature, starting on film with Fritz Lang’s groundbreaking film Metropolis in 1927.

 

Perhaps one the most famous and enduring visions of a dark future is Ridley Scott’s iconic 1979 film Blade Runner, which was based on a story by another celebrated science fiction author, Philip K. Dick.

 

“That’s what Logan’s Run should have been,” Nolan said of Blade Runner describing it as, “hard-edged, dark.”

 

Nolan also cited the George Miller’s classic post apocalyptic feature The Road Warrior as striking the kind of tone he wanted for Logan’s Run. “Instead of that, [Logan’s Run] became a real soft little thing of people running around in pajamas,” he said.

 

He expressed real disappointment for one sinister character from the book called Box, who was supposed to be a half-man, half-cybernetic being with exceptional strength and cunning.

 

He called the movie version of the character a “rolling vanity table with mirrors on it.” And indeed, the teetering, rambling Box character in the film seems to have come from the Ed Wood special effects department, with flex tubing for arms and more shiny surfaces than a vintage Cadillac.

 

“All you’d have to do is tip him over” to get away from him, laughed Nolan.           

 

 

 

The recent debate over government-run health care has brought the concepts in Logan’s Run back to the nation’s consciousness. Following Sarah Palin’s “death panel” remark on her Facebook page, the references to Logan’s Run skyrocketed in relation to the health care debate.

 

Nolan made no bones about Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s “death panels” comments.

 

“Palin’s an idiot,” he said without reservation.

 

“Logan’s Run has become an iconic title, beyond the book and the move,” Nolan said. “People who don’t know anything about the book or haven’t seen the movie still know the title “Logan’s Run” and they know it means early death… government-decreed early death.”

 

“And that’s the thing that’s kept it alive all these years,” he said. “We have touched the psychic nerve of survival. Survival is our strongest instinct, above sex and food. We want to survive.”

 

Nolan said he is happy the book has become a metaphor and part of the dialog on health care. “It could have become this little Ace paperback and nobody might’ve ever heard of it,” he said.

 

 

 

Of course, Hollywood heard of the book and Nolan said he and co-writer Johnson agreed that they would not sell the movie rights for less than $100,000, which was very big money at the time.

 

They got a lot of offers for a lot less, but stuck to their guns. “We were broke,” he said of himself and Johnson in 1967. MGM eventually came around and wrote the check. It was such a big sum that news of the deal made the trade paper Variety.

 

Even at age 80, Nolan, who has written over 80 books, stays busy. He currently has about ten ongoing projects, including the Logan’s Run comic book series, conversion of his other works to comic form, collaboration with Brock on documentaries about other science fiction writers and even a column for a “dark fiction” print magazine.

 

“I get up every day excited,” he said. “I love writing and being a writer.”