Logan's Run (SF) - William Nolan and George Clayton Johnson ****

If you've only ever seen the rather pallid and denatured 1976 movie, the original 1967 novel of Logan's Run will come as a sensory overload. Sometimes when I re-read a book of this vintage it's a let-down, but Logan's Run has really held up well (with a couple of small exceptions). It's pleasantly short - not a wasted page - and drags the reader from glittering set piece to set piece with a relentless power that makes it obvious that this could be made into a much better movie these days.

Having said that, even 21st century Hollywood would struggle with the sexuality and brutal shortness of the lives of the characters who are required to submit to euthanasia on their 21st birthday (the film opted for the less controversial 30) - however the sheer fact that all the 'adults' here are aged between 14 and 21 adds to the visceral nature of the plot - especially in a sequence where the main characters are attacked by the sub-14 'cub scouts.'

It's hard to believe this book didn't influence Blade Runner, if anything more than the Dick story that the movie was just about based on. Our central character here is a sandman, responsible for tracking down (and killing with a big gun) runners who don't give themselves up age 21. And, like the Deckard character in Blade Runner, Logan comes to question his own position, finding himself on the run with a female who should be a target, isolated on the wrong side of the law.

It's worth mentioning those small areas that haven't aged quite as well. Although some of the stronger characters are female, the relationship between male and female still has enough 60s bias not to quite work for a 22nd century setting. And while most of the technology is suitably futuristic, the mainframe computer that runs the world is very 70s. However, these are forgivable in a book that really zings along as it's chapter numbers count down from 10 to 0. If I'm going to be picky, the authors are rather over-aware of their cleverness with language, and there is so much action packed in that sometimes getting out of a problem amounts to 'with one bound he was free.'

I've put off coming back to this book for several decades, as I though it might disappoint - but it certainly doesn't. Packed with memorable scenes and a will-they-won't-they survive tension, it's great fun.

Paperback:

Kindle: I'm highly suspicious of the apparent Kindle version listed on Amazon, as the synopsis is that of the film, not the book...

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

The New Lunar Society - David Mindell *****

David Mindell's take on learning lessons for the present from the eighteenth century Lunar Society could easily have been a dull academic tome, but instead it was a delight to read. Mindell splits the book into a series of short essay-like chapters which includes details of the characters involved in and impact of the Lunar Society, which effectively kick-started the Industrial Revolution, interwoven with an analysis of the decline of industry in modern twentieth and twenty-first century America, plus the potential for taking a Lunar Society approach to revitalise industry for the future. We see how a group of men (they were all men back then) based in the English Midlands (though with a strong Scottish contingent) brought together science, engineering and artisan skills in a way that made the Industrial Revolution and its (eventual) impact on improving the lot of the masses possible. Interlaced with this, Mindell shows us how 'industrial' has become something of a dirty wo...

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...

Search This Blog