Hi,

I hope I'm posting this in the correct forum. Anyway, I very much enjoy the novel, and wanted to post some thoughts.

William F. Nolan first conceived of Logan and his world in 1963. He says he first planned to use him in a short story, but this grew into a novel, which he wrote in 1965 with fellow Southern California SF writer George Clayton Johnson. They wrote the first draft holed up in a hotel in three weeks, though it was polished a great deal before publication in 1967.

The first Dial hardcover printing of the book shows Logan with a bald (shaved) head.

Th SF Book Club put out an edition.

I own a paperback of the book printed before the more famous film cover. It shows a palm with crystal and two running figures.

The more famous cover with the film poster actually has two different covers. Jessica is different (hair, costume, height), the rest is almost the same.

George Pal originally wanted to make the film. Richard Maibum (lots of Bond films) wrote a script closer to the book. IIRC, Nolan and Johnson also took a crack at a script of their book.

The book is episodic, consists of several "set pieces," locations on the run, It starts in Los Angeles (Angeles Complex), goes to "MOLLY," an undersea complex in the Marianas Trench, then to the North Pole, North Dakota (Crazy Horse), Virginia, Washington D. C., then finally to the Florida Keys. No domes in the book.

You must die at 21.

The time is 2116.

Honestly, I was never able to buy the backstory of the "Little War" and how things came to be, but if you get past that, it is an entertaining, fairly short novel.

I won't give away spoilers (unless this place has spoiler tags--does it?), suffice to say Ballard (roughly the equivalent character of Peter Ustinov's "Old Man") is quite different in the book.

Read, enjoy.

Sir Rhosis

Thanks for the great overview, Sir Rhosis.

For those who have never seen the first edition Dial book cover, here's a pic of the cover:



Logan's Run has had MANY different book covers and publishers over the years. If you'd like to see them all - visit Tim Sinniger's excellent Willian F Nolan site at:

http://www.nolansworld.com/

Just to add a bit more to the beginnings of "Logan's Run":

WFN (William F. Nolan) was to give a lecture at UCLA in 1963 about the differences between social fiction and science fiction. He began with the old adage of "Life begins at 40" as social fiction and twisted it a bit to turn it into science fiction. The twist --- a man lives in an overpopulated world and runs from the cops. This would form the basis for him to pen his first draft of his story - "A Wild Run for Morgan 3" with friend and co-author George Clayton Johnson.

The hero of the story (Morgan) would soon have his name changed, as the name Morgan didn't sound like a really good hero name to the authors. So, WFN used an old phone number of his to rename the character Logan (LOgan 6466). Thus, the new title of their story would now be called "Logan's Run".

A couple of other interesting tidbits....

Francis' name was borrowed from WFN's middle name.

Jessica's was taken from a 'memorable young lady who had once posed for "Playboy".' :)

What cool info, how did you get it? Where is it from? I'd love to see an annotated version of the novel. I can't remember for sure, but I swear the name Morgan was used in one of the Logan books for a character.

I've always wondered just how much Johnson contributed to the first novel, and why Nolan chose not to work with him on the second two. From the little I've read of Johnson's prose, his style is lean, almost "reportorial." I recall reading a first-person POV story of his in the old "Twilight Zone" magazine and not realizing it was fiction until nearly the end. I thought it was a reminiscence.

Sir Rhosis

Most of this information comes from Nolan himself. His most recent interview in Starlog magazine (Jan 2005 issue) mentions many of these juicy little tidbits.

He has also written many of these Logan anecdotes as introductions in several of his latest Logan book reissues.

For a cool history of the beginnings of Logan's Run, be sure to visit Tim Sinnigers wonderful Nolan's World web pages.

The link below shows a picture of the cover page of "A Wild Run For Morgan 3".

http://www.geocities.com/tsinniger/LoganBegin.html

^^^Fortunately, I'm off-work until the New Year, so I can afford to set up late and check out the two great sites you've linked to in this thread.

I love manuscripts from the days of manual and early electric typewriters for some strange nostalgic reason.

Sir Rhosis