Check out the new William F. Nolan horror anthology from Stealth Press!
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There were three novels, and a fourth unfinished
novel. The first novel, Logan's Run, was written by William F. Nolan
and George Clayton Johnson. This novel was first published in a
hardbound version (By Dial press(shown below on the left)) and then
shortly thereafter in a paperback version by Dell books. The early
paperback is fairly common in used book stores. It has a cover with a
large hand and some rather scribbily art. This novel was reprinted
numerous time in paperback. At last check it has gone through 16
printings! The book is currently out of print, but easy to find at
used book stores.
The back of the first paperback printing featured the following
blurb:
The Youth Rebellion Had Triumphed... The young long since had taken over the Earth. Sex, drugs, kicks were unlimited. But the trip from grove to grave was quick. No one was allowed to live past 21.
Logan was a Sandman, one of the elite police who hunted those who refused to accept their fate. Then logan turned 21-and suddenly he was desprately running, searching, in a world of cities beneath the sea, frozen artic prison colonies, great hollowed-out mountains, abandoned cities...
... through a labyrinth of terror that lay between him and saftey . . . between him and ultimate triumph...
The 1969 Science Fiction
Club printing (British)
The first book is far different from either of the
two books, or anything else for that matter, that followed it. The
book featured the exploits of Logan, a sandman who worked in one of
the many cities in the future. There were no domed cities, though
many elements of the book wound themselves into the movie in one way
or another. One of the stops on their many adventures is the frozen
prison called Hell which is ruled over by a half machine half robot
warden named Box. In the book Logan and Jessica are far more
developed characters than they are on the screen (either bog or
small) following a underground railroad of mazecars and shady
characters on a quest to get to Sanctuary, which ends up in a rocket
ride from Florida.
The book makes for a wonderful read which is segmented up into
several parts. The book is also a lot more racy than you might think
and has some wonderful prose like writing that oozes off the page in
a very unusual 60's style. With the youth 'revolution' just around
the next corner this sort of prophetic novel must have sounded a lot
more plausible back then. Also one rare bool club version was printed
without any of the racy, sexy parts in it!
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The cover of the book changed several times before and during the release of the movie the cover featured Jessica in a tattered looking green dress. This was later changed in favor of a more revealing, and much taller, Jessica in a sparkling white dress. Shown above are the 1st and 10th Bantam printings. Also, some versions of the book has a 16 page color insert of photographs from the movie, while later Bantam printings did not. |
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In the early 90's Dove released a two cassette version of Logan's Run as read by the author Willima F. Nolan. This was a nice adaptaion and only cut things when necessary. The cover was printed with a meatlic silver ink which made getting a good scan of it hard. I have never seen another one of these either at flea markets or used books stores making me think that it did not recieve all that much distribution (at least on the west coast). I highly reccomend it if you can find a copy. My wife and I listened to it while on our honeymoon. |
George Clayton at one time was working on a sequel set between the first and second novels. This sequil, tenatively called Jessica's Run was told trhough the eyes of a unique character, and each chapter of the book was represented as a tarrot card dealt by the books narrator. I have a lot more information on this including a brief exceprt I will have to dig out. The last i heard this book was about 1/3 done and that was back in the early 1980's
The second novel "Logan's World" was released in 1976 and has much the same flavor as the original. This booke attempted to set the sotry after the fall of the thinker and the breakdown of society. Thus tying the world of the book and the movie together more closely.
However the third book, released in 1980, has more
of the feeling of a cross between the movie and television series.
Logan's Search is the hardest to find of the three paperbacks having
only the initial printing. All three of the novels were then
reprinted in a trilogy volume that seems to have been printed in
hardbound by a vanity press? This volume featured a long introduction
(current of the time of the writing of the book) by Nolan as well as
cover art by Mr. Nolan. This was later re-printed in softbound with a
very dramatic cover. (shown above on the right)
Nolan also wrote a treatment for the Logan's Run television (the
Thunder Gods (aslo known as the Thunder Sentinels)) series that was
never produced, but was later serialized in the Logan's Run
Organization Of Fans (LROOF) newsletter The Circuit. Later Nolan went
on to adapt the first two novels to the comic form. Wonderful
writing, really bad artist! See the comics
page for more information.
In 2000 Willialm F. Nolan took the plunge into the workd of electronic publishing and put out the first three novels and a new Logan novella called Logan's Return. This novella was in Adobe PDF format. In the fall of 2001 Mr. Nolan pulled the plug on his workd coming out of the Virtual Publishing group and currently all four stories are out of print. In the fall of 2001 Mr. Nolan self published a manuscript of Logan's Return. Each copy was signed and adorned with a drawing of logan by the Author. Shown above, for historical purposes, is one of the advertisemnts banners (there were several designs) promoting the novella, Logan's Return.
William F. Nolan has also written two Sam Space novels. I highly reccomend them. Space for Hire (1971) and Make Room For Space (1987). Also of note is a fantastic horror anthology of some of William F. Nolan's 'ripping' yarns called Dark Universe. Published in 2001 by Stealth Press, this book covers 50 years of stories and you cna really see Mr. Nolan's stule grow and change as the world changed around him. of special note is The Party which is still fascinating after all these years. Read the review here.
