Karel TholeCríticas

Story: 7 / 10
Characters: 6
Setting: 7.5
Prose: 4

Themes: Old, obligation, youth, war, work

An enjoyable short novel that moves fast, as you might expect from what is essentially a long chase. Significantly different from the film.

Though I was incredibly excited about the premise of this book, it ended up being centered around action and fighting instead of the dystopia.

This book was written in 1967, so for an entirely different audience than today, which made the writing style intriguing to look at.

As soon as the premise is established, Logan goes on the run and the book turns into an action story, with chases and racing, gypsies and monsters, various climates, and all types of things that are out to kill the pair. Though they were running because of their age, it really wasn't that different than if they'd been branded murderers or something and then had everyone come after them.

The history behind the premise was a little hard for me to digest. In the year 2000, the population of Earth had hit 6 billion and a movement had started to get everyone to die at 21. The youth eventually overthrew all politicians and city councilmen and took over. Nolan's optimism is cute--while there are a lot of youth, the likelihood of American politicians relinquishing power just like that is laughable. He hit the nail on the head with the population issue though.

Another problem I had with the story was in how society functioned. Kids from 14-21 were considered adults. While I think young adults often get a bad rep, it's hard to imagine them being mature enough for the jobs they needed to perform and to look after the other two-thirds of the population. I often found myself feeling like Logan was a lot older and more jaded than a mere 21-year-old.

It was extremely cool to see the technology that Nolan created for this book. While there's an elaborate transportation system to get people around, cell phones aren't a thing, showing how times have changed. Nolan didn't put much time into describing how this technology worked though, and I got kind of confused by how quickly they warped between scenarios.

My favourite scene was one in which he used a new technology to relive parts of his own life. This was a cool gimmick that allowed me to see what growing up in this world was like without having Logan recount it.

For what it was, this book was a good action story, but I thought the dystopian aspect could have been much stronger. I mainly enjoyed it for its age and different style, but I'm not much of a fan of chases and adventure, so I probably didn't appreciate it to its fullest extent.

Overall, though I won't be reading the sequels, I'm glad I did finally get my hands on a copy of this book.

En el futuro, la superpoblación del planeta exige por ley que la vida acabe a los 21 años. Quienes tratan de huir son eliminados por los Vigilantes. Pero, ¿y si un Vigilante decidiera escapar?

This book is one of his better works.

Edmond Hamilton was a prolific SF writer of the 1920s-1960s He wrote dozens of short stories for the Pulp magazines and over 50 novels during his career. He was also the husband of the more famous writer Leigh Brackett. Most of his work was typical middle grade space adventures but he could churn them out like a machine. Once in a while he would write a really good one. This is one of the good ones. I really liked it.

I really like the base concept of this book, but the writing style is a little too rough for me. It's a quick read with a somewhat disjointed writing style. I never got attached to Logan or Jessica, or got a feel for their characters. I was indifferent during their many perils (and I normally get overly involved while reading). To the book's credit, there's A LOT happening during a mere 24 hours -almost ridiculously so. (You'd almost think Logan's lastday would be used up fairly quickly, given all the times he's rendered unconscious.) Overall: great idea, not so great of a read.

I have a long-running, tongue-in-cheek battle with my wife about the quality of the film version for this story - of course, it's the best sci-fi movie ever produced. Seriously, while the campy effects and stilted writing abound in the film, this is a wonderful and over-looked science fiction classic. Nihilism gone to seed in an apocalypse driven by over-population and under-resourced world. This one deserves a place in the cannon.

5 bones!!!!!

Though it definitely shows its age, Logan's Run is still a fun read. The last time I read this was 38 years ago, at the tender age of 14 and I can still remember being blown away by all the cool futuristic concepts and thinking I'd be on the cusp of changing from blue to red. And my life would be two-thirds over.

There's the interesting staccato narrative, the countdown chapters, the sometimes stream-of-consciousness writing...there's a lot of stuff that wouldn't be caught dead in a book published forty years later.

There's also plot holes. I mean, you have a computer that implants a crystal in your hand that blinks 21 years later to warn you to go to Sleep. Why couldn't the computer--the Thinker--simply implant a kill-switch as well?

Still, for all of that, coming at the story now from a guy who's old enough to be well into his third lifespan by the book's standards, I still enjoyed it, and look forward to the next couple in the series.

Sana, vecchia & godibile FS anni '60.

Real Rating: 2.5* of five

I remembered this book fondly. The summer the film came out, I drove my licenseless buds to the Village Multiplex in Pygge, my 1968 Bonneville. (We'd passed the book around our Scooby-group, drinking it in.) There Michael York cheekboned his way into my, um, heart shall we say, and the rest of the film...and the entirety of the book...faded into insignificance.

Netflix loses the film on January 1st. I figured I'd rewatch it, while I give the book another go; after all, they're part of my formative years, so as I enter the last laps let's look back to the track, eh what?

You would think that, by now, I'd know better.

The book is just plain bad. The prose rises to the dizzying heights of serviceability a couple times, all the way up the slope of passable; the bulk of the 150pp are spent on the Plains of Puerility. A pair of fortyish numpties wrote about a world in which they'd be dead twenty years. It went about as well as that makes it sound. It's sexist, of course; it was ground-breaking for its day because the hedonism of its society isn't particularly concerned about who you do since there are no children born of sexual congress. Makes the property base of marriage pretty useless, so marriage simply isn't.

But the big draw, the martial arts bits, are tame and tedious 50 years on. (It came out in 1967, the film in 1976.) The action scenes are mildly fun. The story's versions of Logan and Francis are in a whole father/son dynamic that never gets much of anywhere because, well, you did see the page count, right? The ending takes place in Space. I won't say why, but it is the trippiest piece of dumbfuckery I can imagine. These guys were tripping when they wrote the ending, there's no other excuse. End it does, however, so I shook my head and started streaming the film.

Rob was here that day. He hadn't heard of the book or the film. He flipped through the book a bit and quietly reshelved it after about ten minutes. "Ready to see the film?" I asked; "not really" was the honest reply. Luckily Michael York is there from the get-go, cheekbones a-jut and body firmly and revealingly encased in a spiffy dark costume. I heard no further nose-sighs from little spoon...until a scene where Logan/Michael dials up a sex worker and gets, on his first try, a man.

"...?!!?..."

"Hey, even *I* had older mentors," I said. "Wait for the robot butcher scene. That's when we get to see Logan and Jessica naked!"

And that is pretty much it. The naked scene isn't him naked, it's just her, and some artfully obscured extras who earned that paycheck; a bit disappointing, but obscured by the fact that the film takes a turn for the idiotic from there on out. We ended up wondering what the hell was the point of this exercise, how far breaking ground can go in keeping a creative endeavor in active circulation. I think it's time to let this one slide into the background and we should pack it away in shredded copies of the awful book it was inspired by but doesn't much resemble.½

Originally published in 1967, Logan’s Run by William F. Nolan is a classic science fiction story that has very little in common with the 1976 film of the same name. The setting is a 23rd century dystopian ageist society where, due to over-population, everyone is put to death at age 21. A person’s age is measured by his embedded palm crystal that changes color every seven years. When it turns black that person is required to turn himself in to be eliminated.

Logan, who is the main character, is a Sandman, an enforcer who hunts and kills anyone who tries to ‘run’ from the society ordered execution. When his hand starts to blink black, he decides to spend his last day trying to infiltrate an underground railroad that helps runners who are seeking Sanctuary. Travelling with a female runner, Jessica 6, the reader can sense that Logan is undergoing a change and that this ‘run’ is becoming very real.

Logan’s Run is not a very long book and with it’s non-stop action sequences, it was a very quick read. It’s very much a product of it’s time (1960’s) and there wasn’t a lot of plot or world building just various chase scenes through a decaying world but it was a fun action/adventure read. I am actually surprised that this book hasn’t been adapted into a graphic novel as I think it would work well in that format.½

A brief, fun dystopian read. I like the way the chapter numbers count down from the beginning of the book. To be fair the book is more fun if you haven't seen the movie.½

Aaaaghhhh I have such mixed feelings about this book.

I remember watching Logan's Run with my dad growing up and being fascinated by the dystopian world. I came across this book randomly on my classic dystopia spree last year and decided to add it to my collection. And in many ways, I'm glad I read it. But it's all hot/cold, yes/no with this book.

1. Back in the 1960s, the world wasn't brimming with dystopias. In fact, science-fiction mostly regulated itself to the B-rated films even then. Star Wars changed that in the 70s and Marvel again in the 2000s, but at the time, there wasn't the populous overload of science-fiction that we have today. Logan's Run is a fascinating and original dystopia way before its time.

2. But on the other hand, the era during which Logan's Run was written is clearly visible in its pages. Sensitivity was far less important in the 1960s, and while this book is certainly not the strongest example of racism, Logan runs into a group of "gypsies". This would be more tolerable if the word were just used, but the group strongly resembles the vision of Native Americans circa Disney's Peter Pan and it's pretty inexcusable. From the dialect to the drug-induced haze (requiring an antidote or you'll die!) this story could have gone entirely without that scene.

3. The world building here otherwise is pretty good. Considering the fact that this is written 50 years ago, Logan's world doesn't feel old-fashioned or disjointed. Writing a futuristic science-fiction novel where the world building holds up half a century later is no small feat.

4. But I do have one nitpick with a world building choice - the way Logan's Run works is that all individuals are euthanized at age 21. I understand that within this context, maturity is different and laws would be different... but we don't live that way in our society, so looking in felt sort of uncomfortable at times. For example: very uncomfortable when Logan goes to a brothel and is propositioned by a thirteen-year-old. Again, within the laws of this world's aging design, Logan would have been the equivalent of an 88-year-old and she would have been 52, in comparing to actual human life expectancies verses their controlled environment... but still... no.

5. The complexities of Logan's character are interesting, and we get a great sense of his inner struggle between finding purpose and survival. This train of thought makes for a decent twist near the end, actually.

6. But in comparison, Jessica is a useless pile of dead weight that Logan carries along only because she was also running and had a key? Through the entire book, I couldn't come up with a better reason for him to keep this character along. Johnson and Nolan certainly didn't waste any time giving her depth or interest, so she might as well be a robot.

7. Considering the fact that this book is about a run - a journey - the pacing is incredibly fast and you are bulleted into a lot of different, fascinating worlds. This is awesome to keep interest to the story and further explore the world building. The zig-zag nature of their travels is also important to the falling structure of society. I personally enjoyed the Molly stop the best, and wanted to see more there.

8. But also because of this fast pacing, you barely have time to acclimate to one setting before - BAM! - you're shot off across from the depths of the Pacific Ocean to the Black Hills of Dakota and I don't really understand how the maze works or how the cars can move that quickly through the elements without danger when the platforms themselves are falling apart? I felt like I was on a rollercoaster ride and I just needed to breathe and unravel the threads but NOPE, off again.

9. At the end, the authors threw in three character twists and the best and my absolute favorite was that of Ballard's identity. This was definitely not in the film and something I didn't expect at ALL. Literally, the twist came in the last five pages and I was really, really pleased with it.

10. But the OTHER twist (I think this was supposed to be a twist) was so underwhelming that I'm simply going to reveal it to you. It was so inconsequential that I just sort of shrugged and shooed Jessica off to go do things somewhere else. Right at the end, while Logan is dealing with his twist, Jessica announces in a whine that she cannot leave because she loves Logan. So, um, I guess that was supposed to be a romantic subplot? The romantic subplot did not work.

So, can you see my dilemma? It was a good story, but it was hindered by the authors and the period in which it was written. The entire time I was reading this, all I could think was that it really needed to be rewritten in a modern voice with the same world and concept because the idea and the story were good, but there were ruinous moments and flat characters and I am all sorts of frustrated with how good/bad this was.

Do I have this right? Having fought and won a war arising from outrage at government restrictions on the number of children people may have, the world's youth impose its solution to population explosion and famine by ending life at twenty-one? Certainly, a creative approach to keeping one's fate from the hands of an older generation. Loved this book before the age of twenty-one; still enjoy well after.

Loved the movie, but the book was better!

The Weapon from Beyond by Edmond Hamilton is start of the Starwolf trilogy. The trilogy was the inspiration for the 1978 Japanese series Star Wolf (Sutaurufu). In turn, the series was dubbed and cut together into two TV movies, Fugitive Alien and Fugitive Alien 2. These two films were then re-edited and riffed as two different episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. It is this final version that I was first introduced to Edmond Hamilton's trilogy.

After many times of watching the MST3K versions with the many many Kens, I decided it was time to read the source material. I was curious to see if the original version was as nonsensical as the final iteration.

"Ken" turns out to be Morgan Chase, a Star Wolf, who ends up in the service of some mercenaries. They are after the "weapon from beyond" to prevent it from getting into the wrong hands, or perhaps to sell it to the highest bidder.

Most of the story is Morgan's reaction to meeting all sorts of different aliens. Except, they aren't exactly aliens. Turns out humanity has spread across the galaxy and evolved into different adaptations for survival. The Earthling version is the boring, less evolved version.

So basically the way the mercs, who are all humans because it's the only job out there for them, get the job done, is they disguise themselves as the other human subspecies. I guess that explains the blond wigs all the Kens were wearing?

Although there are two other books I don't think I'm going to continue with them. The adventures are too episodic and there's too much time spent on wondering about all the different cultures and the dangers of being an Earth human.

Very good book. An interesting and creative take on the future of mankind. Better than I expected it to be, considering that it was published in 1967. Often times, I find older works dated. Not this one. If anything, it feels still ahead of its time.

The reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is just because there is more exposition and description that I usually like. Although, I guess a story like this requires quite a bit of exposition. Even so... Fuck exposition in its dirty asshole. If I want something explained, I'll use my fucking imagination.

I decided to read this based upon my enjoyment of the campy/cheesy movie by the same name. This book is totally unlike the movie. Much of it is not only poorly written, but terribly dated. Although I finished reading the story, I did not enjoy it.½

This story came to life for me when the movie came out and Jenny Agutter showed the world (and a teenage me) what she was made of (forget the innocence of The Railway Children)

An interesting premise but the clumsy storytelling and gaping plot holes ruin it. If you want a not-fully-fleshed-out fun science fiction book based on great ideas, I strongly recommend something by [a:ASIMOV ISAAC|5105497|ASIMOV ISAAC|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg] instead. [b:I, Robot|41804|I, Robot |Isaac Asimov|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1298423276s/41804.jpg|1796026] or [b:Foundation|29579|Foundation (Foundation, #1)|Isaac Asimov|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266454691s/29579.jpg|1783981] are both decent places to start for light reading, as is Bradbury's [b:The Martian Chronicles|76778|The Martian Chronicles|Ray Bradbury|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170899683s/76778.jpg|4636013]. If you want heavier fare you might as well just (re)read [b:Brave New World|5129|Brave New World|Aldous Huxley|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41SJW829TEL._SL75_.jpg|3204877].

Interesting and enjoyable story. I picked it up because I live in the Black Hills and heard that the area came up in the story, which is fairly unusual for us out here. I'm intrigued by fiction based on theories of eugenics, and found this premise interesting and entertaining, but no easier to believe than some of the other stories I've read on the subject (Vonnegut comes to mind). I also thought there were a few gaps where clarity was sacrificed to the speed of the tale. I'm not at all sure what Hell was doing in there, and Logan's ultimate change of heart was a little confusing. Jessica's character served as little more than a damsel in distress, whom Logan had to protect and learn to love, but who, for her own part, did and accomplished almost nothing to earn his love. I want to have liked this book more, but... well, there are few books in the world I think need more pages than they already have, but maybe this was one of them.

This might be the worst book I have read this year.

Here is the plot: In a dystopian future world, nobody should live for more than 21 years. They should go to ‘Sleep’. Logan who is a sandman - policeman of the future - who catches the ‘runners’ (people who run instead of going to ‘Sleep’ when their time has come), decides to become a ‘runner’ himself when it is his time to die.

End of the Story. Really.

William F. Nolan never thought beyond this point. Even the end could not salvage this wreck of a novel. It felt forced and cheesy.

I have read grocery lists better written and more interesting than this abomination.

3.5 stars.

I went ahead and picked up this book because of the review I read on tor.com. I've seen the movie a couple of times and I do like it, but the book is better than the movie.

It's not better by a whole lot, so there is no "ZOMG, you've *GOT* to read the book" feeling, but the book is a solid good read. It's dated, it is about the plethora of baby-boomers and the potential population stresses, afterall. But it's a decent read, a fast paced sci-fi thriller with a lot of interesting ideas and vibrant landscape to it.

3.5 stars.

I went ahead and picked up this book because of the review I read on tor.com. I've seen the movie a couple of times and I do like it, but the book is better than the movie.

It's not better by a whole lot, so there is no "ZOMG, you've *GOT* to read the book" feeling, but the book is a solid good read. It's dated, it is about the plethora of baby-boomers and the potential population stresses, afterall. But it's a decent read, a fast paced sci-fi thriller with a lot of interesting ideas and vibrant landscape to it.

Classic Science fiction.