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A review by beedew
Logan's Run by George Clayton Johnson, William F. Nolan
4.0
It's impossible for me to review this book without drawing comparisons to the movie. I am a fan of the movie. The story stands up against the aged special effects and mediocre acting. The world created in it is a fascinating and original "utopia".
While the movie draws a lot from the book, the film and novel are very much their own entities.
What surprised me most in the book was the quality of the writing. It was poetic and raw. It pulled at the senses so that you were drawn into each of the multitude of environments Logan and Jess "ran" through. The Utopia in the book is, it seems, far larger and more sprawling. It was a bit hard to grasp what the actual population size was, and how it was distributed. The glass domes of the movie had left a strong imprint on my mind that I was using, unsuccessfully, as a reference point.
One of the highlights of the book was Box. Yes, put your chuckles aside you fans of the movie. The movie destroyed an incredible character with their interpretation of Box. I don't want to spoil the book in case you read it, which I do recommend, so I'll just say there is a whole lot of philosophy, beauty and menace intertwined in the veins and wires of that character.
I'm still not certain about the twist at the end of the book. It doesn't seem plausible, and this would be my one criticism.
I said earlier that I was surprised by the quality of writing in the book. Besides its poetics and effective lyricism, it remains sparse, keeping you slightly off kilter throughout. This is a perfect technique to bring the reader directly into the confused state of the characters. We are trying to make sense of shadows as much as they are. The writing, like the ailing utopia Logan and Jess live in, comes across in fissures, often fractured. Paragraphs tend to be short. Descriptions are rendered in a way that is not unlike that of Cormac McCarthy (!). The jungle land of DC feels like a jungle (the book also offers an explanation as to how the nation's capital was reduced to this state).
The entire scene that takes place in the frightfully real, yet robotic, battle in Fredericksburg is mesmerizing. This scene has so much working for it: suspense, metaphor, pure ingenuity of imagination. As write this and think about this scene, along with many others in the book, I am left rather impressed.
While the movie draws a lot from the book, the film and novel are very much their own entities.
What surprised me most in the book was the quality of the writing. It was poetic and raw. It pulled at the senses so that you were drawn into each of the multitude of environments Logan and Jess "ran" through. The Utopia in the book is, it seems, far larger and more sprawling. It was a bit hard to grasp what the actual population size was, and how it was distributed. The glass domes of the movie had left a strong imprint on my mind that I was using, unsuccessfully, as a reference point.
One of the highlights of the book was Box. Yes, put your chuckles aside you fans of the movie. The movie destroyed an incredible character with their interpretation of Box. I don't want to spoil the book in case you read it, which I do recommend, so I'll just say there is a whole lot of philosophy, beauty and menace intertwined in the veins and wires of that character.
I'm still not certain about the twist at the end of the book. It doesn't seem plausible, and this would be my one criticism.
I said earlier that I was surprised by the quality of writing in the book. Besides its poetics and effective lyricism, it remains sparse, keeping you slightly off kilter throughout. This is a perfect technique to bring the reader directly into the confused state of the characters. We are trying to make sense of shadows as much as they are. The writing, like the ailing utopia Logan and Jess live in, comes across in fissures, often fractured. Paragraphs tend to be short. Descriptions are rendered in a way that is not unlike that of Cormac McCarthy (!). The jungle land of DC feels like a jungle (the book also offers an explanation as to how the nation's capital was reduced to this state).
The entire scene that takes place in the frightfully real, yet robotic, battle in Fredericksburg is mesmerizing. This scene has so much working for it: suspense, metaphor, pure ingenuity of imagination. As write this and think about this scene, along with many others in the book, I am left rather impressed.