Lessons from Logan's Run

For all you fans of Logan's Run out there (all six or seven of you), you'll sympathize with my current unease: I'm about to turn 30! In a couple short months I'll be saying "so long" to my 20's and embarking on the sobering path to Middle Age. If I were a character in Logan's Run, my Lifeclock (or "palm flower," if you've read the novel) would be red, but gearing up to start flashing red-black-red-black, the signal that I am on LastDay and will have to report to Carousel for "Final Sleep" (aka: euthenasia!). In that realm I would be considered an elder.

If this sounds foriegn to you, I recommend you do yourself a favor and see this film right away. It's one of those set-in-the-way-distant-future post-apocalyptic type sci-fi stories that was dreamed up in the 1960's, when everyone just assumed we'd be riding our hovercrafts to our space-jobs by the year 2000. Published in 1967, it's actually a great social barometer of America's collective consciousness concerning the future in those post-Camelot days: optimistic that the human race will indeed find a way to survive in the face of environmental disaster and overpopulation, but cynical in that these problems are inevitable, and that the way we will accomplish our survival is to give our freedom over to robotic overlords and submit to voluntary suicide rituals when we turn 30 (although in the book it's 21). It's a weird breed: conceived in the 1960's, so it's pretty free-wheelingly groovy, but combined with this totally square sense of judgmental disdain for its characters' hedonistic lifestyle--you get the feeling that the let-the-good-times-roll free sex n' drugs hippy utopia enjoyed by this faux society is (vaguely) preaching some kind of Roman empire kind of lesson (in fact, everybody even wears sexy, color-coordinated togas--although this may be just an elaborate excuse to get Jenny Agutter half naked).

I've been a fan of the 1976 film adaptation (with Michael York as Logan 5!) for a long time. I liked (but was intensely confused by) the 1977 television series (saw it in reruns, out of order, as a kid--before I saw the movie and/or had any idea what the plot was), and I'm currently about 80 pages into the novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. In recognition of my impending 30th birthday (or LastDay, as I will now be calling it) I've decided to make Logan's Run the final pick in my Summer Reading Pool (class starts back next week!). I think it's not only appropriate, but necessary reading for anyone about to become a triagenarian. It may cheer you up when you take a break from the Soylent Green-esque story and realize that, yes, the salad days of your youth are behind you, but hey: you are not required by law to submit to euthanasia for the good of an unsustainable society of flakey LSD-addled swingers. So: silver lining!

P.S. The movie version of Logan's Run also contains my favorite robot character of all times: Box! It took at least 3 viewings to figure out what he was talking about and why he was there, but none of that should bother you. Just sit back, relax, and let the future happen.