Book Review: Logan's World

With the computer system destroyed, Earth has reverted to savagery. Scattered tribes now rule a charred world. Scavengers, who prowl the broken cities. Surviving corps of the elite killers, led by a psychotic ex-Sandman. Sadistic bands of gypsy riders who kill and plunder.

When tragedy strikes his loved ones, Logan sets out on a death-haunted vengeance trail across a ravaged world that leads to a startling confrontation and ultimate destruction.

Logan's World, William F. Nolan's sequel to Logan's Run, was first published by Bantam Books in December of 1977.

I bought this paperback in 1977 when it first came out. I was a huge fan of the film so I wanted more of the story. That copy has long since been lost in the sands of time, but I wanted to revisit the story again to see what I would get from it now forty-five years later.

I found interesting that Nolan started this book with a prologue that basically put the novel-world in the same condition as the film-world (although it was not Logan who ended up causing the downfall of the computers enforcing the life-limit on the human race). I liked too how he continued to reference events and dialogue from the first story here (during Logan's lift-induced visions) to his interactions with Dakk. I also liked how several of the chapters run the narrative in parallel with Logan's actions to find a cure of his son's illness and Jessica's struggles with the outlanders; this helps build the tension.

I felt more for Logan's reactions as a parent now that I have experienced being a parent myself. Those did not resonate with me when first I read this as a pre-teen.

In the end, this was a decent follow-up to the original. It built upon what came before and moved the world and characters along. Like the previous book, the chapters were short and kept the plot progressing. It covered a lot of ground in a short span of pages. Older books tend to do that.