My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I read and enjoyed this sci-fi story back in 1977. I was reading books avidly on the train to and from work in London. I had just left school and was working for a Reinsurance company. I had been watching the American tv show of the same name starring Gregory Harrison and Heather Menzies.
As I started reading the book, I was very surprised at how different it was from the tv show. In the book, the entire world is ruled by a giant computer called The Thinker and in the tv series, a select group of anonymous and hidden old people rule. Also, the book has the people of this dystopian world only being allowed to live until the age of twenty-one as opposed to thirty in the t.v show.
At Twenty-one, these people of the dystopian world report dutifully to a deep sleep shop to be terminated. They have a crystal in the palm of their hand that starts to glow black and red twenty-four hours before their twenty-first birthday. This is Last Day and a citizen must report for termination. If you do not and the crystal turns black, you have broken the law and become a runner.
A runner is a law-breaker who tries to evade termination. The giant computer (The Thinker) picks up the discrepancy and reports the runner instantly to the Sandmen. The Sandmen being a hunter police force who are tasked with the duty of seeking out runners and terminating them as quickly as possible.
Many of the runners believe in a place called Sanctuary. Somewhere that people can escape to and are able to live out their lives for a much longer period. Our anti-hero Logan 3 is a Sandman (policeman) who is tasked with infiltrating the runner's location and finding the mythical place of Sanctuary. But does part of Logan want to run?
He teams up with a beautiful lady runner named Jessica 6. Of course, Logan begins to doubt what he is doing while he is pursued by other Sandmen hell bent on his termination. Also, there are areas where the Thinker's computer system breaks down. Derelict ruins where all sorts of desperate fugitives live.
It was a very seventies decade sci-fi story with the usual dystopian vision of humanities future. It was very enjoyable pulp sci-fi. There have been followed up Logan stories from this original novel.
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