Prolific writer William F. Nolan—best known for co-writing the 1967 novel Logan’s Run with George Clayton Johnson—has died at the age of 93 after a brief hospitalization.
Nolan enjoyed a long career in the world of science fiction fandom. According to his entry in the The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, he co-founded the San Diego Science Fantasy Society, published his first story in If magazine in 1954, and went on to publish dozens of short stories in the years that followed. In addition to writing genre fiction, he also wrote for places like Sports Illustrated, Playboy, and others.
In an obituary for File 770, writer and collaborator Jason V. Brock revealed that he had been hospitalized for an infection, and leaves behind no survivors.
His first novel was Logan’s Run, which he wrote alongside Johnson (who died in 2015), which is set in a dystopian society in 2116 where society mandates that nobody should live beyond the age of twenty-one. The novel follows one member of the society who is a sandman—someone who tracks down those who don’t go willingly to their fates—only to end up going on the run himself.
Nearly a decade after its publication, director Michael Anderson helmed an adaptation, which went on to become a cult hit. It was followed up a year later with a spinoff series by the same name, which lasted for a season.
Nolan ended up writing two additional books in the series to form a trilogy—Logan’s World and Logan’s Search, which follows Logan as he returns to Earth and enters an alternate reality. Nolan also wrote a novella, Logan’s Return, and two additional sequels, Logan’s Journey and Logan Falls (co-written with Paul McComas and Jason V. Brock), although they have yet to be published.
There had been some efforts over the years to remake the film—Nolan recounted the efforts in a blog post back in 2010—with the most recent effort coming in 2016, although nothing seems to have come of that project.
Over the course of his life, Nolan published a number of other books across genres—the Black Mask and Sam Space series—as well as biographies/collections of authors like Max Brand, Dashiell Hammett, and Ray Bradbury.
