AD-012-ENF · Book · 1967 · novel
Logan's Run
William F. Nolan & George Clayton Johnson
The machines
A central computer administering a fully automated city.
What people do all day
Nothing whatsoever. Nobody works, nobody needs to, and the days are spent on pleasure, drugs and travel until Lastday arrives at twenty-one and you report for Sleep. The lifespan cap exists because a society with nothing to do had no other way to limit itself.
Pattern
Enforced idleness — Everything is provided, so nothing is left to do — and that turns out to be unbearable.
Note
Cruder than Forster and blunter than WALL·E, and useful precisely for that: it is the only work here where the response to universal leisure is to shorten the life rather than fill it.
Same answer, different work
- The Time Machine · Book, 1895
- The Machine Stops · Book, 1909
- Last and First Men · Book, 1930
- With Folded Hands · Book, 1947
- Childhood's End · Book, 1953
- Uglies · Book, 2005
- Idiocracy · Film, 2006
- WALL·E · Film, 2008