Showing posts with label Logan's Run. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Logan's Run. Show all posts

Thursday, September 26, 2019

Logan’s Search (Logan’s Run #3)


Logan’s Search, by William F. Nolan
October, 1980  Bantam Books

“With this volume the Logan trilogy is complete.” So claims author William Nolan in a brief but somewhat self-congratulatory Preface, which is funny given that in the second volume he promised to keep Logan “running for a long time.” I guess Nolan must’ve plumb run out of ideas, thus a potentially long-running series was changed to a “trilogy.” Logan’s Search would be proof of Nolan’s paucity of ideas for this particular character and his world, given that it’s basically a rewrite of Logan’s Run. I have to admit though…perversely enough, Logan’s Search turned out to be my favorite book in the trilogy!

It’s some time after Logan’s World, at least nine months, as we’re informed at the outset that Jessica is in the late terms of pregnancy. It will be a boy, and she’s finally succeeded in convincing Logan that they should name the child Jaq, after their previous son – ie the young boy who was almost casually killed in the previous book. Humorously, Jaq is mentioned more here than he was in the entirety of Logan’s World. It’s almost as if Nolan realized, “Wait a second – I killed Logan’s kid in the previous book. That’s kind of a big deal!” Whereas Logan and Jessica practically took the loss of their prepubescent son in stride in Logan’s World, here we finally get a bit of emotional content from both characters, particularly Logan.

I say “particularly Logan” because once again he’s the star of the show and Jessica’s cast out of the narrative. Actually, this Jessica, ie the one we know from Logan’s Run, is cast out of the narrative, but more on that anon. If you’ll recall, Jaq was murdered and Jessica was adbucted and abused in Logan’s World because our “hero” Logan just flat-out abandoned them, not even leaving them with a gun for protection. Well folks you’d think Logan would’ve learned his lesson from all that. But nope. Because as Logan’s Search opens, someone from Chicago flies in, says his people have plenty of medicine but hardly any food, and strikes up a bargain with Logan’s D.C. commune. Logan offers to fly the food to Chicago and return with the meds, given the Chicago guy’s injuries prevent him from making a return trip. That’s right – Logan once again plain abandons Jessica, though I guess this time at least she’s with a community.

One thing I should mention is that Nolan thankfully decides to describe things this time around. Logan’s World approached the vibe of an outline at times, with hardly anything described or explained. Logan flew in a “paravane” and the reader was expected to come up with his own interpretation of what the hell a paravane even was, let alone looked like. So we get a little more depth of description here, as well as more of a glimpse into Logan’s thoughts and feelings. Characters and costumes still aren’t much described, but then the book runs to around 150 pages so again my impression is Nolan’s intent was to deliver something quick.

On the way to Chicago Logan is zapped onto the massive spaceship of glowing, amorphous aliens. Hey, it could happen! These beings draft Logan into going to an alternate Earth, one that’s ten years behind Logan’s Earth and thus still enforces “Lastday” and the like – life is gloriously hedonistic but ends at 21. It’s the same as Logan’s Earth of ten years before, the aliens explain, but subtly different – enough so that Nolan can pretty much rewrite Logan’s Run but not be accused of plagiarizing himself. Here there’s no Sanctuary, but there is a thing called “Godbirth,” in which select Sandmen are afforded the mysterious opportunity to live beyond 21. The alternate-Logan is about to be granted this privilege, but the aliens have frozen him and want to send Logan to the alternate Earth in his place: his goal to destroy the system.

Logan doesn’t have much choice. These godlike aliens tell him it’s either do the job or be erased or something; he’ll never see Jessica or his soon-to-be-born son unless he goes to the other Earth and destroys the System…in two weeks! The aliens, who are humorously omniscient and omnipotent but somehow unable to alter the course of this alternate Earth on their own, warn Logan against meeting the alternate Jessica. They also don’t know what makes this alternate Earth so different from Logan’s, claiming there’s some sort of supernatural element at play which prevents Sanctuary, Ballard, or the other resistance movements that allowed Logan to help topple the system of his own world.

Here we return to the first half of Logan’s Run, which was by far my favorite part of that book (and the movie), in that it occurs in a psychedelicized future of pleasure domes and rampant hedonism. Nolan downplays the latter element this time, even though when Logan comes to on this alternate world he’s in bed with a dancer named Phedra, and ends up giving her some mostly off-page good lovin’ (“He thrust into her” being the extent of it). But again I had a hard time buying this Logan’s Run world of the novels, given that everyone is under 21. The movie got it so much more correct by increasing the age cutoff to 30. Nolan himself seems to forget at times that no one here is over 21. 

Logan, who by the way has been made to look younger by those omnipotent aliens, has a hard time adjusting to this alternate Earth. He’s once again a Sandman but is sickened by the job. And he’s once again hanging out with best bud and fellow Sandman Francis, who of course became Logan’s enemy in Logan’s Run. He’s also overwhelmed with his task, and has no idea how to take down this system in such a short time with no Sanctuary, Ballard, or etc. He’s again in the Angeles Complex, same as in the first book, but this time he’s about to undergo the mysterious Godbirth ritual; he hopes he can use this to destroy the system. As mentioned there’s more emotional content this time and Logan’s driven by the desire to see Jessica again and to be there for the birth of the second Jaq.

The novel follows the course of the first book. Logan and Francis chase a Runner, one who turns out to be Jessica’s brother, and same as in Logan’s Run he dies. Then Logan, despite the aliens’s warning, seeks out Jessica – who has heard of the great Logan and doesn’t seem much bothered that her brother is dead. She engages him in some good lovin’ that’s entirely off-page. Jessica seems to be like the version Logan is married to on his Earth, but her lack of care about her brother turns him off. But here the minor variations begin. Logan’s hauled off by some cops on suspicion of carrying an illegal drug called “death dust” (aka cocaine), and it’s clearly a setup thanks to sluttish dancer Phedra. Jessica is also accused and summarily punished alongside Logan.

Once again we’re pulled out of the more-interesting future world and sent into random, arbitrary plot detours, same as the previous two books. First Logan and Jessica are chased across the Serengeti by massive robot ants. Then Jessica reveals that it was she who set Logan up, in revenge for killing her brother – her icy carelessness about his death was just an act. However she didn’t plan to get set up herself. She also didn’t plan to fall in love with Logan. After several adventures the two make their way to Moscow, where the aliens have told Logan he can find a local contact, Kirov. This part is incredibly arbitrary, as Logan must steal a Sandman Gun for Kirov, and this leads to a humorous bit where Logan tricks a trusting robot that’s responsible for the Guns. After this Logan ventures to Jamaica, where he fights off barracudas to save a nearly-drowned Francis(?).

Meanwhile Jessica’s hit her Lastday, same as in the first book, but another pair of Sandmen go after her when she runs. Like other female Runners, though, she disappears before they can set in on her; we don’t see this happen, just hear about it when Logan asks the Sandmen what happened. They claim Jessica vanished. Meanwhile it’s finally time for Godbirth, which sees Francis and Logan being plied with drugs and taken to Egypt. I forgot, those thoughtful aliens also implanted Logan with defenses against drugs, despite which he goes on a chapter-long trip which sees snatches of surreal events taking place, similar to the stuff in Logan’s World when Logan was high on R-11.

The last quarter reminds me of Zardoz; Logan and Francis are whisked up to a secret floating city above the clouds, ruled by an older guy named Sturdivent. Like the “gods” in Zardoz, Sturdivent has surrounded himself with the great works of antiquity – he’s even had the Great Pyramid taken apart and rebuilt for him in his palace. Former Sandmen are at his beck and call as mind-controlled vassals. And those missing female Runners are now his “Dreamers,” kept in stassis and only brought out when Sturdivent wants some female company for the night. Of course, Jessica’s one of the Dreamers, and Logan makes prompt plans to save her, making various excuses for Francis.

Francis acts as a deus ex machina throughout the final quarter, turning out to be on Logan’s side and helping him figure out how to get around Sturdivent’s inner chambers. This is all explained in the climax, which first sees the head of the Sphinx getting sheared off by Sturdivent’s city as it crashed down into Egypt, then has Francis revealing his own story to Logan. Here Logan learns that those wily aliens were lying to him all along, and tells Jessica he’ll probably never get home despite their promises. I suspected Nolan was headed for a ‘70s-mandatory downbeat ending…but it’s the ‘80s now, baby!

Instead Logan’s first zapped back to the alien ship, then back to his own Earth, where he discovers that no time at all has passed. In fact Jessica wonders why he hasn’t left for Chicago yet! Logan has finally learned his lesson, though, and brings Jessica along with him. We don’t get to see the new Jaq, as here Nolan ends the tale, thus also ending the “trilogy.” Someone commented on one of my earlier reviews that there was a Logan short story many years later, and maybe some other planned novels, but these three books will be sufficient for me. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy Logan’s Search, as there was just a goofy charm to it, but I’d still rather watch Logan’s Run than ever read this trilogy again.

Thursday, January 25, 2018

Logan's World (Logan's Run #2)


Logan's World, by William F. Nolan
December, 1977  Bantam Books

Ten years after Logan’s Run, William Nolan returned to the character he had created in July, 1963 (per the Author’s Afterward of this book); this time he wrote the book without a co-author, and picked up hero Logan 3’s life ten years after the events of the previous book. My assumption was Nolan was trying to catch fire, what with Logan’s Run the film coming out the year before and Logan’s Run the TV series (which was very short lived) coming out the same year as this book. But it does not appear that Logan’s World resonated as strongly as its predecessor did.

The original book was almost two halves; the first was about Logan in his psychedelicized future world, playing Sandman and slowly gaining a conscience. The second half was a series of mostly disconnected adventures, with Logan and new “pairmate” Jessica 6 running around their strange post-nuke world, being chased by other Sandmen and encountering a host of bizarre “outcasts,” all of whom wanted to kill them. Of the two halves, I vastly preferred the first, even more so in the film version, which as I stated in my review I also preferred to the source novel. So you can imagine my dismay that, for the most part, Logan’s World follows the vibe of the second half of Logan’s Run, with Logan running around a post-nuke Earth and encountering a variety of bizarre “outcasts” and former Sandmen, all of whom are out for his blood.

Nolan has published many, many novels, and is well respected in the sci-fi field, but I’m having a hard time connecting with his writing. I’m not the type of reader who needs every little thing spelled out for me, but boy, Nolan really expects his readers to do a lot of heavy lifting. Hardly anything is described, and what is described is done so in the vaguest manner possible. Most characters and items aren’t described at all – for example, Logan spends the first half of the book flying around the country in a “paravane,” and I had no idea what the thing was supposed to look like. But then it seems description would’ve made the book longer, and Nolan appears to have been going for speed, and thus brevity; the novel is filled with single-line paragraphs and in many ways comes off more like an outline than an actual completed novel.

Another hindrance to my enjoyment: the reader can’t help but feel, through the first quarter or so of Logan’s World, that he has missed an earlier sequel. It’s ten years on and all kinds of stuff has happened – Logan and Jessica escaped to the moon colony Argos, where they had a son, Jaq, but over the years the ships bringing the food stopped coming and famine has resulted in most all of Argos being dead, and now Logan and family have come back to Earth, ten years after the last novel, to survive. And six years ago Ballard, the guy who got Logan to the sanctuary of Argos and saved so many others, came down to Earth, destroyed the AI construct “the Thinker,” and thus broke down the entire roboticized civilization of America, sacrificing himself.

But all the above is slowy eked out in the fast-moving narrative, to the point that nothing has any impact. We’re caught up on important things almost in hindsight. For example, we’re told Logan and Jessica have a son, and the next page we’re told he’s already dying of an Earth-borne virus his Argos-raised body has no natural defenses against. For that matter, Jaq has like a line or two in the book, and makes no connection with the reader, and thus his fate, while terrible, doesn’t have the impact it should. We don’t even know for sure what happened to Ballard until midway through. But anyway all the stuff I liked so much about the first half of Logan’s Run is gone; when Ballard killed the Thinker and shut down the mechanisms that ran society, all that stuff like the “hallucimils” and the domed cities and whatnot ceased to be. Indeed, the city people are now known, goofily enough, as “the Wilderness people.”

Logan when we meet him is squatting in an old colonial mansion on the Potomac, fretting over his rapidly-dying son. Logan is not re-introduced to us with much fanfare, however he is consumed with guilt over his Sandman past. There are many scenes throughout where he will flash back or dream about a past Sandman kill, constantly reminding himself that he had no choice at the time. Local Wildnerness People leader Jorath tells Logan that a certain serum could cure young Jaq, but it’s a hot commodity on the black market; Logan will have to venture into the crime-ridden area of “the Arcade” to find any.

So Logan pulls the first of many dumb stunts in the novel, plumb leaving Jessica and Jaq to their own defenses, without even a weapon – Logan we learn threw away his own “Gun” (ie his Sandman Gun, always capitilized), and he himself goes into Arcade on his “paravane” with nothing to defend himself. Right on cue, a gang of “outcasts,” dressed in lace and Florentine styles and dubbing themselves “the Borgias” move in on the colonial mansion, abduct Jessica, kill Jaq (the cardinal pulp rule broken in like the first twenty pages – ie a kid is killed), and make off with their booty. We will later learn that Jessica is repeatedly raped and gang-raped and even lez-raped, given Borgia leader Lucrezia’s sapphic impulses. Gee, I wonder why this one wasn’t made into a movie, too?

Logan, after being chased by various thugs, gets the serum, only to get back home and find the corpse of his son. A harrowing moment, but one that is ruined by the terse, outline-esque treatment the novel receives. Worse yet, Logan hardly even reflects over the boy, and when he does occasionally think of him, it is to fuel his rage. Folks, my son turns a year old tomorrow, and if something God forbid were to happen to him, I don’t think I’d be capable of rushing into action for revenge, at least not as promptly as Logan does. I mean, you’d think the dude would be just a little upset. But then Logan is just a cipher, really. He’s out for blood and wants to get Jessica back, too. So he does what any other former Sandman would do, finds an old Runner named Andar who happens to be a seer, and who looks into his mind and tells Logan that Jessica has been taken to the Florida Keys!

Nolan also isn’t much for paying off on reader expectations; we want to see Lucrezia and her sadistic underlings pay, and pay bloodily. But when Logan sows his vengeance, wielding a newly-acquired Sandman Gun and blasting away with undescribed rounds like “Flamers” and “Rippers,” it’s merely rendered as: “It was over very quickly. In a pain-blurred rage, Logan killed them all.” That’s it, folks. I mean, I would’ve liked to have seen a few “Rippers” to the crotches of the rapists, and maybe some special torment for the bastard who killed Jaq. But it’s this very outline-esque vibe that undermines the novel throughout. Oh, and Lucrezia, before meeting her own quickly-rendered fate, informs Logan that Jessica is dead.

Well, we’re not even a quarter of a way through the novel yet, so that’s not good – I mean Logan’s already lost his wife and his kid. So eventually he hits on the idea of dosing himself with R-11, a drug that, in the old days, was used in special “Re-Live” parlors. R-11 allows users to re-live their lives, but the parlors gave exact doses that allowed specific moments to be re-lived; Logan wants to take a heroic dose and lose himself in the past, forever. He has to go all the way to “the New York Complex” to find any of the expensive and rare stuff; it’s in the hands of a woman named Lacy 14, who runs a black market empire from a building that still functions, given that it was not connected to the Thinker in the old days and thus didn’t shut down when Ballard destroyed the AI.

The novel is a bit more spicy than its predecessor, not that we get much detail or anything – Logan just gets laid a lot more. Lacy’s demanded “payment” for the R-11 is to watch Logan screw two sexy black women; Logan decides, what the hell, to “lose himself in flesh” and complies. The act happens off-page. In return, Lacy gives Logan a “full dex” of the drug, as well as a room to occupy for his trip. The novel takes a psychedelic turn as we get fractured moments from Logan’s past, presented wily-nily, from his childhood to his Sandman days to finally his time with Jessica and Jaq. But meanwhile Lacy has decided to kill Logan for his Gun (not sure why she can’t just take it, as he’s comatose from the drug), and poisons the room.

Logan’s ass is saved by the telepathic aid of Dia, beautiful blonde daughter of Andor. He gets his Gun, maybe kills Lacy (he shoots her with a “Tangler,” which I guess is maybe a net?), and escapes. But the reader questions why Logan even wants to live. His goal with R-11 was to escape this horrible new world without his wife and kid, and to live in the past. So why should he be concerned he’s going to die? Actually, he would die while in the re-live grip of the R-11, ie with his family again, so wouldn’t death be exactly what he’d want at that moment? But Nolan hopes the reader won’t think of this.

Instead, Logan goes and lives in a coral castle along the sea with Dia and her equally-beautiful sister. I mean why not?? More off-page sex for Logan, who is so consumed with the telepathic women that he’s about to give in to their requests that he deny his actual sight and join them in full telepathy, blinding himself via a large mirror(!?). Once again someone shows up just in the nick of time to save Logan’s ass; Wildnerness leader Jorath, who brings word that Jessica is alive, after all. Lucrezia Borgia was lying, in a vain attempt to save her life.

The final quarter of the novel is comprised of Logan freeing Jessica from the grip of Gant, a former Sandman who has gathered together an army of former Sandmen, all of whom still hate Logan for his treachery in the first book. And Gant, we’re told, has long been Logan’s archenemy. Gant might be black; I’m not sure, again due to Nolan’s vague descriptions, which merely inform us that Gant is almost seven feet tall and has “dark, burnished skin,” whatever that means. He also has replaced his teeth with rubies. He makes his base on Crazy Horse mountain, in the Dakotas, a familiar setting from the previous book, as here was the home of the Thinker, which sprawled across entire acres. Now Gant is repairing the computer with the intent of taking over the world anew.

Meanwhile he has purchased Jessica, from Lucrezia Borgia of course, and uses her to taunt Logan. Our hero again comes off poorly, captured promptly and thrust into a “stormroom,” where he is battered by artifcially-controlled elements to the point of insanity and incontinence. Gant tosses the near-vegetable Logan into a cave with Jessica, who tends to him, and periodically shows up to force Jessica to whip Logan for his amusement. Weird, wild stuff, as my man Johnny Carson would say. 

But Logan’s saved again, this time courtesy Mary-Mary, a teen girl who apparently once met Jessica, back when the City was still alive. She’s part of a resistance movement dedicated to stopping Gant. The finale sees an incredibly drawn-out sequence in which a healed Logan marshals a strike force against Gant’s men, with the intent of destroying the Thinker (again). Meanwhile various characters are captured anew, forcing periodic rescue attempts. The finale goes down as expected, with Gant’s plot foiled and the Thinker again destroyed – blown up real good.

“I intend to keep [Logan] running for a long time to come!” Nolan assures us in the Author’s Afterward, but as it turns out, only one more novel was forthcoming: Logan’s Search, in 1980. Perhaps the failure of the TV series, coupled with the failure of this novel to attain the fame of its predecessor, soured him on the idea of doing much more.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Logan's Run


Logan's Run, by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson
May, 1976  Bantam Books
(Original publication 1967)

I really enjoy the 1976 film Logan’s Run: the kitsch, the camp value, the retro sci-fi style and design. I’ve even got it on Blu Ray. Mostly though I love how it plays up on the psychedelic fallout of the 1960s, with sequences of hallucinogenic excess – Logan and his friends getting high on some sort of red smoke in Logan’s ultra mod pad, or Logan and Jessica 6 fighting their way through the delirium of the psychedelicizing love mists during their escape from the City.

So imagine my surprise to find none of that stuff in the source novel. This is one of the few cases where I can say the film version is better than the novel -- much better. (Another instance would be 2001: A Space Odyssey.) Published in 1967, Logan’s Run is straight-up pulp sci-fi, 150 pages of clunky narrative and paper-thin characters. It bears little relation to the film other than the theme, but even that is slightly different.

Anyone who has seen the film knows the story: in this ultra-mod 23rd Century, there’s an enforced life cutoff when you reach 30 years of age. As goofy as that concept is, the source novel is even goofier; here the life sentence ends at a mere 21. Obviously then the novel is a wild extrapolation of the Youth Movement of the 1960s, taken to insane and illogical extremes, but still…it’s very hard to imagine a world being run by those under 21. The film was at least slightly more believable in this regard.

We meet Logan as he’s a ripe old 21, soon to experience his LastDay, after which he must voluntarily submit himself to Sleep, ie death. But that’s it, here. None of the Carousel stuff from the film, where LastDay supplicants would put on white costumes with weird hockey masks and walk around, hoping to be zapped and reincarnated (or whatever the hell was going on in that scene). The book does have the famous crystal flower implanted in the hands of each character’s hands, and when they go black the person is ready to die. If they don’t voluntarily go to Sleep, then Logan, a Sandman, is called in to waste them.

Our hero is a bit more troubled in the novel. As you’ll recall in the film version he has a few years added to his life by the City computer, as a ruse to go undercover among the radicals; again, nothing like this is in the novel. Instead, Logan begins to fear his imminent mortality, so he is intrigued by the mention of “Sanctuary” on the lips of a Runner who is killed by gang members before Logan can get to him.

The dead Runner had a twin sister, Jessica 6, and Logan attempts to track her down. This entails a bit of action within the City, which turns out to be Los Angeles, though it is not the self-contained world as seen in the film. The novel operates on a much larger scale, with Logan shuttling around the entire country; the City of the novel is not closed off from the rest of the world like in the movie, and there’s no mention of the world beyond being a nuclear wasteland.

Indeed, we briefly learn that this world of the novel was created by Youth Movement riots, which blew up in 2000, resulting in a mass youth overtaking of the world, with the guru leader of the movement choosing to end his own life at 21, and his acolytes following suit. The unstated idea being that, since old people created the mess that was the 20th century, then an old-free world would be a much more pleasant place.

The psychedelic haze of the film is still here, if a bit subdued; within the first few pages Logan has visited a “hallucimill” where he ingests a favored LSD concoction, before stopping by a glasshouse orgy den where he has sex with some random female amid flashing hallucinogic lights. But this stuff is brief, and not played out as it is in the film. (And the sex scenes, by the way, are barely there; a quick mention of some girl and the authors fade to black.)

The authors also have a bit of trouble determining Logan’s motivations. He at first becomes interested in Sanctuary because his own LastDay is fast approaching, but later he mentions that his goal is to find the place and destroy it, so he can go to Sleep in a blaze of glory. Whatever the reason, the novel follows the same angle as the film, here, with Logan following a batch of clues to find the mysterious location that is Sanctuary.

It’s after Logan escapes the City, with Jessica in tow, that the book really veers off into its own thing. For one, Jessica and Logan don’t meet until immediately before they escape; the producers wisely built up their relationship in the film. But as mentioned the novel operates on a broader global sweep, and soon enough Logan and Jessica are taking Mazecars to various destinations, from an abandoned factory beneath the sea to a spot in the midwest upon which stands a colossal statue of an American Indian warrior.

The narrative portion here seems excised from the material that came before. Logan’s quest is lost for a bit and it becomes a sequence of unrelated action scenes, Logan and Jess showing up at some abandoned spot, meeting the locals, and getting into a battle. And sadly these action scenes are pretty dumb, not to mention goofy, particularly one where they meet a teenage gang that could’ve come straight out of Doomsday Warrior, their 16 year-old Attila the Hun giving Logan a trio of gorgeous women in exchange for a night with Jessica. (Humorously enough, while Logan partakes of the favor, Jessica keeps the gang leader at bay.)

Along the way Logan and Jessica are followed by Francis, Logan’s former Sandman colleague. Jessica and Logan meanwhile develop the expected feelings for one another, but the authors don’t have anything happen between them, despite their vows of love for each other late in the game. The romance element is just as harried and dashed off as the action.

In the ruins of Washington, DC Logan meets Ballard, legendary leader of the Runners, an actual “old” man at 42. But unlike in the film he’s not some wizened sage, and instead tries to kill Logan, just for being a Sandman. Another escape, more unrelated action stuff, and Logan and Jessica end up in the Florida Keys, where they discover that “Sanctuary” is a space station orbiting around Mars, and Francis is really Ballard (who poses in various Cities to monitor potential Sanctuary candidates), and Logan and Jessica hop on board the rocket and it takes off. The end.

So then, none of the payoff stuff from the film is here – no triumphant return to the City, no confrontation with the diseased computer which runs the place. Like I wrote above, the film is just so much better thought out and entertaining, and publisher Bantam doesn’t help out the authors by inserting 16 pages of photos from the film in glorious color into the book; one can’t help but compare these shots – which detail incidents that don’t even occur in the novel – to the book itself, and find the book lacking.

William Nolan penned the sequel by himself: Logan’s World, which not-so-coincidentally was published in 1976, the year the film came out. He followed this up with Logan’s Search in 1980. During a trip to a local used bookstore the other day I picked up all three novels for a pittance; I’ve read that Logan’s World in particular is in a men's adventure novel vein, so I’m looking forward to it.

If you'd like to see a similar concept given much better treatment, be sure to check out Peter Breggin's After The Good War.