William F. Nolan, the science fiction writer best known for co-authoring the 1967 modern classic Logan’s Run and for frequent TV and film collaborations with producer Dan Curtis, died July 15 during a brief hospital stay. He was 93.
His death, attributed to complications from an infection, was announced by his frequent collaborator and friend Jason V Block on Facebook this morning.
A prolific author in various genres, Nolan reached his greatest public notice with Logan’s Run, the sci-fi novel he wrote with George Clayton Johnson. Set in a future world in which overpopulation and limited natural resources prompt society to euthanize everyone at age 21, the book launched a franchise that included sequels, movies — including the hit 1976 adaptation starring Michael York, where the death age was 30 — and a 1977 TV series starring Gregory Harrison.
Though Logan’s Run is by far the most well-known of the thousands of works Nolan published – including novels, articles, short stories, poems, scripts and screenplays – Nolan also enjoyed frequent collaborations with Dark Shadows producer Dan Curtis throughout the 1970s, including the 1976 feature Burnt Offerings starring Karen Black and Bette Davis (Nolan co-wrote the screenplay with Curtis). His TV movies with Curtis include The Norliss Tapes (1973), Melvin Purvis G-Man (1974), The Turn of the Screw (1974) and segments of both 1975’s Trilogy of Terror and its 1996 sequel Trilogy of Terror II.
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Nolan leaves no immediate survivors, though he considered his friends Jason and Sunni Brock to be family. “We’ve been a unit for nearly 15 years, and it has been one of the best times of my life,” Brock quotes Nolan in the Facebook announcement.
