Customer Reviews

Los Angeles: A.D. 2017

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Novelist Philip Wylie, well known for his pro-conservation stance, wrote the teleplay for the made-for-TV L.A. 2017. Publisher Glenn Howard (Gene Barry) is suddenly whisked away from his plush office in 1971. He finds himself in a world beneath the Earth's surface, circa 2017. The powers-that-be in this subterranean world refuse to answer Howard's many questions as to what has happened on the surface, but audiences familiar with Twilight Zone and Outer Limits should catch on fairly quickly. The only science-fiction installment of the otherwise straightforward TV series Name of the Game, LA 2017 originally aired January 15, 1971. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The book expands on the premise of environmental collapse, and there was a lot of the book that was not filmed, such as the "swinging" corporate conference in the beginning , and a lot of the flashbacks of environmental disasters were also cut do to lack of tech and money, that were never filmed
( gee, we may be living them now ...) and would make a excellent remake today with a large budget, heh, maybe they could even get Steven Spielberg to direct ...


In "L.A. 2017," Glenn Howard is on the way back from a top-secret meeting held by a group of top scientists and industrialists discussing the very serious threats the environment (abused by polution) holds for mankind. Howard, a friend of the President of the United States (who happened to be purposefully left in the dark about the meeting), drives along a rural highway outside of L.A. after the meeting, speaking into a tape recording he is making for the President about the meeting. As he drives, Howard opens the air vent to his automobile, letting a healthy dose of L.A. smog and auto exhaust into his car and lungs, which causes him to pass out at the wheel.

Time passes and Howard is now slumped over the wheel at the roadside, where his crashed auto has been found by a squad of men wearing odd uniforms and gas masks. Howard is awoken and transported across a suddenly foreign looking terrain-a desolate wasteland--to an underground facility. As he is revived, Howard finds himself in a new world, forty-six years in the future!

L.A. is now a small underground outpost where survivors of the ecological catastrophe Howard and the industrialists were discussing in 1971 has come true. After being grilled by the police state (run by psychiatrists!), Howard is indoctrinated into the new society by Dane (Barry Sullivan), the leader of the L.A. branch of the U.S., which is now run by big-business.

As Howard learns more about what has become of society, it becomes apparent that Dane and his cohorts are running things as a big-brother dictatorship (in an oppressive future society not unlike "1984," "THX-1138," "Brazil" (both films share 'well-meaning' terrorist bombings), or Spielberg's own "Minority Report"), where personal freedoms, life, and love are no longer a benefit of freewill...

I THINK IT WOULD BE A BENEFIT TO EVERYONE INCLUDING THE
READER TO READ THIS BOOK. I AM NOT MUCH ON MESSAGES BUT
THIS ONE WILL MAKE YOU THINK WILL KEEPING YOU DEEPLY
ENGROSSED. THAT IS SAYING A LOT BECAUSE I'M A HARD GUY
TO CAPTURE.
GENE ADDINGTON