George Clayton Johnson

Died: December 25 2015

GEORGE Clayton Johnson, who has died aged 86, published only two novels and a handful of short stories, and had a solid if not stellar career as a writer for television.

But, almost by accident, he was connected with two of the best-known works of science fiction: the 1976 film of Logan’s Run and the first episode of Star Trek. Either would have secured exalted status at fan conventions, where Johnson was in fact a frequent sight. The combination elevated him to the pantheon.

But in truth, the film of Logan’s Run, set in a dystopia where overpopulation is managed by euthanasia at the age of 30, had only a limited relation with Johnson’s novel, which he co-wrote with William F Nolan in 1967. And though the novel was more sophisticated than the film, it is unlikely that it would be remembered without Hollywood’s intervention.

Not that the movie, with Michael York and Jenny Agutter, was lauded on release. Critics were sniffy, but over the years its camp mid-70s view of futuristic fashions (for nothing dates as quickly as the future) acquired a cult following. Later, there was a television series, and Johnson never gave up hope of a sequel.

His writing the first Star Trek was similarly fortuitous. Two pilot episodes had been made after NBC rejected the first, The Cage. The second, Where No Man Has Gone Before, and several episodes had been recorded before Johnson began working on The Man Trap.

He had been working on another episode, but was brought in to add action to a story about a shape-shifting alien murdering the crew for the salt in their blood. In the end, the script was rewritten by Gene Roddenberry. Both Johnson and the story editor, John Black, thought Roddenberry should have left it as it was, but as the show’s creator, he had the final say. But Johnson kept the screen credit for what became the first ever episode of Star Trek to be broadcast, on September 8 1966.

It was the only thing he wrote for the show that made it to the screen, but he had more luck with The Twilight Zone, at least eight episodes of which featured him as scriptwriter or were based on his ideas.

Outside science fiction, he wrote the treatment for the 1960 Rat Pack heist movie Ocean’s 11, starring Frank Sinatra. But again, little of Johnson’s work actually made it into the screenplays or films, though he did write a novelisation.

George Clayton Johnson was born in a barn outside Cheyenne, Wyoming on July 10 1929, the son of Charles Johnson, who worked on the railroad, as a carpenter’s mate and – according to George – a part-time bootlegger.

His first job was as a shoeshine boy at a hotel, then he was a telegraph operator and draughtsman in the US Army. He followed a girl to Alabama, where he was briefly at college before before dropping out to get married and to try to become a writer.

Johnson fell in with a set of writers in Los Angeles, many of whom worked in film or television and had his first success with a sale to Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1959. Other work included the short film Icarus Montgolfier Wright (1962), written with Ray Bradbury, and episodes of shows such as Wanted Dead or Alive and Kung Fu. In later years, he wrote comics.

He had recently suffered from cancer and died on Christmas Day at North Hills, California.

George Clayton Johnson married, in 1952, Lola Brownstein, who survives him, together with their son Paul and daughter Judy.

ANDREW MCKIE