The Running Man

By Stephen King as Richard Berman
Rating: Swift
Read: April 2006

When looking for decent shortish novels, both my teacher and my father suggested early Stephen King novels. I was wary of it, since he doesn’t have a great contemporary reputation in my house, but I got this one at the gorgeous Jefferson Market Library and finished it in about 3 days. Despite being broken into very short chunks (Minus 100 and COUNTING… Minus 97 and COUNTING…) it runs very quickly and isn’t something I wanted to put down. I am very pleased.

Ben Richards is a poor man in a crappy future world. His 18 month old daughter Cathy, whose birth was itself something of a miracle, has the flu. He and his wife Sheila don’t have the money for a doctor, let alone medicine, and Cathy’s fever keeps climbing. Sheila has turned tricks in the past, but Richards has had enough. He goes down to the Games studio to try out.

But these are no ordinary game shows. They are vicious, and typically end in death. And Richards is singled out for the most lethal of all: The Running Man. He is portrayed to the audience as a criminal, and then released into the world, where the studio’s Hunters will try to catch him with every means possible and the viewers will call in sightings of him for prize money. They shoot to kill and Richards is not about to die if he can help it.

He’s a lot like Gaiman’s hero in American Gods. Tough, chooses his words carefully, would rather dish the bullshit than take it. But where Gaiman’s guy was pensive, this one is angry.

There is justice at the end, but it’s not exactly happy. Read it. Do it now. Just do it.

…just took a look at the movie… and it looks NOTHING like the book…