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Book Review: The Running Man September 7, 2007
I'm a sucker for near future dystopia stories. Many of you may be familiar with the 1987 film of the same name starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, but this book by Stephen King (writing under the pen name of "Richard Bachman") upon which the movie was supposedly based bears only superficial similarities. It's actually much better.
When antisocial working man Ben Richards becomes desperate for money to treat his sick baby and save his wife from a life of prostitution, he turns to the Games Federation. The Federation offers those grasping at straws a chance at riches through competition in one of their sadistic TV game shows. Lesser shows may let contestants (try to) outswim crocodiles or challenge those with heart conditions run on a treadmill until they have a coronary, but Richards's physical and mental abilities land him a spot on The Running Man, the most popular and most deadly show of them all. The rules are simple: Richards will be set loose and then chased across the dystopian U.S. by a group of "hunters" who will murder him on live television when they catch up with him. The longer contestants stay alive, the more money they earn for their next of kin. In order to keep The Running Man from turning into The Hiding in a Hole Man, participants also have to break from cover and use the Postal service to mail in short videotaped diary entries. The balance of the book traces Richard's flight from and eventual fight with the Games Network.
King actually does a pretty good job of pulling together a few different themes here. I liked how instead of using convicts for the games, The Games Network took in a steady stream of volunteers who don't understand that their misery is being propagated by the very forces they support --sometimes zealously. And yet there's an underground movement that sees through all the propaganda and is willing to help out running men like Richards. You can read as much into that as you want, but it does conjure up some intriguing thoughts about our own political, religious, and popular culture institutions. There's also some pointed stuff about class warfare, the blissful ignorance of the wealthy, people's willingness to sacrifice each other for the sake of a scapegoat, and the corrupting influence of power.
I also liked how Richards was a real anti-hero --an antisocial, abrasive, bastard who develops a bit of a social conscience by the grisly end of the book. I further liked him because even though he was a big guy he was a smart one, too, and he relied on his wits to evade his pursuers so long and then to eventually (though perhaps unwillingly) take the fight to them. He's not just a cookie-cutter action hero like Schwartzenegger's character of the same name in the movie.
And, of course, on top of it all The Running Man is a pretty good action story. Once the game starts, things move pretty quickly and they don't let up until the last punctuation mark on the last sentence. Is the book really deep? Did it really connect with me in a personal way? No, on both counts. But it's fun, exciting, and thought provoking in a few places and that makes it worth a read.
You may be interested to read my other reviews of Stephen King books.
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