Well, I have finally finished The Running Man. I say this not because it took me a particularly long time (3-4 weeks isn’t so bad when you look at how long some of the books have taken me… *cough* The Stand *cough*), but because I flew through the first 200 pages or so in a couple of days and it has taken me 3 weeks to finish the last 100 or so. I have a fantastic reason for this of course. I started the book over the weekend that Amanda was admitted to the hospital to induce labor. Since she spent 2 days in labor before they finally decided to do a C-section and since there wasn’t a whole lot I was able to do while in the hospital with her, I was able to get a good chunk of reading done. At one point I thought I might just even be able to finish the book. I did not, however, and once our baby arrived, I was just a tad busy the next couple weeks getting used to being a parent and stuff and reading took a back seat. But, things are starting to get somewhat back to normal now (or at least, what normal is now going to be) and I am figuring out just how to get reading back into my schedule. Good thing too, because there are quite a few books to go on this journey and I am definitely enjoying myself and would hate to quit.
So let’s jump right on in shall we?
For those of you who don’t know what The Running Man is about, it takes place in a futuristic America in which a giant television network seems to have taken over the country. This book has a very strong science-fiction/futuristic vibe to it, and as such a lot of things aren’t really explained. You just kind of have to pick things up with the story as it goes. In some sense, this is nice for this story, as the action is really all that is important anyway. Anyway, the network has developed a whole series of “reality programs” for poor people to participate in, in order to win money. For example, one of these shows places people with poor hearts on a treadmill and they run and earn money based on how far they go. The appeal of the show for the “viewers” is of course what would draw anyone to any of the idiotic reality shows they have today… Seeing someone else in crisis is apparently very appealing (interesting how King was able to pick up on this fact several years before reality TV really took off, or even existed). And of course, the twist is that someone with a heart condition is going to have some issues after running on a treadmill for any length of time.
The book follows a man by the name of Ben Richards. Richards is down on his luck and applies to be on one of the shows. He gets selected to be on the network’s premier prime time show The Running Man. The premise of the show is that after a day’s head start, Richards will be hunted down by the networks top mercenary and his team. The prize is that for every hour Richards is able to evade capture, his family will receive $100 (I say his family because when Richards is “caught” he will be executed. So, as you can see, this book is very much a futuristic take on The Most Dangerous Game). If Richards is somehow able to survive for a month, he will win the ultimate prize of one billion dollars.
Now, what makes running that much harder for Richards is that, in addition to avoiding the “hunters”, he is also competing with every single viewer of the show. This is because any viewer who submits a tip to help find Richards receives a prize as well. And if that tip leads to his execution, the prize value is increased. Also, Richards must make two tapes of himself everyday (think of the “confessional” times they have on reality shows now – once again, King hits the nail on the head before the nail is even there) and mail them in to the network to air on the program. If he does not, he will forfeit all prize money, but will still be hunted… Of course, as soon as he sends something via the mail, the network knows where he is. But the network “does not share this information with the Hunters”…. Of course they don’t….
And that is the basic premise of the story. We follow Richards as he tries to avoid capture. It doesn’t seem like much, and it isn’t really, but the story is very engaging and moves at a pretty rapid pace. Which was nice after the long, slow, drawn out story that was Roadwork. Another thing that was interesting about this book, and helped with the pacing I suppose, is that it was divided up into 101 short sections; I guess you could call them chapters… Each one was titled the same way, “…Minus ### and Counting…” where ### was a running countdown starting with 100 and ending with 0 (which is why there are 101 of them). With the page count being only a little over 300, you can imagine that these “chapters” would be very short indeed. The chapter thing was kind of neat, and was definitely a stark contrast to Cujo which had absolutely no chapters whatsoever.
Other things I found interesting about the book include:
The main character’s name is Ben Richards. Which I couldn’t help but notice (being the comic lover that I am) is a nice cross between Ben Grimm and Reed Richards (two of the members of the Fantastic Four). Whether or not this was intentional by King, or just a random coincidence, I do not know. But I found it kind of cool.
Another thing I liked was how there wasn’t a lot of (read: any) detail given as to how America got to be the way it was, or much detail given about the state of things at all. Rather little details and tidbits were given though out the story in an almost casual way that someone would mention something that was widely known. For instance, there are air cars. No explanation is given as to what exactly this means, but they seem to be a pretty standard form of transportation. There are “new dollars” and “old dollars”, with new dollars being apparently more valuable. Also, at one point it is mentioned that deer are extinct on the east coast, but no mention as to why or how or what caused that. And then of course there was the mention of the Seattle riots of 2005, wonder what those were about? The final thing I thought was crazy and showed just how strange this future America is was the mention of Nevada’s “Have-One-Kill-One” mandatory abortion law. Of course, as I said, there is no explanation as to what this means at all. It’s just mentioned. But one can only imagine what the law could say, and cringe at the thought of what could cause things in our country to take that sort of turn….
I mentioned earlier that the pacing of this story was in direct contrast to the pacing of Roadwork. The other contrast is with the main character, specifically his name. If you recall from my post about Roadwork, we don’t actually find out the main character’s name until about page 19 or so. In The Running Man, there is no questions about what the main character, Ben Richards, name is. It would be pretty hard to forget too, as it seemed that King used his actually name “Richards” when talking about him almost as much, if not more, than he used the word “He”. Imagine reading a book and every other time you see the word “He” being used to reference the main character, replace that with the character’s actual name. It wasn’t necessarily distracting or anything and it didn’t really change the way I read the book at all. I think I just noticed since I had just finished Roadwork where the character’s name was used so infrequently that it was very noticeable that the name was used A LOT this time around.
Well, those are my thoughts about The Running Man. I really enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s a very quick read. The short chapters help with that, but the book itself just reads fast, so I’d encourage you to check it out of you like futuristic stories, or anything like that. I don’t want say too much about the ending of the book, but there is one more thing I feel I want to mention because it goes hand in hand with King using the whole “reality TV” idea before it existed. So, SPOILER ALERT!!! If you are thinking of reading the book, you may want to avoid the rest of this paragraph. The book ended with a plane flying into the networks main building. Again, keep in mind this book was written 1982, well before the tragedy of September 11th, 2001. I only bring it up because I find it interesting to read books, watch movies, or anything like that that deal with subject matters that at the time wouldn’t cause any issues, but now a day would not be acceptable. I’m sure no one really thought anything about the ending of the book in 1982 other than “Wow, that’s intense” or something like that. But I’m sure today there would be a big hullaballoo if someone tried to include something like that in a book (that wasn’t based on or about the World Trade Center incident).
And that really is all I have to say about the book.
I was planning on being able to share my thoughts on the movie as well, as it arrived before I finished the book and has been sitting on my shelf waiting for me. However, when I went to stick it in on Sunday, I was amazed to find that the disc and a significant dent in it. Not a scratch. Not a crack. But an honest to goodness dent. Needless to say it would not even load in my player. So I reported it to Blockbuster and they are sending me a replacement which should be here Wednesday. I suppose I could have waited to post until after I had watched it, but I don’t know if I’ll get to it right away or not and I didn’t want all my thoughts to evaporate (as they tend to do). I’m still trying to figure out just exactly what could cause a “dent” in a DVD… Maybe I just don’t want to know. Regardless, it’s very clear that Blockbuster does not have inspecting their discs very high on their priority list before sending them out (unless this somehow occurred in transit). I did make the decision to keep moving on with my reading though, as I don’t want to risk stalling while I’m still on such a good roll (three-week delay excluded). So I started The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger last night. Not that it really matters that much to you what I’m doing or what order I’m doing it in… But I just thought I’d share.
I hope you have enjoyed my thoughts. As always, thanks for reading.
One Page At A Time 