Running man

 Author: Stephen King under pseudonym Richard Bachman 

Genre: Sci-Fi, Dystopian

Original publication date: May 1, 1982

Book description: 

The poor are seen more by the government as worrisome rodents than actual human beings. The protagonist of The Running Man, Ben Richards, is quick to realize this as he watches his daughter, Cathy, grow more sick by the day and tread closer and closer to death. Desperate for money to pay Cathy’s medical bills, Ben enlists himself in a true reality style game show where the objective is to merely stay alive.

Thoughts:

It has a slow start while it is giving you a small introduction to the current state of the world. 

The social division between those with money and those at the bottom of the economic status is abysmal. There are two types of currency, old dollars, and new currency. Those in very poor districts have only access to jobs where they get paid old dollars, which is less valuable than the new currency of course. 

The environment suffered greatly and many jobs expose people to unsanitary conditions, the system is lowering the education level and withholding information, so most people do not have a real idea of how dangerous exposure is. 

Some of the lower classes do perform work in certain areas and they know they will not be able to have children or at least it's going to be close to miraculous if they conceive. Ben has spent his life doing menial work that barely pays him enough to keep afloat adding to that it's one of those jobs you take and know your chances of having kids just went to null. His wife gave birth to a girl, but they only had a single blessing. The baby girl, Cathy, suddenly became sick, they do not have access to real doctors or medicine, they can barely afford the weird ineffective herbs from a psueduhealer down the block. 

He is desperate and makes a decision to go to the T.V. Network and offer himself a volunteer for one of the games. When he gets there, he needs to go through several procedures and health inspections. Once those are cleared he is taken to the designated area and he gets assigned to participate in one of the television games. 

He is very unlucky. He gets selected for the Running man, the most profitable game there is. He will be set loose with an amount of money in an undisclosed area. He will run and hide, sending a video recording of himself twice a day. There will be hunters after him. The time he manages to survive while on the run is going to be translated to a monetary prize that will be granted to his family upon the finish of the game. 

Interesting fact, no one has ever won in that game.

He accepts t play. But he soon realizes it is all set up to lose. He gets introduced as a vulgar good for nothing man, his wife described as a whore and he is insulted by the host of the game show. The point is to make everyone out there hate him. The common people get rewards if they provide clues of his whereabouts or capture him and charge the prize the hunters are playing for. So of course he has to lose, with everyone out there against him.

He gets a few allies, some people are not happy at all with the government their cover-ups and the precarious health regulations. Ben might just have a chance at winning this. 

Ben takes us through a few exciting action scenes and it's very disheartening at the same time as we get to care about him and the people that try to help him. 

This is a good example of a dystopian world. We still get a few over-sexualized details, a few words chosen are not socially acceptable and women are definitely not likable here but overall very enjoyable read. 

I recommend this to people how are trying to get into Dystopian but with something that does not feature too romanticized version of the world. It is not very explained as we follow a man who is already part of it so he does not need the world explained to him, but he is trying to dive into some deeper parts of society where the government is keeping the truth from them. The ending might be not to your liking. I am not going to provide any details about it but I was not too happy about it.

It still fits the story, it's just not my favorite ending. 

That's it for now, see you later.

Stay safe!